We are continuing to look into the particulars of the Tokayevs’ life story. This time, we are going to talk about the President’s son’s life in Switzerland where Timur Tokayev owns a beautiful apartment in Geneva. Its value can be estimated by looking at the rental cost. In Geneva, this kind of apartments are normally rented out for $6400 per month.
Last autumn, a voluntary anti-corruption project that had been researching how officials and deputies obey the law in the Russian regions published “A Geneva Guide-Book”.
It is a noteworthy investigation of the former USSR’s elites’ places of residence. However, for Kazakhstan, Geneva has a special significance. It so happens that it is this city that has become a “home” for both the family of the First President Nursultan Nazarbayev and for the family of the second President Kasym-Zhimart Tokayev.
Specifically, a luxurious villa located at Route d’Hermance 399 on Lake of Geneva at the outskirts of the city is Dinara Kulibayeva’s (Nursultan Nazarbayev’s second daughter) place of residence.
Source: Google Maps
Even though, for the second President, the Geneva period is now a thing of the past, a beautiful apartment in the city has been kept as a memento; the apartment now belongs to his son Timur Kulibayev (born in 1984).
The apartment is located at Chemin Gilbert-Trolliet 3 in exclusive-status building in a quiet leafy district.
Here is some information about these apartments. One of the apartments in this building is being rented out. For six rooms of 233 square meters you would have to pay 6500 Swiss fracs (about US$ 5400). On the rental market, the apartment has appeared very recently, in April 2019. The interiors of the apartments can be found here.
Incidentally, today’s market price for such an apartment constitutes about 2.3 mln Swiss francs (approximately US$ 2 mln). “The prices in this district have not changed in recent years”, says an expert in the Swiss real estate market. So, it is quite possible that the Tokayev family paid this amount for the apartment. The question is where the Kazakh official and/or his son got these millions from.
Going bank to discussing the rent, we will note that a certain Mr. Shalygin (judging by the last name, someone with the ties to the former USSR) is acting as the real estate broker. It is possible that former USSR natives have taken fancy to this building.
We do not have information on the entire list of Timur Tokayev’s neighbors but know that Semyon Vinokurov’s apartment is also registered in this building. Semyon Vinokurov is a well-known entrepreneur of the bygone decades. He used to work at the Liat-Natali company founded in 1991 by Iosif Kobzon and Shabtay Kalmanovich.
Incidentally, both founders (as well as the company itself) caught the attention of the FBI so, consequently, Kobzon, despite all his popularity and weight in the USSR and Russia, was denied a US visa. As for his companion Kalmanovich, he was killed in the center of Moscow on November 2, 2009. He stopped 18 bullets.
On the other hand, a much bigger hype is going on around Semyon Vinokurov’s son Alexander Vinokurov. He is considered Russia’s most up-and-coming manager. This belief has many reasons to exist, the most powerful one being his wife Ekaterina Vinokurova (maiden name Lavrova).
In other words, Alexander is married to the daughter of Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov. Both have received their education in the West and met in London in the yet “peaceful” 2005. But then, new times came, and the couple moved to Moscow.
As for Timur Tokayev, he has studied in Switzerland. And, judging by the record in the real estate register, he considers Geneva his place of residence. However, according to our insiders, he actually lives in Moscow where he is running his business (not without the help of his father’s influential allies, we venture to suggest).
This, however, is a subject for another research.
