“Geologist on Bentley”: ex-deputy minister of industry Timur Toktabayev arrested in Kazakhstan

Timur Toktabayev, former Vice Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development, has been detained in Kazakhstan. The official was arrested in his own cottage, he is suspected of abuse of power. The court also seized the numerous property of Toktabaev and his immediate family, including land, real estate and an elite fleet of vehicles.

The Anti-Corruption Committee and the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Kazakhstan are checking the scheme developed by the ministry’s employees, who are currently under pre-trial investigation. Officials illegally transferred mineral deposits to businessmen they knew under the pretext of exploration of these deposits, and without a competitive auction. At the same time, reconnaissance had already been carried out for a long time, but this fact was deliberately hidden by officials. As a result, entrepreneurs got access to a ready deposit for a meager amount, avoiding competition with other market participants, and the state lost a lot of money due to the fact that auctions for the sale of deposits were not held.

The 41-year-old Alma-Ata native and prime suspect in the case, ex-Minister Timur Toktabayev, has a rich biography that he has successfully tarnished.

The official charged under economic articles has three higher educations. In 2003, he studied at the Academy of the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan and served in the bodies for three years. However, the young security officer was drawn to geology – closer to valuable minerals and big money.

In 2006, Toktabaev received a degree in financier and soon became deputy head of the Kazgeoinform RCGI, and this organization is not engaged in anything, but in collecting and storing information about state subsoil and their condition.

Soon Toktabaev receives a third education, specialized in his new field – geology and exploration of mineral deposits. But being a simple scientist is not in his plans: the career of an official is rapidly going up – in the same 2006, he becomes an adviser to the chairman of the Committee for Geology and Subsoil Use, and two years later – Deputy Director of the Department of Direct Investments in Subsoil Use of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of Kazakhstan.

Overcoming step by step on the career ladder, in 2019 the functionary gets to the last position – vice minister in the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development, but leaves it at the end of the year. The ministry itself noted that he resigned of his own free will. Presumably, this was facilitated by fraud, in which employees of the department were suspected even then – according to Kazakhstani media, the former vice minister and his subordinates allegedly demanded a large bribe in the amount of 250 thousand US dollars from companies associated with geological developments for issuing rights to subsoil use objects , and then quietly settled the issue in favor of one of the companies, presumably agreeing to satisfy the demand.

Many foreign companies investing in the geological industry of Kazakhstan have suffered from this scheme. “Vice Minister Toktabayev and the company in the foreseeable future may become co-defendants in the International Arbitration Court in the city of Rotterdam on the claim of the Dutch company, which the cunning guys decided to throw. Thus, Kazakhstan will receive a process under the conditional name “Stati-2,” according to Kazakh media.

An application for Toktabayev and his colleagues to law enforcement agencies was filed back in 2019. Some media in Kazakhstan assumed that the official would not only not be arrested, but would not even lose his position, or take a similar one, because he, as they say, “knows how to spin.” It was reported that the official enjoyed the trust and patronage of his boss, the then Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Zhenis Kassymbek, as well as influential people from Nursultan Nazarbayev’s close circle.

Let’s not forget those years that Toktabayev spent at the beginning of his career in the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan, where he could also acquire good connections among the security forces and the same relatives of Nazarbayev. Recall that Elbasy’s nephew Samat Abish served as the first deputy head of the National Security Committee (KNB) of Kazakhstan.

When Toktabaev was nevertheless fired, the media linked it not to the investor fraud scandal, but to the redistribution of the black market for mining and exploration licenses in Kazakhstan. And now, three years later, the case moved off the ground. Now the court has arrested numerous property of both Toktabaev and people close to him. There are plots of land, huge cottages, and a VIP car park, a little more modest than that of an Arab sheikh – with Maybach, Cadillac, Bentley, BMW sports cars and other premium cars. Much in this case is not disclosed in the interests of the investigation, but one thing is clear – a certain purge at the top is underway.

“We have officials imprisoned like snowdrops are plucked,” political scientist Chingiz Lepsibaev told MK. – We have the first deputy of the presidential administration arrested and sitting at the moment; we have a dozen ministers arrested at different times for different crimes, so the arrest of an individual vice minister is not a direct super sensation.

This, of course, is a high-ranking civil servant, but he is not the head of the department. With great enthusiasm, citizens perceive arrests of this format. The man was clearly stealing, committing crimes of a corruption format. A civil servant cannot have Maybachs and Bentleys.

There is a very big public demand for justice in Kazakhstan. Now the situation is changing when some people used their official position and believed that they would get nothing for it. We have a lot of billionaires who have never worked in business structures, but they have a huge fortune. Our country is small and we all know these people, so the citizens are looking forward to jailing all those who, using their official position, stole here.

There are several hundred people on this list, and even the president said in February of this year that half of the national treasure is in the hands of 165 people. Citizens have questions – when will they investigate the source of the capital of these people.

– Do you think this is really a fight against corruption or just a redistribution of influence between clans?

– Of course, this is a fight against corruption, but even if there are elements of a redistribution of influence, we will only be happy if they slap each other. And we hope that while they leak information about each other, it will be impossible to steal. And we will finally become a state of law.

The arrest of the official really caused an approving reaction among the residents of Kazakhstan. In social networks, they expressed gratitude to the Anti-Corruption Committee, and also noted that it is necessary to punish not only the functionary, but also those people who promoted him through the ranks.