President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has spent the past several years promoting a more just, transparent and rules-based Kazakhstan. Since the violent unrest of January 2022, his “New Kazakhstan” agenda has been presented as an effort to modernize the political system, strengthen institutions and build greater public confidence in the rule of law. Although some have been frustrated by the pace of reform and uneven progress, one area where change is observably underway is in the state’s efforts to impose greater legal accountability on Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet tycoon class. The case of Dinmukhamet Idrisov serves as an illustrative example.
Despite being one of the country’s 20 richest men, Idrisov is hardly a household name in Kazakhstan. Quite the contrary: he appears to have invested a great deal of effort into maintaining a low profile while amassing substantial wealth during the country’s messy transition from communism to market capitalism in the 1990s. He built his fortune across a number of strategically important sectors, including infrastructure, construction, transport, utilities and finance. Today, he owns and chairs Kazakhstan Municipal Systems LLP, a utilities and energy holding company, and has increasingly become the focus of public attention after becoming embroiled in a series of unresolved financial disputes.
The biggest of these centers around his connection to two banking controversies involving Bank RBK and Qazaq Banki. Bank RBK teetered on the edge of collapse in 2017 and had to be rescued by the state, while Qazaq Banki fell into bankruptcy and was liquidated in 2018. Idrisov held documented stakes in both banks: records show that he owned 7.5 percent of Bank RBK shares in mid-2017 and roughly 9 percent of Qazaq Banki in 2018. When crisis struck the former, the bank’s assets were transferred to DSFK LLP, a locally based entity that was established for the purposes of financially restructuring RBK.
Numerous investigations into suspected cases of embezzlement followed, which led to the conviction and imprisonment of Bakhyt Ibrahim, another major shareholder in Qazaq Banki, and Zhomart Ertaev, a banker who had purchased broadcaster Alma TV from Idrisov several years earlier. Idrisov, meanwhile, emerged from the scandal relatively unscathed and went back to leading a quiet life under the radar. It was not to last, however.
Bank RBK made headlines once again in 2024 when it was reported that Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court refused to review earlier rulings in a dispute between Idrisov and DSFK relating to the bank’s 2017 rescue. Bank RBK, Idrisov, and his affiliated group reportedly signed an agreement to repay more than 65 billion tenge [USD$140 million] by November 2020. The dispute erupted due to a portion of the debt amounting to some 28.6 billion tenge [USD$61.5 million] that allegedly went unpaid.
DSFK first won an arbitration ruling ordering Idrisov to repay the debt. Idrisov responded with a counter-claim asking DSFK to accept DSFK bonds worth 28 billion tenge instead of cash. In January 2022, the arbitrator sided with Idrisov, holding that the bonds could be used to offset his liability, in effect allowing the debt to be settled by netting it against the value of the bonds rather than by repaying the full amount in cash. This ruling was later overturned on appeal, and the Supreme Court then declined to reopen the case, leaving the appellate reversal in place.
Whatever the legal merits of the dispute, the picture that emerges is one of a major businessman repeatedly appearing in long-running, high-stakes litigation tied to a bank whose collapse became a public scandal. In the old Kazakhstan, there was a prevailing sense that the politically-connected economic elite lived under a different set of rules to the rest of the country. The eventual outcome of Idrisov’s case will therefore be a measure of progress. But this will not come without its own challenges: Idrisov has tried to portray the Tokayev administration as both corrupt and inefficient while talking himself up as a potential alternative leader for the country. Kazakhstan’s elite seem unlikely to give up their privileges without a fight.
Idrisov isn’t the only oligarch to encounter new limits to their unaccountability in recent years. Kairat Boranbayev, Kairat Satybaldyuly, and Timur Kulibayev, are yet more examples of members of the Nazarbayev-era elite whose assets and business dealings came under heightened scrutiny after 2022. These cases have demonstrated that those who were once thought to be untouchable could, in fact, become subject to investigation, prosecution, asset return or legal pressure. Seen in that context, the attention now surrounding Idrisov is less an isolated anomaly than part of a wider effort to bring greater transparency to Kazakhstan’s political economy.
Achieving this will be key to ensuring long-term stability in the country. The unrest of 2022 reflected public frustration over inequality, corruption and the enduring influence of entrenched networks. Tokayev’s answer was to promise renewal through institutional reform. The growing willingness to revisit legacy disputes, examine elite financial histories and pursue accountability in high-profile cases is a positive step forward. But the real test for Tokayev will be whether he can maintain this momentum when he encounters growing pushback from Kazakhstan’s old elite.