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The “full story” of Mukhtar Ablyazov

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It has been described by some as “fraud on an epic scale” and, now, the “full story” of Mukhtar Ablyazov has been put in print.

To those unfamiliar with the said Mr Ablyazov, he is an individual who has certainly attracted his share of attention in recent years.

The problem for him is that a lot of this publicity has not been very favourable.

Now, a new book by the UK-born journalist/publisher Gary Cartwright claims to shed new light on the somewhat murky world inhabited by Mr Ablyazov and his many associates.

The redoubtable Cartwright, a former staffer in the European Parliament, certainly cannot be accused of not doing the works on a man whose recent fortunes make the travails of Donald Trump appear lightweight by comparison.

With the ninth anniversary of his "flight from the authorities" in his homeland of Kazakhstan fast approaching, the raft of transnational court cases involving Mr Ablyazov show no sign of abating.

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“Wanted Man: The story of Mukhtar Ablyazov”, penned by Cartwright, tells the shady story of a mega rich man that stretches from his homeland to the United Kingdom onto France and to U.S President Trump himself.

Welcome  to the murky world of Mukhtar Ablyazov.

Accordng to Cartwright, nowadays mostly based in Belgium, this is a criminal mastermind, a man facing a miscellaneous assortment of allegations.

First, a bit of history: Mr Ablyazov was appointed as head of the state-owned Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company (KEGOC) and named Minister for Energy, Industry, and Trade in Kazakhstan. Within a year, KECOG revenues  were reportedly down by 12 percent and expenditure up by 53 percent, a pattern repeated in 1999 when he was named CEO of Air Kazakhstan.

After falling foul of the authorities, Mr Ablyazov, the book recalls, took flight from his homeland to claim asylum in the UK where he settled into opulent Carlton House on Billionaire’s Row in Highgate, London.

Cartwright says that Mr Ablyazov was soon on the run again, this time from British justice. Despite an arrest warrant having been issued, he managed to slip away to France.

In his absence, between November 2012 and March 2013,  the book says that British courts passed judgments against Mr Ablyazov, with Lord Justice Maurice Kay observing that: “It is difficult to imagine a party to commercial litigation who has acted with more cynicism, opportunism and deviousness towards court orders than Mr Ablyazov.”

After being warned of risks of kidnapping or assassination several times by various sources, including the British police, went into hiding, moving between luxury villas in the south of France. Along the way, the book says that the saga even reached the hallowed corridors of the European parliament.

Today, from his villa in France, Ablyazov continues to complain of his “persecution”.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this tangled tale, there is no denying Cartwright’s determination to try to get to the bottom of this startling story.

The story, in some ways, is not particularly new as Mr Ablyazov’s tortuous journey through various member states’ judicial systems and, more importantly, those who were left in its wake, is quite well known.

But Cartwright, who interviewed scores of people and invested  hundreds of hours of research in compiling this work, certainly deserves full credit for trying to get to the heart of the staggering fall from grace of this former top Kazakh minister.

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