KazAtomProm’s ex-head, jailed for several months now, is in dire need of medical care, according to his wife, who spoke to journalists after visiting her husband. There is, of course, more to this than meets the eye.
Kazakhstan is the wealthiest country in former Soviet Central Asia, its economy buoyed by vast oil and gas reserves and uranium resources. The country is expected to become the world’s largest uranium producer this year or next.
This is from Peter Leonard and the AP, in connection with the story last week on KazAtomProm’s jailed ex-head.
Mukhtar Dzhakishev is the highest-profile businessman to be arrested in a recent crackdown on executives that has alarmed foreign investors in uranium-rich Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest economy.
He was jailed in May, just days after being fired as head of state-controlled Kazatomprom, and was charged with signing over more than half of the former Soviet republic’s uranium holdings into his own name.
Mr. Dzhakishev is in the care of the KNB, the Kazakh brother of Uzbekistan’s SNB, and similarly a direct descendent of the KGB. They insist that the jailed businessman is healthy and checked daily, and (from the Washington Post):
“He himself has not said that (he is in poor health),” a KNB spokesman said.
Since this story came out, it has been viewed in several different lights. For example, there is the story as anti-corruption arrests, an attempt by Nazarbaev to pull his underlings into shape. Another example: the story is one of the selective enforcement of universally broken laws in order to prevent one of the more powerful figures in Kazakhstan from having a political future. Or perhaps it is just another story of the security force (KNB) and its connections to the President and his right-hand woman, Kvyatkovskaya. I’m willing to believe it could be all of the above.
Quick Aside: Kvyatkovskaya has an interesting history, and she shows up in Olcott’s Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise as an ex-journalist who made some good political connections in early 90s Almaty, moving into the Otan [now Nur Otan] party after winning a court case proving the ‘94 parliamentary elections were unconstitutional. Even at that early date, analysts suspected Presidential collusion – for how else could a failed candidate take on the Kazakhstani court system and win?
In closing, I find it interesting how people in Kazakhstan sometimes refer to Nazarbaev in an almost Voldemort-esque manner. I’ve seen this in the press, but more commonly in conversation. In other words, if you’re saying (or printing) something that could be construed negatively, NAN becomes ’somebody.’
Dzhakishev told reporters that Kvyatkovskaya’s statement is absurd and assumed that she is acting on somebody’s order.
“Kvyatkovskaya’s accusations that I am allegedly giving away resources is a total nonsense that shows her incompetence in legal matters, ” Dzhakishev was quoted as saying to Svoboda Slova newspaper.
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