Bern drops case against Kulibayev

Timur KulibayevBern has dismissed the criminal complaint against the son in law of the head of the Kazakh State. A complaint against this oligarch who is close to the Kazakh authorities has led to three years of investigation. And to the freezing of almost 400 million francs in Swiss banks, kazworld.info reports. 

The criminal investigation has been closed. Opened in September 2010 by the Attorney General of the Confederation, the criminal investigation for money laundering against the son in law of the head of the Kazakh State was closed fifteen days ago. All measures taken against Timur Kulibayev  and his partner Arvind Tiku and companies associated with them  have been lifted.

«We are obviously delighted, and have no complaint, the investigators have only done their job,» a financial advisor to this oligarch close to the government responded on Friday while he was passing through Geneva.

Before turning on another oligarch in disgrace  currently imprisoned in France. «We note that Mukhtar Ablyazov  he confirmed on his TV station that it was him  was able to abuse the Swiss judicial system by finding a front man to make an anonymous criminal complaint and then watch while the accused and the judges explained themselves.»

The criminal complaint filed in 2010 in the name of dissident citizens by Bruno de Preux which led to the freeze, at Credit Suisse, UBS and BNP Paribas, of bank accounts linked to Timur Kulibayev, his partner and about twenty companies  300 to 400 million francs in total. This is less than the 600 million reported at the time. «Based on false bank documents presented to the media, the evidence was manipulated and manufactured» explains Kulibayevs advisor. «Approximately 100 million francs» directly related to Timur Kulibayev were frozen at Credit Suisse explains his advisor, according to whom «nearly all the money was released six weeks after the start of the investigation.» Contacted yesterday, the Geneva lawyer responsible for the complaint did not respond to our calls.

High risk Investigation Opponents of the regime in the former Soviet Republic have in the past pointed to the political nature of this case. And the fact that this investigation into deposits of dirty money in Switzerland required, as a preliminary step, the son in law of the president to be convicted of a crime in Kazakhstan. «The Kazakh Prosecutor General’s Office decided that after an investigation by the financial police, no evidence justified the opening of proceedings for a predicate offence to suspected money laundering in Switzerland», was the limited response on this subject from the Swiss Public Prosecutor. «Not a single question from the Swiss was left unanswered», adds the oligarchs representative. He stressed that it is paradoxical to say on the one hand that «Berne sends its prosecutors to investigate a State without a credible judicial system» and on the other that «that State is sophisticated enough to sign a double taxation agreement with it.»

According to his financial advisor, the former oil minister  whose fortune exceeds 2 billion  is currently managing his businesses in Kazakhstan. The oligarch does not want to strike back and seek compensation for «millions of francs in legal fees.» The Federal Prosecutors office states that this «dismissal of the complaint does not involve any cost to the federal government.» Other than three years of work.