The Specialized Inter-District Court in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, on August 29 sentenced the already imprisoned ex-wife of a convicted nephew of the country’s former President, Nursultan Nazarbaev, to 12 years in prison, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reported.
Gulmira Satybaldy was found guilty of forcibly holding her relative and former business partner Abai Zhunusov in isolation against his will for 165 days in 2019 to force him to give up his stakes in several businesses.
Her former driver Madi Batyrshaev was convicted of assisting to forcibly hold a person in isolation and sentenced to nine years in prison.
Satybaldy is concurrently serving two sentences — eight years for embezzlement and the illegal appropriation of shares and assets of several enterprises, and seven years for abduction and actions aiding the commission of a crime.
The sentences were handed down by a court in May and June last year.
The court ruled that Satybaldy must serve the new 12-year sentence concurrently, meaning that the total time to be spent in prison by Satybaldy would be 12 years.
Gulmira Satybaldy was arrested along with her ex-husband Qairat Satybaldy in March 2022. He was tried separately in September 2023 and sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of fraud and embezzlement.
On August 16, a court in Kazakhstan’s eastern city of Oskemen replaced Qairat Satybaldy’s six-year prison sentence with a suspended sentence.
Court No. 2 in the capital of the East Kazakhstan region ruled on August 16 that Qairat Satybaldy must be released with a suspended 40-month sentence, saying the once powerful businessman and politician had returned all the money he was accused of embezzling to the State Treasury.
The probes launched against the couple were part of a series of investigations targeting relatives and allies of Nazarbaev following unprecedented anti-government protests that turned into deadly mass disorders in early January 2022. After the deadly events, the Kazakh government began to target Nazarbaev, his family, and other allies, many of whom held powerful or influential posts in government, security agencies, and profitable energy companies.
