On July 29, Nursultan Nazarbayev’s Foundation, the first president of Kazakhstan, filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in Maryland against the American Journalism Development Network (JDN), headquartered in Baltimore.
According to the lawsuit, the Nazarbayev Foundation did not like the JDN publication, which revealed that the first president of Kazakhstan owns a multibillion-dollar fortune through charities that bear his name.
The publication, which caused dissatisfaction with the Nazarbayev Foundation, appeared on the website of the International Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime (OCCRP) on January 19, 2022, right after the January protests that swept the republic.
The article “Nazarbayev’s billions: how Kazakhstan’s “leader of the nation” manages huge assets through charitable foundations” told that the ex-president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev actually owns banks, TV channels, luxury hotels, shopping centers, a golf course, a mobile communications company, warehouses, a pasta factory, a landscaping company, an Airbus ACJ320neo private jet worth over $100 million, and billions of cash.
The estimated value of these assets, according to the authors of the journalistic investigation, is about $8 billion. However, these assets are owned by four charitable foundations established at different times by the decision of Nursultan Nazarbayev.
“But behind all of them is the longtime leader of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Some assets were transferred to Nazarbayev’s foundations or are still jointly owned by oligarchs who owe their wealth to the crony capitalism that flourished under his rule. In other cases, the government of Kazakhstan invested in private companies, which were then acquired by charitable foundations. As a result, Nazarbayev’s non-profit organizations actually own larger business portfolios than many multinational conglomerates. Since the foundations are non-profit, Nazarbayev does not formally own their huge assets. However, lawyers contacted by OCCRP explained that under Kazakh law, the founder of a private foundation has full control over its assets,” the investigation noted.
It is noteworthy that the authors of the article sent comments to all four Nazarbayev foundations, but three of them did not respond.
“A fourth told OCCRP that the former president did not receive any benefit from the assets he owns, intended to provide funding for educational institutions named after him,” the article said.
This publication was considered offensive by the Nazarbayev Foundation.
“The headline, subtitle, and main findings of the article are false and libelous,” the lawsuit says. “The Respondent knew—because the Claimant informed his correspondent before publication—that the Charter and Kazakh law prohibits the misuse of funds that the Respondent wrote about in his material.”
The Nazarbayev Foundation is represented by American lawyer Matthew Schwartz of Boies Schiller Flexner. The plaintiff is seeking compensation for damage caused by a JDN “defamatory article” published on the OCCRP website. However, the amount of damages in the claim is not specified.
Meanwhile, JDN executive director Drew Sullivan said that the claim of the Kazakh foundation has no grounds, as the information of investigative journalists is correct.
