Kazakh exile Rakhat Aliyev’s wife accuses Malta of human rights breach
The wife of a former Kazakh oligarch, found dead in an Austrian jail in a startling act of suicide, is suing the Maltese government in the European Court of Human Rights.
Elnara Shorazova, an Austrian national who became the second
wife of Rakhat Aliyev – a one-time exile living in Malta – is complaining that
the Maltese government’s compliance with a freezing order requested by the
Kazakhstan authorities, breached her human rights because the request stemmed
from a regime that could not offer any guarantees of a fair trial.
In her complaint, signed by lawyer Joe Giglio, Shorazova
complains that the freezing order on her Malta assets – in place since 2014 –
was based on politically motivated trumped-up charges.
She said the measure had no genuine public interest,
especially in Malta, and that Malta was positively obliged not to be complicit
in the breaches of human rights perpetrated in Kazakhstan.
She also complained that she had suffered a breach of her
right to a fair trial because of the long constitutional proceedings in Malta
in which she protested the asset freeze and the Maltese collaboration with the
Kazakh investigation.
Rakhat Aliyev, later Shoraz, was married to the daughter of
Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev, having occupied a high-ranking role in
the country’s secret service. But he fell out of favour with his father-in-law,
and by 2007 while serving as ambassador in Vienna, he was forcibly divorced
from Nazarbayev’s daughter. Aliyev has always claimed that his pro-democracy
views imperilled Nazarbayev’s iron grip on the country.
Like similar dissidents Aliyev went into exile, but he was
dogged by accusations of having commissioned the kidnapping of two Nurbank
bankers later found dead. In absentia, he was found guilty by a Kazakh court
and sentenced to 20 years’ jail.
Austria refused a 2007 request for extradition, citing the
former Soviet republic’s human rights record. But at the same time, criminal
proceedings were instituted against him in Vienna on charges of money
laundering and the Nurbank murders.
Aliyev came to Malta in 2010. His four-year stay was dogged
by the Austrian investigation, as well as new money laundering accusations in
Germany and Liechtenstein, and accusations of torture from two former security
men who worked by his side.
In 2014, the Austrian authorities issued an arrest warrant
against Aliyev when he left Malta, intending to acquire citizenship in Cyprus.
Aliyev has always insisted that Kazakhstan was funding
lawyers and activists across Europe to persecute him on money laundering
charges.
Malta proceedings
While in Malta, Aliyev was dogged by a request from
Kazakhstan to Maltese police for an investigation and an attachment order. In
April 2014, the Court of Magistrates issued a freezing order over Aliyev’s
properties in Malta, his yacht, and companies.
Aliyev requested constitutional redress, complaining that
the proceedings by the Attorney General at the request of the Kazakh
authorities were in breach of his right to a fair trial, given the political
situation in Kazakhstan.
But in February 2015, Aliyev was found dead in an Austrian
jail – ostensibly having killed himself – after turning himself to Austrian
prosecutors in December 2014 on the Nurbank murders charge. His lawyers always
insisted that Aliyev, 52, could not have killed himself.
In October 2017, the Civil Court in its constitutional
competence found a partial breach and ordered that the documentation collected
by the Maltese authorities should not be sent to the Kazakh authorities as it
had been collected in breach of the rights of the claimants.
But it said legal assistance should be continued against
Elnara Shorazova and that all documentation be sent to the Kazakh authorities
in relation to the criminal charges against her.
Shorazova complained to the ECHR that the Maltese court had
been shown the various reports presented to it about the regular use of torture
in political trials in Kazakhstan; but it had decided that given the
seriousness of the financial crimes with which Aliyev was charged, the Maltese
authorities should not obstruct the investigation by not sending the collected
information.
The court did not consider it appropriate to make any
general assertions as to democracy in Kazakhstan, which was not relevant to the
present case, as in it had not been sufficiently proved that the applicant’s
trial was politically motivated.
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