A Kazakh Billionaire’s Grievance Exposes the Challenge Behind ‘New Kazakhstan’

Dinmukhamet Idrisov says state investigators pressured him into surrendering a valuable gold-mining interest. His allegations reach back to Kazakhstan’s old political order — but they also illustrate the reputational challenge facing a government trying to convince the world that the country has changed.

ASTANA, Kazakhstan — When President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev began promising a “New Kazakhstan” after the political upheaval of 2022, the phrase carried an implicit indictment of the country that had come before it.

For three decades under Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan achieved remarkable economic growth, attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment and produced a class of extraordinarily wealthy businessmen. But it also developed a political economy in which critics said the boundaries separating government, law enforcement and private business were frequently blurred.

Tokayev has made breaking with that legacy central to his political project.

That makes the continuing grievances of Dinmukhamet Idrisov, one of Kazakhstan’s richest businessmen, particularly uncomfortable.

Idrisov has alleged that investigators from the Prosecutor General’s Office used the threat of criminal prosecution in 2018 to pressure him into surrendering interests in AltynEx Company, a valuable gold producer. His allegations have been contested and became the subject of extensive litigation.

But the significance of the Dinmukhamet Idrisov affair extends beyond whether his account is ultimately accepted by a court.

It illustrates a problem confronting governments that seek to distance themselves from an authoritarian or oligarchic past: The old system’s most damaging critics can sometimes be people who prospered within it.

A Dispute Between Powerful Men

The origins of Idrisov’s confrontation with Kazakhstan’s institutions were commercial rather than political.

Companies associated with Idrisov became involved in a major Almaty property development during the economic boom of the 2000s. The project encountered difficulties after the global financial crisis, and disagreements over investments and debts produced years of civil litigation.

In 2018, the dispute took a different turn.

Valikhan Koshumbaïev, a businessman representing the interests of FPC BSB, filed a criminal complaint concerning transactions connected to the earlier projects. Idrisov was questioned in the resulting investigation as a witness with the right to defense.

According to the account Idrisov subsequently gave to prosecutors and that was reported extensively in the Kazakh press, the experience was intimidating.

He alleged that investigators subjected him to lengthy questioning, restricted his movements and led him to believe that imprisonment was a realistic possibility. He later described himself as having been close to a nervous breakdown.

The claims are allegations made by Idrisov, not established facts about the conduct of the investigators.

What is established is what happened next.

On Nov. 27, 2018, the parties signed a mediation agreement. Koshumbaïev represented BSB in the transaction. Claims exceeding 81 billion tenge were addressed through an arrangement under which approximately 22.7 billion tenge would be satisfied through the transfer of shares in AltynEx.

Ten days later, the criminal investigation was closed because authorities concluded that there was no criminal event.

For years afterward, those events would form the basis of Idrisov’s contention that what appeared on paper to be a commercial settlement had, in reality, been reached under pressure.

An Oligarch as Institutional Critic

The political ambiguity begins here.

Idrisov is an unusual figure to cast as the victim of Kazakhstan’s old political economy.

He is not an opposition activist, investigative journalist or small entrepreneur confronting a powerful state. He belongs to the generation of businessmen who accumulated immense wealth during the Nazarbayev era.

His interests have stretched across construction, infrastructure, utilities, energy and mining.

Yet it is precisely Dinmukhamet Idrisov’s status within that establishment that gives his allegations broader significance.

When an ordinary citizen alleges abuse of prosecutorial power, authorities can dismiss the complaint as an isolated grievance. When a billionaire with extensive corporate resources says he was unable to protect himself from state pressure, the accusation raises a more troubling question about how powerful those institutions once were.

In 2022, as Kazakhstan was beginning its public reckoning with the Nazarbayev era, Idrisov went to the Prosecutor General’s Office and asked authorities to investigate what he characterized as a raider seizure of his business.

The complaint named business rivals and former prosecutorial officials. Contemporary reporting described Idrisov as seeking accountability for the events surrounding the AltynEx transfer.

