Times’ owners reprint Kazakh exile’s memoirs

The former son-in-law of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev won himself front-page coverage in the Sunday Times yesterday, ostensibly because the newspaper's printing company Progress Print has just reprinted the English translation of Rakhat Aliyev's memoirs The Godfather-in-Law.

In the past he accused MaltaToday of being 'paid' to persecute him, but only after his offer to buy this newspaper was snubbed.

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Aliyev, formerly the Kazakh ambassador to the OSCE in Austria before Nazarbayev forcibly divorced him from his daughter in 2008, lives in Malta where he claims the Kazakh secret service is watching him and waiting to kidnap him.

Sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment in 2010 by a Kazakh court in absentia for the murder of bankers Zholdas Temiraliev and Aybar Khasenov, Aliyev denies the charges.

But the Austrian government, which has refused to extradite him to Kazakhstan, is investigating the claims itself and has also questioned Aliyev here in Malta, where he moved in 2010 with his wife Elnara Shorazhova, a naturalised Austrian citizen. Aliyev today uses the surname Shoraz.

Everybody wants a piece of Aliyev, it seems: former Kazakh prime minister Akezhan Kazhageldin has challenged the Maltese police in court, unsuccessfully, to force an investigation into the torture of his former bodyguards. Aliyev is accused, as former deputy head of the Kazakh secret service (KNB), of attempting to force a confession from them that Kazhageldin was planning a coup.

In Germany and Austria, legal firms like Lansky, Ganzger and Partner are also pursuing their own actions in Malta against Aliyev over human rights abuses and money laundering, representing the widows of two managers of the Kazakh "Nurbank" who were allegedly kidnapped and allegedly murdered by Aliyev and his associates in 2008.

Since falling out with Nazarbayev, Aliyev has reinvented himself into a pro-democracy crusader against the excesses of the oil-rich despotism of the Nazarbayev family. Nazarbayev himself has courted European social democrats like Tony Blair and Romano Prodi in his own 'pro democracy' circle.

The only two constants in this family feud are two: power and money. Both Nazarbayev and Aliyev have much of the same, and those who are looking for Aliyev in Malta also want a piece of the action.

In June, the courts ordered the freezing of Aliyev's assets over a possible money laundering investigation. Lawyer Joe Giglio claims that order - which is prohibited from being divulged - ended up in the hands of the Kazakh security service.

MaltaToday published the details of the order days after it was issued - and appearing on Kazakh news websites - leading to the arrest of Matthew Vella after the police opened an investigation.