After the May holidays, the National Anticorruption Bureau of the Republic of Kazakhstan has announced the completion of the criminal case investigations of the “organized criminal groups” under the leadership of Viktor Khrapunov and Bergey Ryskaliyev.

The information on that subject with the quotes from the agency was published by many Kazakhstan media and internet-resources. However, there has been no strong reaction on the part of the civic society to this news. Meanwhile, these events are worthy of our in the light of the upcoming power transit in Kazakhstan.

The matter is that, for the past few years, many high-rank officials have become the figurants of the criminal cases opened in the country. They include former Prime Minister Serik Akhmetov, several ministers and regional governors as well as the heads of the national companies. Therefore, the very fact that Khrapunov and Ryskaliyev have been accused of a number of criminal cases and are named as leaders of organized criminal groups is not in the least sensational and is not surprising to anyone in the country.

However, unlike their unfortunate colleagues from the state service that found themselves on the defendants’ bench, heard the guilty verdict, lost all or a part of hard-earned fortunes and were sent to prison to serve their sentences (albeit not for long), these two men have emigrated from the country and, so far, have been unreachable for the Kazakhstan justice system. Therefore, for the guilty verdicts that will soon be reached by the Kazakhstan court to be executed, they must be, in some form, recognized and enforced abroad, in Switzerland and the UK.

However, judging by the fact that more than ten years have passed since Viktor Khrapunov and his wife’s emigration (and five  years since Bergey Ryskaliyev and his brother’s emigration) and they have managed to stay free despite the efforts of the state agencies, particularly the Public Prosecution Office and the Ministry of Justice of Kazakhstan, the effectiveness of the Kazakhstan state machine does not seem to be high.

With that, one should keep in mind that, as oppose to Mukhtar Ablyazov who was first put to jail in 2002 for political reasons and who had long been supporting the democratic opposition of the country, Bergey Ryskaliyev has never been spotted to be doing anything of the kind. Besides, he has been successful in the original accumulation of capital as precisely a state official and, in this regard, is no different from the overwhelming majority of the high-level Kazakhstan officials including Nursultan Nazarbayev, their relatives, and business partners.

In other words, there are certain objective and subjective factors that allow the Kazakhs who have emigrated to the West to successfully escape criminal prosecution despite the efforts of the Kazakhstan authorities. Note that this happens regardless of whether or not they act as direct political opponents of the regime (like Mukhtar Ablyazov) or simply are the members of a clan that has lost the inter-elite fight (like Ryskaliyev).

Obviously, the power transit in Kazakhstan, given the absence of a real political opposition and the passivity of the vast majority of the population, will in no way influence the organization and the principles of the super-Presidential vertical and the authoritarian political regime. This means that, after Nazarbayev’s retirement and the appearance of his successor, a process of the power renewal on the level of the persons involved will begin (perhaps not immediately) simply because the epicenter of the power will change.

In the course of this process that will undoubtedly be accompanied by the mass redistribution of not only the spheres of the political influence and the right to access the state money but also of the business-niches and the property, the risks for its participants will rise significantly. Thus, the number of the losers who will be presented with a choice – either to accept their defeat or to continue fighting the winners while risking being accused of crimes and sent to prison - will rise as well.

There is no doubt that the logic of the domestic political process will force some of other former influential people in the country to choose between emigration and prison. And since it is obvious that the prosecution of such people as Ablyazov, Khrapunov, Ryskaliyev and so forth is unlikely to end up successfully for the Kazakhstan authorities in the nearest years, it may turn out that the Kazakhstan counter-elite will form anew, this time, inside the country as it did in the beginning of the 2000s and not beyond its borders.

Clearly, it will not be homogenous in the political and the mental sense. Its members will be extremely unfriendly to each other personally. But it will appear. Of course, its life expectancy in history will be short since the children and the grandchildren of the exiles will probably not want to return to their homeland and, therefore, will not (at least on a massive scale) covet a place in the Kazakhstan power vertical and economy.

But, for Nazarbayev’s successor, this counter-elite is likely to create a number of problems. All the more so, since Akorda has still been unable to come up with the effective ways to fight it not counting the physical destruction it as the case of Nazarbayev’s former son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev showed.

Photo from “Uralskaya Nedelya” website