KZBlog

After the government takeover of BTA Bank, chairman of the board and long time opposition figure, Mukhtar Abliyazov, and his deputy Zhaksylyk Zharimbetov, were both fired. As an investigation began into misdeeds by BTA Bank, both fled the country. The General Prosecutor claims that Abilyazov laundered money through the bank by giving “credit” to front companies [RU].

The CEO, Roman Solodchenko, followed suit, fleeing with his family to London:

Roman Solodchenko, the former chairman of the executive committee of Kazakhstan’s BTA bank said that his family recently had to leave for Britain, in order to protect themselves from government repression.

He said that by leaving Kazakhstan he wanted to protest against the government and its “destructive measures that practically killed the bank.”

Solodchenko added that there was no need to inject billions of dollars into the bank, because there “was no need to save [it] at all.”

Bizarrely, BTA Bank claimed the day after he left that they did not know where he was and had not heard that he was planning to leave the country. He made a press statement in London, but he didn’t phone anyone at the bank to let them know he had fled?

Now we learn that 20 associates of Abilyazov have been arrested, presumably in connection with the investigations of BTA Bank. The government claims to have found evidence People on the street are suspicious of the sudden discovery of fraud at the bank. They wonder why these claims were brought up only after the bank was taken over. If the government was ignorant of these crimes, how did they discover them so fast? Normally it takes months and months to untangle evidence of money-laundering schemes. Finally, the claim that Abilyazov’s escape and the number of bad loans on the bank’s books prove his guilt are undermined by the fact that in this crisis, many loans turned bad and that Abilyazov was fired before he left the country.

We will see what all this means for the poor people who have money in the bank. For now, the investigation and the turnover in top management doesn’t seem to have affected normal banking business.