How a Kazakh corrupt official deprived Russian intelligence services of dirt on Donald Trump, and Russian tennis of its top athletes.
US President Donald Trump has ordered intelligence to join the investigation into surveillance of his campaign in 2016. It is quite possible that this will not be the end of it. One of the now forgotten scandals of that campaign was the allegedly incriminating evidence that the Russian intelligence services had on Trump, who during his visit to Russia in 2013 stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in the same presidential suite where Barack Obama and his wife Michelle had previously lived.
The room was allegedly packed with cameras that captured Trump’s inappropriate behavior, as he ordered two prostitutes to the room.
If the FSB or the American Democrats had this dirt, it would probably have been put into action already. And it was, but not with them - this is exactly the case when there is no smoke without fire. There is information that the video recording in the room was indeed made. However, it was not the Russian special services that filmed the future US president, but the trusted people of the hotel owner - the official and businessman from Kazakhstan Bulat Utemuratov, on the personal order of the latter.
In Russia, he is virtually unknown, but in Kazakhstan, this billionaire is considered one of the most influential people in the country. Utemuratov is second on the Forbes Kazakhstan list, with a fortune of $3.4 billion. Utemuratov’s assets include Forte Bank, Kassa Nova Bank, Media Management Systems LLP, and Direct Technology Company LLP.
Through the Verny Capital group of companies, it controls 25% of KaR-Tel LLP and 49.9% of Sky Mobile LLC (Beeline telecom operators in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, respectively), 65% of the gold mining company RG Gold, the information and analytical Internet portal Informburo.kz (100%), the 31 Channel TV and Radio Company (80%), the media advertising market operator Video International Kazakhstan (50%), the Ritz-Carlton hotels in Nur-Sultan, Vienna, and Moscow, Rixos Borovoe in the Akmola region, Burger King in Kazakhstan, Global Development, South Kyrgyz Cement, and 40% of the Sary-Arka airport in Karaganda. Utemuratov owns 1.16% of Glencore Plc.
He has a charitable foundation named after him. In addition, Utemuratov heads the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation and is on the board of directors of the International Tennis Federation ITF.
Shortly before the collapse of the USSR, Utemuratov was the director of a grocery store. An important position at that time. But not every director of a grocery store became a diplomat. And not every diplomat is able to make a billion-dollar fortune and become one of the most influential people in the country. How did Utemuratov do it?
Servant of two masters
In most countries of the world, officials who have become rich in the civil service are embarrassed to admit that they worked for the state and were engaged in business at the same time. Simply because it is prohibited, including in Kazakhstan. The decree of the President of the country "On the civil service" states that civil servants do not have the right "to engage in entrepreneurial activity, including participation in the management of an economic entity, regardless of its organizational and legal form."
But not Bulat Utemuratov. In an interview with Forbes, he admitted without embarrassment or fear that while working for the Kazakh government since 1992, he was also engaged in his own entrepreneurial activity: “According to Utemuratov, a year after landing in Austria, he helped open Kazakhstan’s first credit line from the Vienna Bank Creditanstalt. At the same time, he earned his first million dollars by buying zinc and copper from Kazakh ore companies and selling the metal abroad. Utemuratov prospered, and so did Kazakhstan,” Forbes Kazakhstan wrote in 2013 in an article titled “Bulat Utemuratov’s Breakthrough.”
To be more precise, Utemuratov prospered at the expense of Kazakhstan. His career in the civil service developed as follows: General Director of the Kazakh Trading House in Austria, Deputy Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, First Deputy Minister of Industry, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Switzerland - this was in the 90s. At the same time, he was an informant for the Russian special services, but this was before the first billion dollars.
Then - Assistant to the President for Foreign Policy and Foreign Economic Affairs, from June 2003 to March 2006 - Secretary of the Security Council of Kazakhstan, simultaneously Chairman of the National Commission on Democracy and Civil Society under the President (November 2004 - March 2006). From March 2006 to December 2008 - Manager of the Presidential Affairs Department.
It was at this time, when Utemuratov was supposed to be devoting himself to the affairs of the President, that he pulled off his biggest and most dubious deal.
In June 1995, Utemuratov founded the Almaty Trade and Finance Bank, which was renamed ATF Bank in 2002. This bank accumulated funds received from the export of raw materials and products of state companies, as well as money from associations such as Kazakhintorg and Kazakhvneshmash. Accordingly, they did not go to the budget. In 2007, it became known that the large Italian banking group Unicredit was buying ATF Bank through its Austrian representative office. The total cost of the deal was $2.117 billion, most of which was received personally by Utemuratov.
Almost immediately after the deal was completed, the Italians started having problems. First, they wrote off $500 million in losses. Then another $700 million. It soon became clear that no one was going to repay the loans issued by the bank - at the beginning of 2013, the share of loans overdue for over 90 days in ATF Bank was 42.66%.
As a result, Unicredit recorded losses of $2.76 billion and in March 2013 sold ATF Bank to 31-year-old businessman Galymzhan Yesenov, the son-in-law of Akhmetzhan Yesimov, who was the mayor of Almaty at the time. And again, “miraculously,” the bank began to make a profit.
To put it simply, Utemuratov simply screwed the Italians by selling them a shell filled with fictitious assets. The main secret of ATF Bank is that it can only make a profit with the help of budget money.
