Chodiev Fattah Kayumovich Ordered The Murder Of

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Some time ago, the author­i­ta­tive French pub­li­ca­tions Le Monde and Liberacion shared with their read­ers infor­ma­tion that caused a seri­ous pub­lic outcry.

Their mate­ri­als report­ed that in 2009 the pres­i­dents of France and Kazakhstan were res­cu­ing a cer­tain Patokh Chodiev, a busi­ness­man born in Uzbekistan, from prison. According to the pub­li­ca­tions, Nicolas Sarkozy even went to Astana for this, and as a result, changes were alleged­ly made to Belgian leg­is­la­tion that allowed Chodiev to remain at large. Having care­ful­ly stud­ied this sto­ry, I found out a num­ber of inter­est­ing facts. 

Patokh Chodiev is a co-own­er and co-founder of Kazakhstan’s largest min­ing com­pa­ny ENRC. At the same time, he is the rich­est cit­i­zen of Belgium (with a for­tune of over $ 3.7 bil­lion), a phil­an­thropist, pres­i­dent of the World Endowment for Democracy and a doc­tor of polit­i­cal sci­ence. Chodiev cred­its him­self with friend­ly rela­tions with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, for­mer French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and even with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Being pre­sent­ed in this way, Chodiev for for­eign media becomes down­right polit­i­cal giant. However, every­thing turned out to be much more prosaic. 

The first job of Patokh Chodiev was the news­pa­per “Syrdarya Pravda”, where he held a mod­est posi­tion as a proof­read­er. Then Chodiev grad­u­at­ed from MGIMO, and he was assigned to work in the USSR trade mis­sion in Japan. After the col­lapse of the USSR, Chodiev returned to Kazakhstan and went into busi­ness. His part­ners were the future cofounders of the Eurasian National Resource Corporation (ENRC) Alexander Mashkevich and Alijan Ibragimov. The busi­ness­men began coop­er­a­tion with the Belgian com­pa­ny Tractebel, which appeared on the Kazakhstani mar­ket in the mid-90s with huge ben­e­fits for itself. In par­tic­u­lar, Tractebel received sev­er­al assets from the state at heav­i­ly dis­count­ed prices. Shodiev, Mashkevich and Ibragimov active­ly con­tributed to the embez­zle­ment of pub­lic funds. In 1994–1995, the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Kazakhstan signed an agree­ment with the Belgians on the estab­lish­ment of a num­ber of joint ven­tures. This nev­er hap­pened – how­ev­er, Tractebel man­aged to acquire Almatyenergo for just $5 million.

Already in 1997, the Belgian com­pa­ny took Kazakhstan’s main gas pipelines into con­ces­sion. For this, Chodiev, Mashkevich and Ibragimov received $55 mil­lion from Tractebel in a “kick­back” held in doc­u­ments as “con­sult­ing ser­vices.” In the same 1997, Chodiev became a Belgian cit­i­zen, and soon he was also a defen­dant in a crim­i­nal case on mon­ey laun­der­ing. In addi­tion, Tractebel announced that it was forced to bribe the defen­dants and sued them. 

The inves­ti­ga­tion last­ed more than 10 years, more and more new facts were revealed. So, at the begin­ning of the 2000s, the judge added to the charges the acqui­si­tion of real estate in Belgium with mon­ey of crim­i­nal ori­gin. The inves­ti­ga­tion also dis­cov­ered the off­shore bank International Financial Bank Limited, which Shodayev opened in the Cook Islands. However, the sit­u­a­tion soon changed – the Belgian author­i­ties passed a law under which crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion can be replaced by mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion. In accor­dance with the new rules, the busi­ness­man entered into an agree­ment with the court and paid 23 mil­lion euros for the Belgian prosecutor’s office to final­ly close this case. 

