Accused by Kazakhstan of having embezzled 7.5 billion dollars, the billionaire Mukhtar Abliazov obtained at the beginning of the year the abandonment of legal proceedings in France. He is still targeted by justice in the United Kingdom and in Kazakhstan, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In Paris, the thorny file is in the pile of sensitive cases of the new president of the National Court of Asylum Law who must soon rule on his case.
Last Friday, the National Court of Asylum (CNDA) welcomed a new president. Former Chief of Staff at the Ministry of Justice, Mathieu Hérondart will operate a large machine with 1,200 employees and a throughput of more than 60,000 decisions per year. The CNDA is the administrative jurisdiction to which asylum seekers whose applications have been refused by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) turn. While the number of cases is exploding – an increase of more than 40% this year according to Le Figaro – the CNDA must also deal with very political cases. One of the most sensitive concerns the oligarch Mukhtar Abliazov, exiled in France where he has lived in Paris for ten years, and whose status has still not been decided.
In the 2000s, this former energy minister of Kazakhstan headed BTA, one of the most important banks in his country. Considered one of the richest men in the world. His troubles began in early 2009 with the nationalization of the BTA. The Kazakh state accuses him of having siphoned some 7.5 billion dollars from the coffers via bogus credits and a myriad of front companies. Installed in London in a luxurious house on Bishop’s avenue, the one that the English call “the alley of billionaires”, Ablyazov then appears as an irreducible opponent of the regime of Noursultan Nazarbayev, the president-dictator of Kazakstan, to whom he attributes the origin of his legal troubles. British justice does not really hear it that way. Not only did he fail to obtain political refugee status, but in early 2013 he was sentenced to 22 months in prison for contempt.
The billionaire then fled to France by bus. It will take eighteen months for English detectives commissioned by the BTA bank to find his trace on the Côte d’Azur. On July 31, 2013, in the small village of Mouans-Sartoux, between Cannes and Grasse, twelve hooded police officers from the Nice Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) arrived in force in an opulent house on Chemin de Castellaras. They are supported by a helicopter equipped with a thermal camera, in case the suspect flees through the forest. Alerted by the notice of an arrest warrant from Interpol, the French police fear that the billionaire is protected by armed bodyguards, or even by a “private militia”. In fact, Abliazov is alone, in shorts and a T-shirt. He begins by brandishing a Central African Republic passport issued under an assumed name, before letting himself be challenged without batting an eyelid.
Extradition requests from Russia and Ukraine |
Under the influence of two extradition requests issued by Russia and Ukraine, which accuse him – like his country of origin – of massive embezzlement, the oligarch is placed in solitary confinement at the house of Luynes stop, a vast concrete quadrangle in the suburbs of Aix en Provence. Then began an obstacle course during which the authorities of the French administration contradicted themselves one after the other.
In early 2014, the administrative court of Aix en Provence ordered his extradition to Russia or Ukraine. The judgment was confirmed by the Lyon Court of Appeal a year later. In September 2015, Prime Minister Manuel Valls signed the extradition, but the decision was canceled a year later by the Council of State. Within the administration, the Abliazov case is debated. The State Councilors then believe that he should be treated as a political opponent, because he runs the same risks in the event of extradition. The OFPRA investigators, for their part, consider that the facts for which he is being prosecuted are devoid of any political character. In May 2018, his asylum application was rejected by the Ofpra under Article F of the Geneva Convention according to which “certain actions are so serious that they do not deserve international protection”. The billionaire then appealed to the National Court of Asylum and obtained satisfaction. In September 2020, the CNDA canceled the Ofpra decision, arguing “the risks of persecution linked to his return to his homeland due to political positions”. The Ofpra, which must grant him refugee status, then decides to appeal to the Court of Cassation. In its multiple attributions, the Council of State acts as a court of last instance for administrative disputes. It is therefore up to him to make this judgment. The decision will be rendered in December 2021 and there, surprise, the Council of State challenges the refugee status granted to Mukhtar Abliazov. In the meantime, the oligarch obtained the abandonment of legal proceedings in France, but he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Kazakhstan.
Read also: Dropping of legal proceedings against Kazakh opponent Mukhtar Abliazov in France
He was also tried in British civil proceedings to pay the BTA bank the sum of 4.6 billion dollars. The Council of State underlines that this fine is explained by “fraudulent mechanisms that he had put in place when he ran the bank in order to enrich himself personally”. “For the same reason, continues the Council of State, the British authorities withdrew his refugee status. “Following the decision of December 2021, it is now up to the CNDA to decide on its thorny case. The case is sensitive because of France’s links with Kazakhstan in the arms sales and uranium supply sector. Meanwhile, a new element has disturbed the context: the war in Ukraine. If Mukhtar Ablyazov were to be extradited, would he go to kyiv or Moscow? The last hope of relatives would be, as a source close to the case tells us, “to obtain at least protection that prevents him from being extradited”. And become an undocumented billionaire?