A court in Kazakhstan’s eastern city of Oskemen has replaced a six-year prison sentence given to a nephew of Kazakhstan’s former strongman President Nursultan Nazarbaev with a suspended sentence, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reported.
Court No. 2 in the capital of the East Kazakhstan region ruled on August 16 that Qairat Satybaldy, 52, must be released with a suspended 40-month sentence, stressing that the once extremely powerful businessman and politician had returned all the money he was accused of embezzling to the State Treasury.
At a hearing prior to the ruling, Satybaldy offered his apologies to the Kazakh government and people for his crimes.
The court’s ruling came less than two years after Satybaldy was sentenced to six years in prison by a court in Astana after he pleaded guilty to all charges following indictments for fraud and embezzlement.
Satybaldy was arrested in March 2022 while trying to board a plane heading to Turkey. The probe launched against him was one of a series of investigations targeting relatives and allies of Nazarbaev.
Kazakhstan’s Anti-Corruption Agency accused Satybaldy of embezzling tens of millions of dollars from state companies Kazakhtelecom and Transport Service Center.
The agency said at the time that $500 million had been returned to the State Treasury and that 29 percent of Kazakhtelecom’s shares that had been controlled by Satybaldy were placed back under state control.
After unprecedented anti-government protests in January 2022, the Kazakh government began to quietly target Nazarbaev, his family, and other allies — many of whom held powerful or influential posts in government, security agencies, and profitable energy companies.
