By OCCRP and Vlast (Kazakhstan)

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has sought to distance himself from his powerful predecessor, who many in Kazakhstan hold responsible for the country’s vast wealth inequality. But Tokayev’s family has its own foreign secrets: Lakeside townhouses, Moscow apartments, Swiss bank accounts — and a money trail that goes far offshore.

• President Tokayev’s wife and son had a Swiss bank account as early as 1998 — when most Kazakhstanis lived in poverty and he was foreign minister. The account held $1 million at its peak.
• The Tokayevs also opened secretive offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands that controlled a U.K. company with $5 million in assets.
• They also bought apartments around Lake Geneva and in Moscow worth at least $7.7 million.

In recent weeks, Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has taken a stand against inequality.

Addressing the nation after days of protests that were suppressed by mass police brutality, he acknowledged the wave of popular anger against his predecessor, long-ruling strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev.

“Thanks to the First President,” he said, “in the country there appeared a group of very profitable companies and a group of people who are rich even by international standards. I think it’s time to pay back the people of Kazakhstan.”

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev during a January 28 meeting of the political council of Kazakhstan's ruling Nur-Otan party. He recently took over the party’s leadership from former president Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Until the wave of protest and violence shook Kazakhstan in early January, even this mild public criticism of Nazarbayev would have been unthinkable. But Tokayev appeared to have gotten the message that the people of Kazakhstan wanted a change after decades of oil-fueled oligarchy. He promised to make it happen.

“As head of government, I will continue the policy of political transformation and modernization of our society,” he said.

As it turns out, Tokayev’s family had secretive wealth, safely stored in Europe, as far back as 1998 — when nearly half of Kazakhstan’s population lived under the poverty line. A leak of banking data from Credit Suisse shows that a Swiss bank account for Tokayev’s then-wife Nadezhda and 14-year-old son Timur was opened that year, even as Timur attended an expensive boarding school in Geneva.

It’s unknown how much money passed through the account over the years. According to the Swiss leak, it reached its maximum value of 1.5 million Swiss francs ($1 million) in 2005.

Documents from an offshore services provider, corporate files, and property records all show that, in the years to come, the family continued to accumulate significant wealth outside of Kazakhstan. In 2012 — after the Swiss account was closed — the Tokayevs opened offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands that had their own bank accounts in Switzerland and controlled a U.K. company with $5 million in assets at one point in 2014. They also amassed properties in Moscow and Geneva worth at least $7.7 million.

During those years Tokayev held a series of senior government positions, including minister of foreign affairs, prime minister, and Senate chair. Neither he nor his wife had any known businesses or sources of wealth. Only their son Timur has ever been connected to any real business — and even that deserves considerable scrutiny. As reported by Kazakh media, he was listed as the co-owner of an oil company that won lucrative development rights to a Kazakh oil field, and later earned millions in profits, at just 18 years old.

Timur may also be the family’s original connection to Switzerland. It recently emerged that he attended College du Leman, one of Geneva’s most expensive boarding schools, and also has a diploma from the U.S.-accredited Webster University branch in Geneva.

The Tokayevs also made property acquisitions in and around Geneva, all in Timur’s name: An apartment in a quiet district in the city, an apartment in a lakeside townhouse in the nearby municipality of Versoix, and another townhouse apartment in the village of Saint-Prex.

It is unknown how long Timur spent in Geneva after graduating, but his father did live in the area while he was serving as Director-General of the United Nations’ Geneva office in between 2011 and 2013.

Meanwhile, Timur had moved on to Moscow, reportedly cruising around the Russian capital in a Lexus and BMW with diplomatic plates and receiving an advanced degree from the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

He and his mother also acquired several expensive apartments in Moscow. Curiously, as an investigation by now-imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny showed, the Russian government appears to have wiped any mention of them from Russian property records. (Navalny’s team discovered the Tokayevs’ ownership from records they had downloaded before they were deleted from the registry.)

Some of their real estate has since been sold. Their remaining Moscow properties include a large apartment in an elite downtown residence called Fusion Park, and another large, two-floor apartment two kilometers from the Kremlin. Tokayeva was also registered at a third apartment in the city’s northwest.

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