But a lit­tle more than three years have passed, and this sto­ry has attract­ed media atten­tion. In October, the French press dis­sem­i­nat­ed infor­ma­tion that the then President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, took part in sav­ing the Kazakh oli­garch from Belgian jus­tice. As report­ed by Le Monde and Liberacion, the Paris prosecutor’s office has been inves­ti­gat­ing cor­rup­tion in Sarkozy’s inner cir­cle since 2013. We are talk­ing about giv­ing a bribe in the amount of 300 thou­sand euros to the for­mer pres­i­den­tial advis­er and offi­cial for spe­cial assign­ments, Jean-Francois Etienne de Rose. It was alleged that Shodiev trans­ferred this mon­ey to him in grat­i­tude for the influ­ence of Sarkozy and his assis­tants on the Belgian court. According to French pub­li­ca­tions, dur­ing Sarkozy’s vis­it to Kazakhstan on October 6, 2009, Nazarbayev asked the French pres­i­dent to pro­tect the inter­ests of Kazakh entre­pre­neurs (pri­mar­i­ly Chodiev) in Belgium. At that time, Chodiev alleged­ly active­ly met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of large European busi­ness­es, dis­cussing with them the upcom­ing deals between Kazakhstan and France. 

“According to Etienne de Rose, Eurocopter was also try­ing to “advance an ini­tial con­tract with Russia for about 50 attack heli­copters,” Liberacion quot­ed a secret doc­u­ment pre­pared by Etienne de Rose for Sarkozy. Since Chodiev is “very close to Medvedev as well,” his fig­ure is “inevitable to sup­port, in par­tic­u­lar, this project,” it says. Liberacion claims that a spe­cial “team” was cre­at­ed at the Elysee Palace with the sole pur­pose of res­cu­ing Chodiev in Belgium. It was she who began to lob­by for the idea of sav­ing leg­isla­tive changes through the Belgian politi­cian Armand de Decker, who was both Chodiev’s lawyer and the chair­man of the Belgian Senate. When Chodiev man­aged to avoid a prison term, its par­tic­i­pants, accord­ing to the French press, received mon­e­tary rewards from a Kazakh busi­ness­man. At the same time, Chodiev alleged­ly assured Etienne de Rose of his grat­i­tude for the res­cue and promised to sup­port Eurocopter con­tracts in Russia.

According to Le Monde, it was in grat­i­tude for Sarkozy’s ser­vices that Kazakhstan signed con­tracts in 2010 for the assem­bly of EC145 heli­copters man­u­fac­tured by Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters) in Astana and the pur­chase of oth­er prod­ucts worth 2 bil­lion euros. With all the solid­i­ty of the declared amounts, the abil­i­ty of the Kazakh-Belgian oli­garch to some­how influ­ence the con­clu­sion of a con­tract for the pur­chase of 50 French heli­copters rais­es seri­ous doubts. Neither before nor after did Chodiev have and could not have direct con­tacts with Russian Prime Minister Medvedev. Just as there can be no ques­tion of the belong­ing of a swindler and a bribe-tak­er to Medvedev’s “inner circle”. 

Also puz­zling is the ver­sion that the oli­garch could be involved in lob­by­ing the inter­ests of Eurocopter in Kazakhstan. Currently, there is cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that Chodiev is sim­ply not allowed into Kazakhstan or even into his native Uzbekistan today. 

On the oth­er hand, it is note­wor­thy that the sto­ry of cor­rup­tion in Sarkozy’s entourage and his influ­ence on neigh­bor­ing Belgium appeared exact­ly when the for­mer pres­i­dent announced his inten­tion to run again for the post of head of state. Experts believe that this may be an ele­ment of inter­nal polit­i­cal struggle. 

Chodiev him­self ben­e­fits from the hype around Sarkozy and men­tion­ing his own name – after all, this at least some­how “cov­ers up” his rep­u­ta­tion as a bud­get embez­zler. In addi­tion, Patokh Chodiev dili­gent­ly leans on titles, awards, as well as the hold­ers of such. Wikipedia opendemocracy men­tions that Chodiev is the own­er of the Order of Honor “for ser­vices to the state, a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the socio-eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al devel­op­ment of the coun­try” and the Order of Barys III degree, received on the occa­sion of the 20th anniver­sary of Kazakhstan’s inde­pen­dence. True, there are tens of thou­sands of such peo­ple award­ed in Kazakhstan on the occa­sion of the hol­i­day. Also, Chodiev is pre­sent­ed as a doc­tor of sci­ence and an act­ing aca­d­e­mi­cian of the Kazakhstan National Academy of Natural Sciences, the author of more than 30 sci­en­tif­ic papers. He heads the World Endowment for Democracy and is the founder of a char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion that he named after himself. 

