This material was prepared when Dariga Nazarbayeva was not simply chairing the Senate of the Kazakh Parliament but was abnormally active at this job interfering with literally everything that she came across. Nonetheless, we are publishing is here because, for Kazakhstan, the subject it touches upon is more than important and interesting.

Apart from that, judging by how the events in the country are unfolding, the Leader of the Nation’s eldest daughter and her clan will not be subject to repressions and the pressurising at least for several upcoming months.

While most Kazakh citizens have been and continue fighting coronavirus and the reduction or even disappearance of the sources of income, the ruling elite continues to undergo the same developments that started last year after the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan handed over the chair and the authorities of the head of the state to his formal successor.

One of such developments (and the key one, in our opinion) has to do with the forming of the new verticals within the ruling elite. It is when all the clans, groups and figures of influence, without exception, are looking for and finding new benefactors while, on the whole, aligning with Nursultan Nazarbayev and swearing to be faithful to him (officially or not). Or they prove their loyalty to their former protectors. 

The Leader of the Nation’s eldest daughter, now former Head of the Senate of the Kazakh Parliament Dariga Nazarbayeva plays the role of such a protector herself. 

We have already published an inside material on the mutually beneficial collaboration of the Mukashev family with Dariga. (By the way, interestingly, the problems that the Mukashevs started to experience after hewing out 11 thousands trees in Almaty to build a new shopping centre have already ended. We are planning to tell our reader how this happened and who assisted in it in a special material). This, however, is just one example out of many.

Now then, according to our insiders, among those who chose Dariga Nazarbayeva as a protector and whom she took under her patronage, there is an entrepreneur who has come under some serious spotlight during the emergency rule. We are talking about Aydyn Rakhimbayev, the founder, majority shareholder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the BI Group construction holding.

It is this construction company that has received the urgent contract for building a hospital for the  coronavirus victims. BI Group has indeed completed this difficult task; thus the top-management and the regular staff of the holding have truly earned the gratitude of the Kazakh citizens. However, according to our insiders, it was Ms. Nazarbayeva who played the crucial role in the fact that the contract for building the hospital was received by BI Group and no other.

In our opinion, the fact that, almost one tenth of the notorious list of Kazakhstan’s 361 «systemically-important industries» that deserve the state support above all others is controlled by Rakhimbayev is not coincidental as well.

We do not see a point in throwing stones either at BI Group or its top-managers since no other scenario can exist in Kazakhstan. As a rule, any more or less profitable, attractive and serious business-project can be implemented only after it has been won through not just on the formal level but on the «informal» level as well.

Of course, the latter one is usually obscured for the press and the civil society. But everyone who, one way or another, is operating in any given sector of the national economy knows and understands it. Of course, they do keep silent about it and will continue to do so because such are the rules of doing business in Kazakhstan.