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Kazakhstan's ex-Ambassador to Austria Rakhat Aliyev accused of double murder and tortures is driving around Malta with fake number plates, MaltaToday reports.
"Mr Aliyev believes he is a marked man, and he lives in a high-security home in Malta. He has also moved around in a car with number plates that do not match the registration of the car. If Joe Citizen were apprehended for fake number plates, it would be the end of the world. But Mr Aliyev, who had all his residence papers processed when Tonio Borg was home affairs minister, seems to be untouchable," Saviour Balzan writes for MaltaToday.
This continues the series of unsavory events has has been following Aliyev's arrival to Malta. Earlier Maltese Foreign Minister and member of the European Commission Tonio Borg was accused of receiving a bribe of 150 thousand Euro from Rakhat Aliyev in return for the residence permit. The Minister denied receiving the bribe, of course.
The bribe came up during Aliyev's litigation with his former lawyer Pio Valletta whom he fell out with. The lawyer said that obtaining permanent residence status for Aliyev on Malta didn't go smoothly in 2010 because of the Interpol alert that had been issued against Aliyev. In the list of services he rendered to Aliyev Valletta demanded €150,000 because of the "difficulties" he encountered in procuring the permanent residence status, "due to the non-approval from the police authorities" because of the Interpol alert, MaltaToday wrote some time ago.
Things have changed for Aliyev since, and it looks like three years has been enough for him to straighten things out with the local police, and everyone else: the police pretends not to be aware of his fake plates and The Times of Malta has decided to reprint his memoirs.
Meanwhile, an editor at MaltaToday was arrested and asked by the police to reveal his source about facts related to Aliyev's frozen assets, MaltaToday writes.
Besides, MaltaToday revealed that Mr Aliyev had expressed interest in purchasing the media company that owns MaltaToday.
In 2011 Aliyev was convicted durante absentia of murder of top-managers of Nurbank Zholdas Timraliyev and Aibar Khassenov after their bodies were found in Almaty outskirts. In 2008 he was charged with several grave crimes in Kazakhstan, including kidnapping (of Timraliyev and Khassenov). The sentence was given durante absentia, as Aliyev fled from Kazakhstan to avoid justice was hiding in Austria then in other European countries since 2007. He currently lives in Malta, where he was interrogated by Vienna prosecutors this spring.
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