The death of Nazarbayev’s brother made us remember the scandals of the past

The personality of Bolat Nazarbayev was controversial, but memorable

In Kazakhstan, the younger brother of the first President of the Republic, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Bolat Nazarbayev, died after a long illness. According to preliminary data, the cause of death was cardiac arrest. The current president of the country, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, expressed his condolences to the first president of the republic, Nursultan Nazarbayev, but he will not attend the funeral. We remember who Nazarbayev’s brother was and what he was remembered for.

Over the past year, we have heard less about the Nazarbayev family than ever before. The family tries not to be in the public eye, but from time to time one of the relatives becomes the object of another scandal or criminal cases, the origins of which go back to the times when Nazarbayev Sr. headed the country. Last week, reports appeared in the Kazakh media that the plane of Elbasy (the leader of the nation, such a title was awarded to the ex-president) arrived from the United Arab Emirates to Kazakhstan. This happened against the backdrop of news about the deteriorating health of his brother, Bolat Nazarbayev. Most likely, Nursultan Nazarbayev visited him in the hospital, and is now preparing for the funeral of a relative.

It is known that 70-year-old Bolat Nazarbayev has recently experienced serious health problems. We talked about laryngeal cancer and other diseases. Back in early November, the Kazakh media reported that the 70-year-old brother of the ex-president was in serious condition. He was allegedly hospitalized with a second heart attack, and later Almaty doctors reported that the man was in intensive care, but employees of the Salikaly Urpak charitable foundation he created did not confirm the information about the heart attack.

Despite the unspoken ban on negative mentions of Elbasy’s relatives in the Kazakh media, the younger brother, who is referred to as an entrepreneur, has often been criticized and accused of a variety of things: from racketeering and polygamy, to abuse of power and connections with criminal groups.

It is possible that some of the criticism is not without merit. For example, they say that Bolat Nazarbayev had so many children that he himself did not remember some. Some media write that he has 20 of them, but in fact there could be more. However, there were three born in an official marriage – two daughters and a son, Nurbol Nazarbayev, a police colonel and vice-president of the Federation of National Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Bolat Nazarbayev owned a huge fortune and numerous real estate throughout Kazakhstan. He was credited with ownership

59 plots in Nur-Sultan, Talgar, Kaskelen and Turkestan region. He owned luxurious palaces, the main one of which was a huge estate in the foothills of Almaty, which was once captured on a quadcopter video filmed by journalists from the opposition publication Orda.kz. From above you can see a huge house in the middle of a sprawling orchard, as well as gazebos, greenhouses and other buildings.

Bolat Nazarbayev had a special passion for markets and market business. For example, he owned the Nikolsky market, the oldest market in the city of Alma-Ata, which he later tried to sell for fabulous money.

“The buyers paid a tidy sum, estimated in millions of dollars, some by bank transfer and the rest in cash in a suitcase. According to our sources, Nazarbayev’s brother needed the money to finance the construction of a residential complex on the corner of Seifullin and Gogol streets, where the NurBol restaurant complex was widely known in narrow circles,” one of the well-known Kazakh media wrote about the deal. However, whether the buyers ultimately received the market is unknown, since Nazarbayev’s brother allegedly refused to both give the money and transfer the property.

And journalists have cited many similar cases. The brother of the former leader of the Republic allegedly simply came to the owners of the asset he liked and openly demanded that they give him a share in the project without any payment, for “protection.” In March, the prosecutor’s office of the Alma-Ata region opened a case against Bolat Nazarbayev, demanding that part of his property be returned to state ownership.

As for Nursultan Nazarbayev himself, at the legislative level he had the right to head the Security Council of Kazakhstan for life as chairman, but after large-scale protests in January 2022, this law was repealed, and the position was taken by the current President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

Nazarbayev’s lifelong chairmanship of the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan was also cancelled, but at the same time, according to media reports, he retained the right to address the people of Kazakhstan, government bodies and officials on the most important issues of state building, domestic and foreign policy and the security of the country, and therefore to this day has since played a role in the political and social life of the country.