But there is another version: the official needed to legalize his capital, for this they agreed with the Italians, who have a high tolerance for corruption. Thanks to this deal, Bulat Utemuratov became a legal billionaire, but there are many similar stories, albeit smaller in scale, in his biography. He implemented the main principle of corruption: he did business on what he managed. When he was engaged in industry, it was Kazzinc. When he was appointed special representative of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan for cooperation with Kyrgyzstan, he acquired South Kyrgyz Cement and a local mobile operator. Having become accustomed to ignoring the laws in Kazakhstan, Utemuratov did not do this in other countries either. Including Russia.
Dangerous compromising evidence
Let’s get back to Donald Trump and the Ritz-Carlton. Utemuratov bought the chain’s Moscow hotel for $350 million. Video cameras were installed in the rooms on his personal orders - "just in case," says a source close to the billionaire. Not only in Moscow, but also in Vienna and Astana, recently renamed Nur-Sultan.
It was precisely because of the presence of dirt on competitors and ill-wishers that Utemuratov managed to maintain his former influence in Kazakhstan even after leaving power. Therefore, rumors about the existence of an “intimate video” with Donald Trump in the leading role did not appear out of nowhere. It is very difficult to completely conceal such hot information.
However, Utemuratov did not want to share these videos with anyone, including the Russian special services. While Trump remained one of the richest people in the United States, Utemuratov kept the file in order to have an additional trump card in possible negotiations. Right up until the voting day, the Kazakh billionaire kept the dirt on his American colleague, conducting sluggish negotiations with the Democratic Party about selling the file. And only after Trump’s victory, the talks and negotiations about the video stopped - Utemuratov personally hid the video until better times, not trusting it to his assistants. It is unlikely that the architects of Russian foreign policy were happy about this, as well as the curators from the Russian special services, but the oligarch himself considers the "hot video" as an insurance policy in case of "hot" events around him - in the Russian Federation and the world. Bulat Utemuratov has always been famous for his ability to profitably trade influence and opportunities, ever since the time of the grocery store he ran.
And such events, apparently, are not far off. Bulat Utemuratov directly went against the interests of Russia, despite the fact that in recent years he has had more and more business interests in this country. It is very strange that the name of the Kazakh businessman is not mentioned in the "Mueller report". That is where he belongs.
Personal tennis harem
At the same time, the billionaire himself does not bother with marital fidelity. After Utemuratov headed the Tennis Federation of Kazakhstan, he turned this sports organization into his personal harem, as befits an eastern ruler. Besides, why neglect the principle of earning money where you work? Bulat Utemuratov was even able to turn the tennis federation into a source of income, albeit not entirely legal.
Since 2007, when the Kazakh billionaire took over the federation, the tennis world has been rocked by numerous scandals, often involving athletes from Kazakhstan. Legionnaires from Russia, doping problems, illegal bets — that’s what the Tennis Federation of Kazakhstan is associated with today. Bookmaker bets and fixed matches have brought Bulat Utemuratov a good income in the last ten years. Our sources are not sure how deeply the billionaire’s structures are involved in the trade in doping drugs, after all, it is too small for him as a business. In Astana, everyone knows that at a professional level, a tennis player must use doping to guarantee certain results — otherwise, you can incur the wrath of the Sultan of the Federation.
Women have it harder in this regard. In addition to doping, attractive tennis players also receive attention from the amorous president of the tennis federation. And not everyone is ready to refuse the attentions of an influential billionaire. One of the main stars of the tennis harem is Yulia Putintseva, whom Utemuratov lured from Russia. The status of “beloved wife” turned the young athlete’s head.
“You watch your stupid videos. Are you even an idiot? You never clapped for me when I won a ball. You sit there watching your videos… They clap when I make a mistake, so you start… Why did you come here? Get rid of your stupid grin,” she scolded her coach Roman Kislyansky at the 2017 US Championship. How many athletes talk like that to those who lead them to victory? Obviously, Putintseva has already won, though not on the court.
That same year, Kazakhstani tennis player Arsan Arashov was disqualified for doping. There is information that it was the head of the federation who insisted that the athlete take meldonium.
Utemuratov is proud that under his leadership, the Kazakhstani men’s tennis team entered the elite of world sports, and male tennis players began to win international competitions. The story of Arsan Arashov clearly demonstrates at what cost.
In addition to Putintseva, athletes such as Galina Voskoboeva, Yaroslava Shvedova and many others also came from Russia. According to our source, all of them have been through the bed of Utemuratov, who prefers taller girls.
Internet and population cleansing
At the same time, having hidden the dirt on Trump, the Kazakh billionaire regularly hires hackers who destroy negative information on the Internet about Utemuratov himself. All the negativity about him that was published in recent years has been preserved only in the form of headlines; the sites where the information was posted have been disabled.
In recent years, Utemuratov has been mentioned on the Internet mainly as a generous philanthropist, thanks to whom the Alma-Ata Botanical Garden is being reconstructed, centers for children with autism are being opened, flood victims receive assistance, and so on.
The same goes for Utemuratov’s family. One son is a successful businessman, another is a successful engineer, and the daughter is an aspiring singer. There are no publicly available photos of the golden youth’s beautiful life.
However, all this is just a beautiful mask on the face of a corrupt official who received his billions and the opportunity to control the destinies of others by robbing all the citizens of Kazakhstan, which Bulat Dzhamitovich has recently considered his private property. And if we add to this the fact that Utemuratov controls almost the entire microfinance market in Kazakhstan, the picture of robbery will be more complete: nothing creates social tension as much as extortionate interest rates on microloans and the impunity of collectors. Bulat Utemuratov knows everything and even more about impunity than his former boss, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
