Kazakh exile Rakhat Aliyev’s wife accuses Malta of human rights breach

The wife of a former Kazakh oligarch, found dead in an Austrian jail in a startling act of suicide, is suing the Maltese government in the European Court of Human Rights.

Elnara Shorazova, an Austrian national who became the second wife of Rakhat Aliyev – a one-time exile living in Malta – is complaining that the Maltese government’s compliance with a freezing order requested by the Kazakhstan authorities, breached her human rights because the request stemmed from a regime that could not offer any guarantees of a fair trial.

In her complaint, signed by lawyer Joe Giglio, Shorazova complains that the freezing order on her Malta assets – in place since 2014 – was based on politically motivated trumped-up charges.

Elnara Shorazova, wife of former Kazakh oligarch Rakhat Aliyev

She said the measure had no genuine public interest, especially in Malta, and that Malta was positively obliged not to be complicit in the breaches of human rights perpetrated in Kazakhstan.

She also complained that she had suffered a breach of her right to a fair trial because of the long constitutional proceedings in Malta in which she protested the asset freeze and the Maltese collaboration with the Kazakh investigation.

Rakhat Aliyev, later Shoraz, was married to the daughter of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev, having occupied a high-ranking role in the country’s secret service. But he fell out of favour with his father-in-law, and by 2007 while serving as ambassador in Vienna, he was forcibly divorced from Nazarbayev’s daughter. Aliyev has always claimed that his pro-democracy views imperilled Nazarbayev’s iron grip on the country.

Like similar dissidents Aliyev went into exile, but he was dogged by accusations of having commissioned the kidnapping of two Nurbank bankers later found dead. In absentia, he was found guilty by a Kazakh court and sentenced to 20 years’ jail.

Austria refused a 2007 request for extradition, citing the former Soviet republic’s human rights record. But at the same time, criminal proceedings were instituted against him in Vienna on charges of money laundering and the Nurbank murders.

Aliyev came to Malta in 2010. His four-year stay was dogged by the Austrian investigation, as well as new money laundering accusations in Germany and Liechtenstein, and accusations of torture from two former security men who worked by his side.

In 2014, the Austrian authorities issued an arrest warrant against Aliyev when he left Malta, intending to acquire citizenship in Cyprus.

Aliyev has always insisted that Kazakhstan was funding lawyers and activists across Europe to persecute him on money laundering charges.

Malta proceedings

While in Malta, Aliyev was dogged by a request from Kazakhstan to Maltese police for an investigation and an attachment order. In April 2014, the Court of Magistrates issued a freezing order over Aliyev’s properties in Malta, his yacht, and companies.

Aliyev requested constitutional redress, complaining that the proceedings by the Attorney General at the request of the Kazakh authorities were in breach of his right to a fair trial, given the political situation in Kazakhstan.

But in February 2015, Aliyev was found dead in an Austrian jail – ostensibly having killed himself – after turning himself to Austrian prosecutors in December 2014 on the Nurbank murders charge. His lawyers always insisted that Aliyev, 52, could not have killed himself.

In October 2017, the Civil Court in its constitutional competence found a partial breach and ordered that the documentation collected by the Maltese authorities should not be sent to the Kazakh authorities as it had been collected in breach of the rights of the claimants.

But it said legal assistance should be continued against Elnara Shorazova and that all documentation be sent to the Kazakh authorities in relation to the criminal charges against her.

Shorazova complained to the ECHR that the Maltese court had been shown the various reports presented to it about the regular use of torture in political trials in Kazakhstan; but it had decided that given the seriousness of the financial crimes with which Aliyev was charged, the Maltese authorities should not obstruct the investigation by not sending the collected information.

The court did not consider it appropriate to make any general assertions as to democracy in Kazakhstan, which was not relevant to the present case, as in it had not been sufficiently proved that the applicant’s trial was politically motivated.