Kazakh billionaire to be extradited over alleged £3bn fraud, French court rules

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/09/kazakh-extradited-fraud-mukhtar-ablyazov

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Mukhtar Ablyazov, the Kazakh billionaire accused of stealing £3bn who went on the run after being found guilty in Britain of lying to a court about his ownership of a £17m mansion on London's "billionaires' row", will be extradited to Russia or Ukraine, a French court ruled.

Ablyazov, 50, who is accused of embezzling £3bn from the state-owned Kazakh bank BTA, was found guilty of contempt of court in London for trying to hide more than £34m of assets, including Carlton House, his seven-bedroom home on The Bishops Avenue, and an £18m 100-acre estate near Windsor called Oakland Park. A high court judge sentenced him to 22 months in prison in February 2012, but he fled the country before he could be jailed.

Private detectives tracked him down last summer to a villa on the French Riviera by tailing his friend Olena Tischenko, a Ukrainian lawyer, from the Royal Courts of Justice in London to the south of France.

The detectives, working for BTA, which he allegedly defrauded when he was chairman, followed her as she took a taxi to Heathrow airport and a flight to Nice.

She was picked up by a chauffeur and driven in a white Land Rover to her home near Cannes where she switched cars to a grey Land Rover at 2.30am and drove to the six-bed Villa Neptune in Miramar on the coast between Nice and Marseille. Inside they spotted Ablyazov in his underwear.

Ablyazov was transferred to a third villa, the Chemin de Castellaras in Mouans-Sartoux, where the private detectives called in a police helicopter and 12 gendarmes disguised as gardeners to storm the property and arrest him.

Since then he has been in prison in Aix-en-Provence while the court decided whether to extradite him – he is wanted in Britain, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.

The court ruled on Thursday that Ablyazov, who had been granted political asylum in the UK in 2011, should be extradited to Ukraine or Russia, with a preference for Russia. Kazakhstan does not have an extradition treaty with France.

Ablyazov denies the charges, which he claims are politically motivated. His lawyers said he would appeal against a "patently flawed decision" that "drapes French justice in shame".

Peter Sahlas, who represents Ablyazov's family, said: "This court wants to send Ablyazov, a refugee, straight to the very people he should be protected from.

"All human rights groups warn against his extradition over fears he will be tortured. Ultimately he will be sent to Kazakhstan and mistreated.

"He will not be able to get a fair trial – he will be tortured in Kazakhstan; he will be tortured in Ukraine; he will be tortured in Russia."

Amnesty International said: "Not only do we have fears that Ablyazov would not get a fair trial in Russia or Ukraine, there is the real danger that he will eventually end up in Kazakhstan, where he will be at risk of torture and other ill-treatment. The French authorities must not send Ablyazov to any country where he will face serious human rights violations or be forced back to Kazakhstan."

The French prosecutor said the court made a condition of his extradition that Ablyazov would not be sentenced to forced labour.

Alma Shalabayeva, Ablyazov's wife, said: "For my husband, extradition is a death sentence. If he is extradited, he will never see me, or our four children, ever again."

Last year, Shalabayeva and the couple's six-year-old daughter, Alua, were abducted in Rome by the Kazakh ambassador and deported on a private jet to Kazakhstan, paid for by the Kazakh embassy. They returned to Rome with the assistance of the Italian authorities last month.

"My husband has sacrificed everything in his fight for democracy and reform in Kazakhstan. He has lost his wealth, he has lost his freedom, and he has been cut off from his family," Shalabayeva said.

"He is fighting a malicious regime that wants to destroy him, to kill any hope for democratic change. France is a country of democracy. France is supposed to be a country of human rights. France cannot help the regime in Kazakhstan to destroy my husband."

Chris Hardman, a lawyer for BTA, said: "The decision to extradite Mr Ablyazov to stand trial for at least some of his many frauds on BTA Bank should assist the bank in its recovery efforts.

"The extradition will greatly limit his ability to continue to launder the proceeds of his wrongdoing. It also demonstrates once again that Mr Ablyazov's repeated attempts to portray himself as being pursued by the bank for political reasons are groundless; he is merely being required to answer for the billions of dollars that were taken from BTA and its creditors."

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