Geneva is a favourite location for the mansions of Kazakhstani leaders and their families
f the five Central Asian “stans” that emerged as independent republics from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan had seemed the most prosperous, best-run and most stable. Its leader at the time of independence, Nursultan Nazarbayev, remained president until 2019; even afterwards he was the power behind the throne.
This time the unrest there was provoked by a sudden doubling in the price of liquefied petroleum gas from 60 to 120 tenge a litre .is widely used as car fuel by less well-off drivers. It cost so much less than petrol that in recent years many drivers have converted their cars to run on it, sacrificing space in their boot for the canisters.
The Malaysian prime minister’s touchiness was understandable. It later emerged that, during his tenure, some $4.5bn had been siphoned from a state investment fund, while the prime minister’s own bank balance rose by nearly $700m . Self-effacing as ever, Nazarbayev declined the honour. It took years of wheedling from his loyal subjects for him to be persuaded that the new name was no more than his due. He eventually accepted it, like a gold watch or a greetings card full of embarrassing workplace reminiscences, as a retirement gift. He unexpectedly resigned the presidency in March 2019, to retreat to a life of behind-the-scenes string-pulling as the constitutionally designated “leader of the nation”.
The first three properties were the subject of an embarrassing “unexplained wealth order” from Britain’s National Crime Agency in 2019, alleging that they had been bought with money from Aliyev’s father, Rakhat Aliyev. The elder Aliyev, divorced from his wife, was a former senior official who had styled himself “godfather-in-law”. In 2015 he was found hanged in an Austrian prison cell, where he was awaiting trial for murder.
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