Since 2012, hundreds of millions of dollars from Kyrgyzstan — one of the poorest countries on earth — have poured into bank accounts in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East on behalf of a single family.

Much of that money ended up in an expansive real estate portfolio that stretches from the Persian Gulf to the shores of California.

That portfolio includes prestigious acquisitions, such as a mansion in one of London’s most exclusive neighborhoods and a $1.2 million home near Washington, DC. It also includes new real estate development projects, like a new 26-floor apartment tower in Dubai.

But though some of the other projects occupy prime real estate, they have stalled for unknown reasons, prompting questions about who is behind them.

“Is there even an investor or an architect anymore?” asked a group of lawmakers from Augsburg about one of the mysteriously inactive construction sites.

This investigation by RFE/RL’s Radio Azattyk, OCCRP, and its Kyrgyz member center, Kloop, answers that question — and connects the millions behind these investments to a murky enterprise half a world away.

Last month, the three outlets published an investigation that vaulted Khabibula Abdukadyr, a secretive ethnic Uighur tycoon based in Dubai, into the public eye. The series of stories revealed that he and his family run an underground Central Asian cargo empire that earned millions by smuggling goods, evading taxes, and employing other schemes that depended on corruption in the Kyrgyz customs service.

Some of the proceeds of this massive operation, channelled through the Abdukadyrs’ world-spanning company network, the AKA group of companies, ended up in existing properties and new real estate developments, both built and unbuilt, on multiple continents.

To move this money abroad, the Abdukadyrs relied on the services of Aierken Saimaiti, a self-confessed money launderer who deposited their millions in his accounts and wired them overseas, often making the transfers via his wife or his Kyrgyz company. He also used a network of working-class couriers to physically carry cash out of Kyrgyzstan and deposit it in Turkish bank accounts. From there, it could be sent wherever the Abdukadyrs wanted.

Saimaiti was murdered in Istanbul last month. But before his death, he had turned on his former employers, providing reporters with detailed descriptions of how they made their money and the techniques he used to funnel it abroad. He backed his claims with copious documentation, including personal spreadsheets and ledgers, wire transfer records, and cash declarations.

In total, Saimaiti moved more than $700 million out of Kyrgyzstan over the five years he worked for the Abdukadyr family. He did not provide documentation for that entire amount, but according to a subsequent investigation by the country’s financial police, the total figure may be considerably higher.

The documents he did provide to reporters show that he had sent at least $209 million of the Abdukadyrs’ money to Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Dubai — countries where the family was making large real estate investments.

Using land and company records, reporters were able to identify at least 20 properties the Abdukadyr family purchased. The total value of these properties, from mansions and city apartments to gleaming hotel towers, is not possible to determine. The family is known to have paid $65 million for real estate, but this figure is incomplete because records were not available in all countries and because it does not include the cost of developing the properties, which must have amounted to tens of millions more.

The materials Saimaiti provided also reveal the fraudulent methods he used to send the Abdukadyrs’ money abroad.

One of these was creating fake loan agreements to provide a cover story for the wire transfers.

Saimaiti gave reporters what he said was a sham contract stipulating that his Kyrgyz company, Abdyraz, would lend $30 million to AKA Petroleum, one of the Abdukadyr family’s main German companies. The contract — drafted under German law and dated July 1, 2014 — features AKA Petroleum’s corporate stamp and a signature closely resembling that of Khabibula Abdukadyr’s Munich-based representative.

Saimaiti also provided copies of seven wire-transfer orders totaling $3.7 million he made to AKA Petroleum accounts that specifically reference the sham contract.

Other transfers used different tactics. In many cases, they were made to appear as legitimate payments for goods, such as textiles. But the companies that received the money did not appear to be in the textile business.

In one case, Saimaiti personally wired $700,000 to Khabibula Abdukadyr’s German bank account, with the reason for the transfer listed as “textile production.” In another, he sent $290,000 to a Dubai property developer using an official code for a land plot with the words “for textile” appended at the end.

“These are large transfers, emanating from a poor country, and should have been looked at carefully,” says Graham Barrow, a dark money specialist who has advised major banks on how to strengthen their anti-money-laundering practices.

“Paradoxically, money launderers do not like to move or invest money through the unstable and corrupt systems that allow them to gain control over it in the first place,” he said. “This makes mature Western economies and stable, long-term investments like property particularly attractive.”

But the investments do little to benefit the countries they arrive in, Barrow said.

“The long-term effect of dark money … is to distort the market, often pricing out the very residents whose presence is required to support the local economy,” he said.

Neither Abdukadyr nor his business associates have responded to multiple requests for comment.

Germany: The ‘Haunted House’ and the Phantom Headquarters

The construction project across from the fur shop here in Augsburg, one of Germany’s oldest cities, has dragged on for years. And Ernst Franzmann is not happy about it.

“There are always new people coming. They work, and then the work is stopped, and it’s littered with garbage. Everyone puts their trash out, and neither the owner nor the architect keeps an eye on this,” Franzmann, a furrier at the venerable Conrad Glock fur and leather shop, said in an interview outside the store this September.

“It’s an eyesore for the city,” added Franzmann, a bespectacled, mustachioed man who complains that the construction site has driven business away.