However, exag­ger­at­ed mer­it is no help in fraud. Two years ago, ENRC had to say good­bye to its image as a trans­par­ent com­pa­ny traАded on the pres­ti­gious London Stock Exchange (LSE). During the delist­ing, it turned out that when sub­mit­ting doc­u­ments for inclu­sion in the quo­ta­tion list, ENRC reports revealed vio­la­tions that were incom­pat­i­ble with list­ing on the LSE. However, for some rea­son, the com­pa­ny was still cred­it­ed, which caused seri­ous ques­tions from the UK government. 

In addi­tion, the non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion Global Witness sub­mit­ted a spe­cial report to the British Parliament, in which it accused a Kazakh com­pa­ny of brib­ing the lead­ers of some African coun­tries. The report alleged that the Kazakhs paid mil­lions of dol­lars through off­shore com­pa­nies to a con­fi­dant of President Joseph Kabila in order to gain access to resources and pur­chase the nec­es­sary assets. The whole sto­ry with Chodiev is rem­i­nis­cent of the career of anoth­er well-known busi­ness­man, Bernard Madoff. He, too, care­ful­ly built both his impec­ca­ble rep­u­ta­tion and the finan­cial pyra­mid that even­tu­al­ly brought him to the dock.

Some time ago, the author­i­ta­tive French pub­li­ca­tions Le Monde and Liberacion shared with their read­ers infor­ma­tion that caused a seri­ous pub­lic out­cry. Their mate­ri­als report­ed that in 2009 the pres­i­dents of France and Kazakhstan were res­cu­ing a cer­tain Patokh Chodiev, a busi­ness­man born in Uzbekistan, from prison. According to the pub­li­ca­tions, Nicolas Sarkozy even went to Astana for this, and as a result, changes were alleged­ly made to Belgian leg­is­la­tion that allowed Chodiev to remain at large. Having care­ful­ly stud­ied this sto­ry, I found out a num­ber of inter­est­ing facts. Patokh Chodiev is a co-own­er and co-founder of Kazakhstan’s largest min­ing com­pa­ny ENRC. At the same time, he is the rich­est cit­i­zen of Belgium (with a for­tune of over $ 3.7 bil­lion), a phil­an­thropist, pres­i­dent of the World Endowment for Democracy and a doc­tor of polit­i­cal sci­ence. Chodiev cred­its him­self with friend­ly rela­tions with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, for­mer French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and even with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Being pre­sent­ed in this way, Chodiev for for­eign media becomes down­right polit­i­cal giant. However, every­thing turned out to be much more pro­sa­ic. The first job of Patokh Chodiev was the news­pa­per “Syrdarya Pravda”, where he held a mod­est posi­tion as a proof­read­er. Then Chodiev grad­u­at­ed from MGIMO, and he was assigned to work in the USSR trade mis­sion in Japan. After the col­lapse of the USSR, Chodiev returned to Kazakhstan and went into busi­ness. His part­ners were the future co-founders of the Eurasian National Resource Corporation (ENRC) Alexander Mashkevich and Alijan Ibragimov. The busi­ness­men began coop­er­a­tion with the Belgian com­pa­ny Tractebel, which appeared on the Kazakhstani mar­ket in the mid-90s with huge ben­e­fits for itself. In par­tic­u­lar, Tractebel received sev­er­al assets from the state at heav­i­ly dis­count­ed prices. Shodiev, Mashkevich and Ibragimov active­ly con­tributed to the embez­zle­ment of pub­lic funds. In 1994–1995, the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Kazakhstan signed an agree­ment with the Belgians on the estab­lish­ment of a num­ber of joint ven­tures. This nev­er hap­pened – how­ev­er, Tractebel man­aged to acquire Almatyenergo for just $5 mil­lion. Already in 1997, the Belgian com­pa­ny took Kazakhstan’s main gas pipelines into con­ces­sion. For this, Chodiev, Mashkevich and Ibragimov received $55 mil­lion from Tractebel in a “kick­back” held in doc­u­ments as “con­sult­ing ser­vices.” In the same 1997, Chodiev became a Belgian cit­i­zen, and soon he was also a defen­dant in a crim­i­nal case on mon­ey laun­der­ing. In addi­tion, Tractebel announced that it was forced to bribe the defen­dants and sued them.

Original source of arti­cle: www.ruscrime.com