Austrian far-right party files complaint to follow Aliyev’s money in Malta

New allegations of money laundering and questions about Rakhat Aliyev's company interests in Malta have been made in a new complaint against the Kazakh exile, to the State prosecutor in Vienna.

The accusations come from an unlikely quarter - the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) - which has pounced on revelations in the Austrian press that Aliyev's cash is funding a new real estate project for media houses in the St Marx quarter of Vienna.

The FPÖ filed an official complaint against Aliyev - a former Kazakh diplomat now living in exile in Malta - to investigate the origins of the funds that his company AV Maximus used to finance the holding company that owns Media Quarter Marx.

Media Quarter Marx is 60% owned by the City of Vienna, while the rest is owned by VBM GmBH - the company which loaned cash from Aliyev's AV Maximus.

The FPÖ's demands include tracing the whereabouts of Aliyev's fortune, after Malta's money laundering investigators, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, were alerted to Aliyev's interests in Malta.

According to information seen by MaltaToday, the FIAU was told that AV Maximus's shareholding was transferred to a company set up in Malta under the name A&P Power, now renamed Zurich Asset Management.

A&P Power was set up for Aliyev's Austrian wife, Elnara Shorazova, to transfer the sum of €2.4 million from another Austrian firm Veitlissen.

According to court documents in a case Shorazova filed against her former lawyer, Pio Valletta, A&P Power was renamed Zurich Asset Management, while the ultimate beneficial ownership was vested in A&P Power Holdings, another company based in the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis.

It is not suggested that the creation of these companies and the transfer of ownership or money is unlawful or suspect.

Permanent residence

Critics claim Aliyev's millions originate from extortion during his time as chief of the tax police, deputy foreign affairs minister and deputy head of the Kazakh equivalent of the KGB, and that as son-in-law to Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, he used his influence to take over private companies for financial gain, often by threatening violence.

Aliyev, 49, claims he is the victim of a frame-up and politically-charged accusations. In 2007, while serving as ambassador to Austria, he was forced to divorce his wife after being found guilty of kidnapping two Nurbank bank managers. The two managers were later found dead, and Aliyev was sentenced, in absentia, to 20 years' imprisonment. Aliyev has denied the charges, and Austria has refused to extradite him to Kazakhstan where he cannot be guaranteed a fair trial.

However, the Viennese State prosecutor has started its own investigations into the double-murder, interrogating Aliyev for three days in the Maltese courts in April 2012.

In Malta, the foreign ministry has stood by its decision to grant Aliyev permanent residence on the grounds that he is now married to Austrian citizen Elnara Shorazova, and as such can avail himself of freedom of movement - despite objections raised by the police over a 2007 Interpol alert against Aliyev.

But this does not answer the question as to why Maltese criminal investigators have refused to investigate allegations of torture made against the former Kazakh diplomat, in an official complaint of 'widespread or systematic torture' made by bodyguards employed by a former Kazakh prime minister, who accused Aliyev of commissioning their torture, allegedly as part of a vendetta on the former prime minister.

The lawyers for bodyguards Satjan Ibraev and Petr Afanasenko filed the complaint in February 2012, but in his reply, Assistant Commissioner Andrew Seychell claimed the police could not exercise jurisdiction on Aliyev because he was not a 'permanent resident' in terms of the Immigration Act - a status that grants foreigners an ordinary residence permit - because he happens to be benefiting from freedom of movement by virtue of his marriage to an Austrian (and by extension, an EU national) - Elnara Shorazova.

But this claim remains questionable, given that even the foreign ministry has confirmed that Aliyev benefits from a residence permit of sorts. Additionally, a counter-claim by former lawyer Pio Valletta in a civil court case also claims that Aliyev secured 'permanent residence status' sometime in 2010 under the scheme that granted special tax status to foreigners who purchase property over the value of €116,000.

MaltaToday has previously reported that the Aliyev case is a source of embarrassment for the Maltese government: the matter was raised with foreign minister Tonio Borg in a meeting he had with the head of the German-Maltese parliamentary group and MP Ernst-Reinhard Beck, which inquired about the Maltese position on hosting the former Kazakh diplomat.

On its part, the foreign ministry insists it would act on a European arrest warrant issued by Austrian investigators, and that it would "review" Aliyev's residence permit "should new irregularities arise" other than those under investigation by the Austrians.