KAZAKHSTAN: BUSINESS CLIMATE GROWS GLOOMY AMID ARBITRARY ARREST CONTROVERSY

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Foreign investors and Kazakhstan’s business elite have been shaken by the arrest of one of the country’s most respected and successful entrepreneurs. As investors look on nervously and some of the country’s top executives protest openly, a probe of all state companies has been ordered. So great has been the controversy stirred by the arrest of Mukhtar Dzhakishev, former head of the state nuclear agency, that President Nursultan Nazarbayev felt compelled to intervene.

Dzhakishev was fired as head of Kazatomprom on May 21 and officially arrested four days later on suspicion of stealing state property. (His wife insists he was actually arrested on May 21).

According to the National Security Committee (NSC), he is accused of appropriating as his personal property 60 percent of Kazakhstan’s uranium deposits worth tens of billions of dollars. The NSC says Dzhakishev committed the alleged crimes in collusion with fugitive banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, his longtime associate. Separately, Ablyazov is accused of running an organized crime ring at BTA Bank, which he owned until the financial institution was forcibly nationalized in February.