One early workday afternoon this fall, reporters saw a man walking inside the shell of a building, but no construction activity. Neighbors said only a handful of workers showed up to the site occasionally — though Franzmann said last week that some construction had picked up again. Still, the building has become known among locals as the “haunted house.”

Since 2015, various deadlines have been announced for the six-story, postwar building stretching over an entire block along Schmiedberg, an east-west thoroughfare in central Augsburg. At one point, it was supposed to be a hotel completed by 2016. The current plan is to turn it into an apartment complex, which was supposed to have been built by March 2019.

“Is there even an investor or an architect anymore?” asked a group of Augsburg lawmakers in a February 2018 letter to the mayor about the development.

There is. For the past eight years, the property has been held by the Abdukadyrs’ AKA group of companies.

In fact, the stalled project is just one of several German developments featured on the group’s now-defunct website. They also include a plot of land near Munich and an empty business center in the city that serves as the group’s phantom corporate headquarters.

The precise scope and value of the family’s properties in the country, where real estate ownership and sales records are not publicly accessible, is unclear. But the website also showcased plans and architectural renderings for additional hotel, residential, and business developments in several German cities and towns.

‘Phantom’ Headquarters

Two of the Abdukadyr family’s main companies — AKA Immobilien (now renamed AKA Group) and its subsidiary, AKA Petroleum — are incorporated in Germany. According to their most recent financial filings from 2017, these companies held over $106 million, though this figure likely includes assets outside Germany.

Their listed corporate address, meanwhile, appeared to be nothing more than a deserted business center in an industrial park in eastern Munich when reporters visited on a weekday this fall.

Boxes and construction materials could be seen strewn haphazardly across the ground floor. Not a single person was visible inside. Folding tables and a lonely broken umbrella lay near the dusty main entrance, while the courtyard brimmed with weeds and unkempt bushes.

A small mailbox at the front of the premises listed the names of AKA Immobilien, AKA Petroleum, and two other German firms tied to the Abdukadyr network. A paper sign taped to the glass door at the main entrance directed visitors to a business center across the street, where the names of the four companies were listed next to a doorbell. Reporters rang the bell several times but received no answer.

Repeated calls to the number listed on the paper sign went to an answering machine. The calls were returned by the Abdukadyrs’ Munich-based representative, Kudrat Nurmamat. He refused to discuss the family’s business and has since declined subsequent interview requests.

The website of the Munich-based architectural firm Stark Architekten, which has also worked on the Augsburg “haunted house,” describes a proposed $19.2 million renovation of the empty AKA headquarters. It envisions a gleaming, five-star cylindrical glass hotel with 196 rooms — complete with AKA International branding.

“A Uniquely Stupid Fantasy Product”

In addition to the Augsburg “haunted house” and the deserted Munich business center, the Abdukadyr family purchased a plot of land in Vaterstetten, just east of Munich.

The now-defunct AKA website described the planned development there as a 220-room hotel with an expected completion date of December 2017. The Abdukadyrs have since sold the plot.

A local official in Vaterstetten said representatives of the group had shown plans for the proposed hotel but had never filed any formal paperwork to move the project forward.

At least two other AKA projects in Germany appear never to have existed at all.

The group’s website featured a proposed hotel in the German spa town of Bad Vilbel, northeast of Frankfurt. A local official responsible for commercial construction told Immobilien Zeitung in April 2018 that the images associated with the purported development were “a uniquely stupid fantasy product without a plot of land.”

This does not appear to have changed.

“I don’t know anything about such a project, so the statement of the city councilman still stands,” Yannick Schwander, a spokesman for the Bad Vilbel mayor’s office, said in an e-mail.

Another proposed project on the dead AKA site was the development of a hotel in the town of Dietzenbach, southeast of Frankfurt. A spokesman for the local government said that no official planning application had ever been submitted for such a project.

But if the Abdukadyr family never completed a real estate development in Germany, it wasn’t for lack of money.

Financial records that Saimaiti provided to reporters indicate that in 2014 and 2015, he wired at least $46 million to accounts held by Abdukadyr and his two main German companies.

Given the family’s financial resources, it’s unclear why so many of their German projects appear to be phantoms. The construction in Augsburg, at least, may now be picking up again. But even if none of the rest are ever completed, they already represent many millions of dollars successfully funneled out of Central Asia.

The United Kingdom: A Luxury Mansion and Uighur Kebabs

Uxbridge Road, a large, commercial thoroughfare in the Ealing district of West London, has gained a new lease on life since the 2007 announcement that a new railway, known as the Elizabeth Line, will run through the district.

It was here that the Abdukadyr family purchased a property known as Dawley House for $28 million in 2016.

Once the new rail line starts running in 2021, the property will be just 20 minutes from both central London and Heathrow Airport, making it an attractive investment opportunity.

According to permitting documentation and a defunct website for the Abdukadyrs’ AKA group of companies, the family had big plans for the site: A 12-story glass hotel with 113 apartments, “a ground-floor cafe, meeting facilities, and fitness center” that would loom over the surrounding area.

But according to locals, the site has been virtually untouched since the previous building was demolished almost three years ago.

On a recent weekday, there was no sign of construction, workers, or security guards at the site, which was just an empty lot behind a wooden partition and a few padlocked metal gates.

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