These findings exemplify the corruption and stark inequality that has plagued Kazakhstan since it gained from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Under Nazarbayev’s long years of leadership, most Kazakhstanis have seen little benefit from their country’s vast mineral wealth, even as it lined the pockets of a circle of billionaires, including members of Nazarbayev’s family and officials close to him.

The system barely changed after Nazarbayev resigned from the presidency in 2019. He installed a hand-picked successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and retained control of the security council.

This explains why, after local protests against high fuel prices in Western Kazakhstan spread across the country in early January, they quickly turned into demands for broader political change — and became personal. The chant “Old man, leave!” became a mainstay of the demonstrations. A photograph widely shared online showed a toppled statue of Nazarbayev.

The popular demonstrations were accompanied by an apparent struggle for power behind the scenes, with President Tokayev announcing on January 5 that he had taken over Nazarbayev’s role as head of the security council.

Nazarbayev himself has hardly been heard from since the unrest began, and his political influence may be at its end. What will happen to his billions is still unclear.

A spokesman for Nazarbayev did not respond to requests for comment. Three of Nazarbayev’s foundations did not respond either. The fourth told OCCRP that the former president did not benefit from any of the assets it held, which were dedicated to securing financing for educational institutions named after him.

Thirty Years of Nazarbayev

Born into a peasant family, Nazarbayev joined the Soviet Communist Party in his early 20s and rose steadily through its ranks. By the middle of his career, he was at the top of the party structure in Soviet Kazakhstan, holding positions including prime minister and first secretary of the local Party branch. When the post of president was established in 1990, he was selected to fill it. Nazarbayev was overwhelmingly reelected after the country gained its independence the following year, setting the stage for decades of one-man rule.

Over that period, Kazakhstan’s constitution was amended several times to expand Nazarbayev’s presidential powers and allow him — and only him — to run for reelection as many times as he wished. His Nur Otan party became the dominant force in a rubber-stamp parliament. Even as his regime repeatedly suppressed freedom of speech and political opposition, it allowed a circle of businessmen close to him to amass enormous fortunes and influence after a wave of privatizations.

He was granted full immunity from scrutiny or prosecution, which extends to any entities founded by him. And in 2010, Nazarbayev also gained a new title — “Leader of the Nation.”

It was around this time that he began to establish the foundations that would eventually come to hold billions in assets.

One of these, the Foundation of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan - Elbasy , had been established years earlier as a public foundation, but in 2011 it was reclassified as “private,” and Nazarbayev was listed as its founder. (It was dissolved in 2021.)

Nazarbayev founded two more private foundations, the Nazarbayev Foundation and the Nursultan Nazarbayev Foundation, in 2009 and 2010. He founded another two, Demeu (“Support”) and Elbasy (“Leader of the Nation”), in 2013 and 2021.

The foundations’ similar names and the way their activities are reported make them difficult to distinguish. Some don’t have websites, and those that exist can be misleading: For example, a website for the Foundation of the First President once redirected visitors to the site of the Nursultan Nazarbayev Foundation — which incorrectly lists the former foundation’s founding year as its own.

The Demeu and Elbasy foundations don’t appear to carry out public-facing activities. But the others have touted their educational, social, and patriotic projects, which are frequently reported in glowing terms in the largely pliant Kazakhstani media.

In 2011, another new law made the Nazarbayev Foundation responsible for funding two major educational institutions: a network of secondary schools and a flagship research university.

But there was more to this arrangement than it seemed.

An Endowment — and a Business Empire?

Located on a vast campus on the outskirts of Nur-Sultan, Nazarbayev University was founded in 2010 with a mission to modernize Kazakhstan’s higher education system.

“The creation of this educational institution is a most important national project, which I will oversee personally,” said Nazarbayev in a 2010 speech shortly after the university opened. “I am convinced that it will have a systematic impact on the development of the capital, our entire state, and society.”

Alongside the university, a network of primary and secondary schools called the “Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools” was also created.

Both institutions are generously funded by the state, receiving about $5 billion between 2010 and 2021. This was a disproportionate amount of Kazakhstan’s education budget, especially considering that the university and the schools host only a small proportion of the country’s students.

Most educational endowments are set up by universities to receive donations, invest them, and use the profits to fund their needs. But unlike such endowments, the Nazarbayev Foundation does not belong to the educational institutions it’s supposed to fund. Instead, it is a private organization personally founded and controlled by Nursultan Nazarbayev. Confusingly, both the university and the schools also set up their own corporate “development funds,” which they really do control.

The Nazarbayev Foundation has no website, does not publish any reports, and has not publicly disclosed how much money it has received from external donors or Nazarbayev himself.

When contacted by reporters, the chairman of its board, Aslan Sarinzhipov, provided an official document which revealed that, as of 2019, it had received $1 billion from undisclosed donors and made $200 million in investment income.

Sarinzhipov wrote in an email that, in the decade since its creation, the Nazarbayev Foundation had paid $46.5 million to fund research activities, laboratory equipment, student support, and other educational expenses. (This is equivalent to about 1 percent of the state funding the university and the schools received over the same period.)

Though it was established in 2009, corporate records show that the Nazarbayev Foundation appeared to have no investment activity until 2019, the year of Nazarbayev’s retirement.

By then, the two corporate foundations owned by the schools and university had established an investment fund called Pioneer Capital Invest, and used it to acquire a Kazakhstani bank called ExpoCredit for $30 million.

Now the Nazarbayev Foundation joined the party, acquiring 75 percent of Pioneer Capital and leaving the others with just a quarter between them. (The amount it paid for this stake is unknown.)

These stakes would later change, with the Nazarbayev Foundation’s share decreasing to 62 percent by July 2021.

With its prominent new backer, Pioneer Capital went on a shopping spree, acquiring a major Kazakhstani lender called Tsesnabank. The latter had belonged to the family of Adilbek Dzhaksybekov, a former head of Nazarbayev’s presidential administration, but had to be saved by the government after being mismanaged.

Since then, Pioneer Capital has acquired several other banks, an internet marketplace, mobile operators, warehouses, shopping malls, and even a pasta factory.

Photo: James O’Brien

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