Cartwright - WANTED MAN

A Manual for Criminals

on How to Avoid Punishment in the EU

London

2019

WANTED MAN

THE STORY OF MUKHTAR ABLYAZOV

GARY CARTWRIGHT

Published in UK

for EU Today LTD

by Cambridge International Press, 2019

e-mail: cip.publisher@gmail.com

www.cambridgeinternationalpress.com

WANTED MAN: THE STORY OF MUKHTAR ABLYAZOV

A Manual for Criminals on How to Avoid Punishment in the EU

by Gary Cartwright

English

Editor Stephen M. Bland

Designer Alexandra Rey

Cover image by Philippe Merle

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Catalogue in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-910886-95-3

CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE: From Rags to Riches; Accident or Murder?

CHAPTER TWO: A Billionaires Road to Britain; Flight to England; The English Courts Weigh In; Partners in Crime; Flawed Judgement

CHAPTER THREE: The Move to France

CHAPTER FOUR: The Deportation of Shalabayeva; The Arrest and Rehabilitation of Olena Tyshchenko; Ablyazov Walks Free From Jail

CHAPTER FIVE: Criminal Networks

CHAPTER SIX: The Trump Connection; Court Judgement Against Ilyas Khrapunov: Trump Implicated

CHAPTER SEVEN: Viktor Khrapunovs Retirement; Bota Jardemalie: Ablyazovs Right Hand; Money Laundering Allegations; Joseph Chetrit

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Fake NGO; Mukhtar Ablyazovs Champions in the EU; Polish Government Investigation into the ODF; Where Does This All Lead?; Ablyazov Taken Off the Interpol Red List; The ODF Campaign Against Interpol; Criticism of the ODF in the European Parliament; They Are Going to Put You in the Movies; Kozlovskas Removal from Belgium

CHAPTER NINE: Murder Most Foul; Tokmadis Jail Cell Confession; Tokmadis Conviction for Murder

CHAPTER TEN: Europe Welcomes Stolen Billions; Unexplained Wealth Orders; Tax Havens and Loopholes

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Threat to Democracy

APPENDICES

INDEX

FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR

With the tenth anniversary of his flight from the authorities in his homeland of Kazakhstan fast approaching, the raft of transnational court cases involving fugitive embezzler Mukhtar Ablyazov show no sign of abating. In a global saga which stretches from an institutional aversion to tackling kleptocracy in the United Kingdom to United States President Donald Trumps shady business partners, the murky world of Mukhtar Ablyazov even led his family to make a pit stop in the Central African Republic to pick up diplomatic passports. Yet despite having judgements against him totalling $4.9 billion in the British courts alone, almost six years since he fled from the UK to avoid three concurrent 22-month sentences for contempt of court, Ablyazov remains a free man.

So who is this criminal mastermind, a man found to have committed fraud on an epic scale in the UK and sentenced in absentia in his homeland of having ordered the assassination of his erstwhile business partner? A country boy turned kleptocrat, in certain quarters estimates as to the total amount embezzled by Ablyazov stand at almost $10 billion, yet from his villa in France, Ablyazov continues to bemoan his plight to be a simple case of political persecution. This is an argument supported by parties such as the NGO, the Open Dialog Foundation, whose activities, a report from a conference held in the European Parliament in November 2017 found, are funded by companies flagged and sanctioned by the West.

With webs of shell companies which straddle the globe threatening democracy at every turn, the story of master fraudster Mukhtar Ablyazov and his entourage is shrouded in deliberately and intricately constructed layers of obfuscation. In his book, Cartwright shines a light on the extraordinary antics of the fugitive kleptocrat and his retinue. Exhaustively researched, yet succinct and easily comprehensible, Wanted Man: The Story of Mukhtar Ablyazov lays bare the startling facts behind this opaque tale.

Stephen M. Bland,

award-winning author and journalist

PROLOGUE

A murder committed to facilitate fraud and theft on a scale the world has rarely, if ever, seen. The perpetrators closely associated with top officials and illegally funded companies linked to shadowy operators at the heart of politics in the European Union, and those responsible seemingly able to escape justice at will. This isnt the plot of a novel by John Grisham or Ian Fleming, but a harsh reality involving billions of dollars of stolen funds, a story which began in the days following the fall of the Soviet Union and continues today, with its perpetrators apparently always a step ahead of justice. It is a saga of criminality that calls into question the basic concept of justice. Is it impartial and applicable to all without fear or favour, or is it something that can be bought and paid for? Are judicial systems partial to those with enough money or political influence that has itself been obtained at a price?

The story begins in the post-Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, a fledgling nation, but one with a proud people of Turkic and Mongol origins whose history stretches back over millennia. In this nation that has rapidly evolved from a vassal state to an emerging economy, a remarkable figure emerged. A young man from a humble background, Mukhtar Ablyazov quickly rose to the rank of minister in the government of the highly regarded President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was widely unpredicted, with the West apparently unprepared. In hindsight, the end of the Soviet Union following the dramatic collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was inevitable. As the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) experienced its final days, the Supreme Soviet left the constituent republics to fend for themselves. The Kremlin withdrew into survival mode and, under the guidance of President Boris Yeltsin, explored new avenues on how to protect Russia, historically the colonial master, including a brief flirtation with liberal democracy.

Whilst the West embraced the new situation and opened doors at every level to the former Soviet states, in the fledgling republics long-held animosities were to express themselves in a number of ways. In the former Yugoslavia, vicious warfare broke out with battle lines drawn along ethnic and religious grounds. Europe was again to witness heartrending scenes of citizens imprisoned behind barbed wire and subjected to starvation and brutality based simply on ethnicity and religion. Ethnic cleansing reappeared on the continent which had already given the world the words Holodomor and Holocaust just decades earlier and then naively told itself, never again.

In the Baltic States, hatred of the former and much loathed Russian occupiers was expressed in the peaceful but to many provocative tearing down of Soviet-era monuments. In Ukraine, the desire for independence and self-determination that had long defined the countrys relationship with its closest neighbour was reignited, and the seeds for the Orange Revolution of November 2004 were sown. All of this led down the long and painful road to the illegal annexation by Russia of Crimea in 2014 and the often covert Russian-backed military struggle in the Donbass that now pits Ukrainian against Ukrainian.