The legal persecution of Rakhat Aliyev, the former Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Austria and husband of President Nazarbayev’s elder daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva, is among the most sensational events in post-independent Kazakhstan that have galvanized the public. The dirty linen of the Nazarbayev family, paradoxical as it may sound, turned out to be a powerful propaganda tool that boosted the democratic image of the ruling regime.

The stunning news that Rakhat Aliyev was on the list of wanted suspects came from Kazakhstan’s Interior Ministry on May 28. Formally he was charged with kidnapping employees of Nurbank, a bank purportedly controlled by Aliyev, in January this year. But in the course of investigations, more crimes relating to the illegal purchase of millions worth of assets and money laundering come to the surface.

The abduction of Abilmazhin Ghilimov, the former chairman of the board of Nurbank managers, and his deputy Zholdas TimrAliyev, took place in hitherto unclear circumstances on the night of January 18. They were allegedly kidnapped by Rakhat Aliyev, who used force and threats to make them sell the premises of the bank and their business assets for a low price. Since that time, despite repeated demands of the relatives of the victims, no proper investigation into the case has been conducted. But recently Interior Ministry launched a new probe into the mysterious case which led to a whole string of arrests of dozens of suspects from Rakhat Aliyev’s entourage. On January 31, a group of unidentified armed men raided Nurbank’s offices and kidnapped the two executives who disappeared without trace. Although four Almaty police officers found themselves in the dock on suspicion of organizing the raid, it is widely implied from pro-government media sources that it was masterminded by Aliyev. Baghdat Kozhakhmetov of the Interior Ministry’s press service urged journalists to refrain from biased interpretation of the case, as it hampers the course of investigation.

The scandal around Nurbank and Rakhat Aliyev’s alleged involvement triggered a veritable media war, which culminated in the Prosecutor General suspending the publication of the Aliyev-owned Karavan weekly and taking the KTK television channel off the air. Formally, the Prosecutor General’s office substantiated the closure of Rakhat Aliyev’s media outlets as a legal punishment for alleged violation of the language law. On May 10, a gang of masked people broke into the offices of the KTK television station and abducted two employees. It was found out later that they were, along with other detained people, interrogated by the Almaty police department. The following day, Rakhat Aliyev’s father, academician and a renowned surgeon Mukhtar Aliyev, the chief editor of Karavan Aleksadr Shukhov and former National Security Committee chief Alnur Musayev in a press statement denounced the pressure on Rakhat Aliyev’s media as “agony of the system, bogged down in corruption and inebriated by unlimited permissiveness and impunity”.

In a last-ditch appeal to his “very numerous supporters” in Kazakhstan, Rakhat Aliyev said he advocated Kazakhstan’s presidency of the OSCE because he wanted to raise his country up to the democratic standards of European countries and to ensure transparency at the highest level of power. He said he faced persecution after having made known to President Nazarbayev his intention to run for the presidency in 2012. “Charges against me are fabricated and they are politically motivated,” he added. He added that Kazakhstan will not benefit in any way from elections turned into a “political farce” and backtracking on democracy.

Events developing around Nurbank and Rakhat Aliyev are very complicated for people in the Kazakh streets to grasp. Everything in courtrooms is shrouded in ambiguous phraseology, media reports are incomplete and, more often than not, misleading. Theoretically, the presidential son-in-law, who was among the few rich in relatively well-faring Kazakhstan and had a normal political career, albeit remote from presidential court, had no apparent reason to rebel against the President. Rakhat Aliyev runs a successful business in and outside his country, holding a 10 percent share in the French Sucden sugar company, and is a co-owner of Nurbank. He effectively controls, besides a powerful media holding which includes Karavan weekly, the KTK television channel and Kazakhstan Today news agency, as well as a ramified network of sugar businesses in Kazakhstan. However, dramatic developments sparked by his unbridled ambition to vie for the presidency are likely to put an end to his enviable career.

On June 7, Nursultan Nazarbayev, during a call-in television chat, stated that he made the difficult decision concerning Rakhat Aliyev to show the public and the outside world that nobody is above the law in Kazakhstan. The Interior Ministry announced that Austrian police launched a criminal case against Rakhat Aliyev on suspicion of illegal transactions and money laundering, and Kazakhstan seeks the extradition of the suspect. Nazarbayev showed a great deal of tolerance, hiding the numerous wrongdoings of the unmanageable son-in-law from the public eye. But the inner power struggle, greed and lawlessness went so far that it is no longer possible to sweep these ills under the carpet.

On June 12, Rakhat Aliyev was officially divorced, against his will, from Dariga Nazarbayeva, showing that his prospects for a return to happier days are indeed dim.