arresting his advisor

scandal
Observers regarded the arrest of financier James Giffen as a serious warning from Washington to the President of Kazakhstan. The financier arrested earlier this week in the United States is a close associate of Nursultan Nazarbayev and one of the main defendants in Kazakhgate, a scandal that has been going on for several years and involves the illegal transfer of money from American oil companies to the personal accounts of members of the top leadership of Kazakhstan.
James Giffen was arrested on Monday at New York's Kennedy Airport. According to some reports, he was heading to Europe, from where he was going to fly to Alma-Ata. In addition to the American one, he also had a Kazakh diplomatic passport in his hands. The arrest of Mr. Giffen was the result of an investigation that US law enforcement agencies have been conducting for more than three years.
According to the investigation, James Giffen in 1992 became a representative and consultant of the government of Kazakhstan in negotiations with Western companies on the sale of oil, gas and other fields. In 1995, President Nazarbayev appointed him as his adviser. Between 1994 and 2000, Mr. Giffen's firm Mercator, according to investigators, received tens of millions of dollars in commissions from transactions. A considerable part of this money was then transferred to the accounts of Kazakh leaders in Western banks. In Kazakhstan they say that James Giffen was not just a very influential person in this country. His orders were perceived almost as instructions from the president.
Kazakhgate began to unfold in the fall of 1999, when an account was discovered in one of the Swiss banks that, as investigators believed, belonged personally to President Nazarbayev. This account seemed suspicious to them and was frozen. Swiss journalists established that the account contained about $80 million. Then Swiss investigators found new accounts belonging to Kazakh executives and established that the money in them came mainly from the American oil companies Chevron, Mobil and Amoco. At the same time, the majority of banking operations to transfer money from account to account were carried out by James Giffen.
In January 2000, Swiss investigator Daniel Devaux sent a letter to Washington in which he notified his American colleagues that American companies and US citizens were involved in the case he was investigating. This is how the American side joined the Kazakhgate investigation. At the beginning of July, at the instigation of the United States, several more accounts in Swiss banks were frozen, also allegedly belonging to the President of Kazakhstan. The amount stored in frozen accounts, according to investigators, is at least $1 billion.
The Kazakh authorities have repeatedly tried to hush up the scandal associated with the promotion of Kazakhgate. At the very beginning of the scandal, in September 2000, Mr. Nazarbayev went to New York for the UN-organized Millennium Summit, where he met with the then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. After discussing state affairs, the President of Kazakhstan asked Ms. Albright to intervene in the Kazakhgate investigation, unfreeze bank accounts and drop the case against his adviser James Giffen, who, as Mr. Nazarbayev said, “is not guilty of anything.” But the Secretary of State dryly noted that the US Department of Justice, which is leading the investigation, is not subordinate to the State Department.
After September 11, 2001, Astana tried to use the US interest in new partners to fight international terrorism in order to exchange its loyalty for American concessions and, in particular, to achieve the closure of Kazakhgate. However, Astana's efforts were in vain. Moreover, in January 2003, the US Congress adopted a resolution “On the situation in the field of human rights in Central Asia,” in which Kazakhstan is given one of the main places. A few days later, the US Senate adopted an amendment linking financial assistance to Kazakhstan with the state of affairs in the field of protection of political freedoms in this country. The arrest of James Giffen can be regarded as the last warning from the United States to the Kazakh president.
GENNADY SYSOEV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 57 dated 04/03/2003, page 11

Authors:

Gennady Sysoev

The US warned the President of Kazakhstan