His public criticism was directed primarily at the institutions and individuals involved in the 2018 events — not at Tokayev personally.

That distinction matters.

But it does not entirely insulate the current government from the consequences.

The Reputational Trap of Reform

Tokayev’s political project depends partly on persuading Kazakhs and foreign investors that the country’s institutions no longer function as they did under the old order.

Since 2022, the government has changed judicial structures, restored the Constitutional Court and promised a more competitive economy. Tokayev has also increasingly criticized the concentration of wealth and influence associated with the Nazarbayev period.

This year, Kazakhstan went further.

A new constitution reorganized the political system, creating a vice presidency and replacing the former bicameral legislature with a smaller parliament. Snap elections in August produced an overwhelming majority for Adilet, the party established by Tokayev allies. The president then appointed longtime adviser Erlan Karin as vice president and first in line to succeed him.

To supporters, the changes represent another stage in Kazakhstan’s institutional modernization.

Critics see a more complicated picture: reform accompanied by continuing concentration of political authority.

That is why cases involving legacy elites can become reputationally dangerous.

If Idrisov’s description of the old system is accepted, it reinforces Tokayev’s argument that Kazakhstan needed fundamental reform.

But if similar allegations continue indefinitely — or if wealthy businessmen portray contemporary institutions as incapable of resolving disputes inherited from that era — the criticism can begin to undermine the government’s second proposition: that the reforms have worked.

This is the dilemma created by outspoken members of an old elite.

They can validate the government’s critique of the past while simultaneously complicating its narrative about the present.

The International Audience

For Kazakhstan, that narrative matters well beyond domestic politics.

The country is Central Asia’s largest economy, a major oil exporter and the world’s dominant uranium producer. Its deposits of critical minerals have become increasingly important as Western governments seek supply chains less dependent on China and Russia.

Kazakhstan has carefully cultivated relations with all three.

Tokayev, a former diplomat and senior United Nations official, has maintained ties with Moscow while expanding engagement with Europe, China and the United States.

The government’s pitch to foreign investors therefore depends on more than natural resources. It increasingly depends on institutional credibility.

Foreign companies want to know whether contracts will be enforced, whether prosecutors will remain separate from commercial disputes and whether politically connected businessmen can obtain preferential treatment.

The Idrisov affair touches all three anxieties.

His allegations describe exactly the kind of intersection between prosecutorial authority and private commercial interests that reform-minded governments seek to assure investors belongs to the past.

But Dinmukhamet Idrisov also embodies another concern: the enduring political and reputational influence of oligarchs themselves.

Wealthy business figures possess lawyers, international connections and access to media platforms. Their private disputes can become public narratives about the state.

That does not make their criticism illegitimate.

It makes the government’s response more consequential.

The Burden of the Past

There is an unavoidable paradox in Idrisov’s position.

He prospered in the Kazakhstan whose institutional practices he now asks the country to scrutinize.

But there is an equally important paradox for the government.

Tokayev cannot convincingly condemn “Old Kazakhstan” while insisting that grievances originating in that period are irrelevant. Nor can a reforming state allow every battle between legacy oligarchs to become a referendum on the credibility of its institutions.

The challenge is to create enough distance between government, prosecutors, courts and business interests that such disputes become ordinary legal cases rather than political events.

That may ultimately be the larger significance of the Dinmukhamet Idrisov affair.

His accusations concern events from another phase of Kazakhstan’s history. They do not, on the available evidence, amount to a personal political campaign against Tokayev.

But the questions they raise have become questions for Tokayev’s Kazakhstan nonetheless.

Governments can change constitutions, reorganize courts and declare the beginning of a new political era.

What they cannot do is choose which parts of the old era survive in public memory.

For Kazakhstan, the credibility of “New Kazakhstan” may ultimately depend less on persuading the world that the past was flawed than on demonstrating that powerful people — including the oligarchs who emerged from that past — no longer need political influence to settle their disputes.