Money laundered by Aliyev via Austria may be returned to Kazakhstan

Ex-ambassador of Kazakhstan Rakhat Aliyev must have laundered at least 113 million Euro via Austria, Tengrinews.kz reports citing Viennese lawyer Gabriel Lansky who represents the interest of the widows of murdered Nurbank managers Zholdas Timraliyev and Aibar Khassenov. According to the lawyer, he has already presented the Vienna court with a proof of Aliyev’s money transfers from Kazakhstan to Europe, using Austria as an intermediary in the financial operations. “113 million Euro were transferred to Austria alone. In our opinion Austria was the “laundry machine” for the money that Aliyev was illegally siphoning from Kazakhstan to Switzerland, Malta, Germany and the Middle East. This is only the portion of the money that we, lawyers, have managed to find out about,” Lansky said. He added that Austria had legal instruments that make it possible to return illegally obtained money back to their legal owners. Those instruments could be applied to the funds that Aliyev siphoned off from Kazakhstan. Lansky stressed that this would happen if the criminal case on the money laundering against Aliyev was completed sucessfully. The lawyer added that according to the Austrian legislation, Aliyev could be extradited to Kazakhstan or sentenced to a prison term in Austria. In fact, Aliyev could receive life sentence in Austria. Lansy expressed hope that the legal proceedings on the case of the ex-ambassador would start in 2013. “I will personally make sure Rakhat Aliyev is imprisoned. I have never seen such an accumulation of criminal energy and readiness to torture people in one person in my entire life,” the lawyer said. Lansky said that Vienna Superior Land Court had confirmed that it believed that the accusations against Aliyev were well grounded and reasonable and did not find them politically motivated. Political motivation of the charges was something Aliyev has been insisting on since the very beginning. This gave him a head start, but only until the European authorities started investigating into his activities themselves. According to the layer, the Vienna court had acknowledged that Aliyev was accused of creating an organized criminal group, blackmailing and money laundering. The court considered reasonable the results of the investigation in Kazakhstan and the sentence on Nurbank case (kidnapping and murdering two of the bank's to managers) and the testimony of the widows of the murdered managers trustworthy. According to the judges, Aliyev's arguments about political motivations did not waive his responsibility for the crimes. The court decided that the results of the independent investigations of Vienna prosecutors not only confirmed but also enhanced the suspicions of Aliyev’s guilt. By Dmitriy Khegai