Ousted envoy charged as Kazakh rivals clash

MOSCOW —  Open conflict erupted within Kazakhstan’s ruling elite Monday as authorities issued an international arrest warrant for the president’s politically ambitious son-in-law, who until Saturday was the country’s ambassador to Austria.

The charges against Rakhat Aliyev, which relate to alleged kidnappings, open a window into the murky world of the influential clans that control the oil-rich Central Asian country under the strong-arm rule of President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev.

Aliyev is married to the president’s eldest daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva. Each has been mentioned as a possible successor to Nazarbayev in the former Soviet state.

Under the Kazakh Constitution, Nazarbayev is required to step down in 2012. But on May 18, Parliament approved amendments that allow him to run for reelection indefinitely. It now appears those revisions were related to an increasingly fierce succession struggle.

Aliyev and his allies are known to be engaged in political warfare with a rival faction headed by Almaty Mayor Imangali Tasmagambetov, said a prominent newspaper editor.

“The main reason for this war was succession to the presidency,” Gulzhan Yergaliyeva said in a phone interview from Almaty. “It is a no-holds-barred battle between the two most powerful clans in the president’s entourage.

“Experts, journalists and the public at large were aware of that struggle, but very little actual information would come out into the light. People were killed, kidnapped, blackmailed, and among them were politicians, journalists and bankers.”

“The clan war reached such a pitch that many very influential people close to the president demanded Aliyev’s head,” she added.

Authorities announced Wednesday that, with the president’s approval, they had launched an investigation of Aliyev in the January abductions of Abilmazhen Gilimov, chairman of the Nurbank commercial bank, and two associates. Gilimov was released and accused Aliyev of abducting him. The other two men are still missing, the Russian news agency Interfax said Monday.

Aliyev initially responded to the allegations with a statement posted Saturday on the website of Kazakhstan Today, a news agency he owns. In it, he declared that detainees were being tortured to fabricate a case against him. Aliyev said he had told his father-in-law several months ago that he planned to run for president in 2012, and he claimed that the legal assault against him was launched in response.

Aliyev concluded with a direct and, in part, sarcastic attack on the president.

“Fabrication of a criminal case is a rather humane method of removing opponents from the political scene,” Aliyev said. “I will do everything in my power not to allow the country’s backsliding to the totalitarian Soviet past.... I am convinced that the future will be with us, not with you, Mr. President for Life. I have only one request: to stop torturing people.”

Last year, when he was first deputy foreign minister, Aliyev was widely mentioned as a possible suspect in the kidnapping and slaying of an opposition leader, along with the victim’s driver and a bodyguard.

Nazarbayeva responded at the time with an article denouncing the allegations against her husband as “scurrilous lies.” She accused the security service and the opposition of waging “a finely directed information war against the family of the head of state.”

A former police officer, the former administrator of the Kazakh Senate and eight others were convicted in the slayings, based partly on confessions that were later recanted.

Aliyev’s posting to Vienna was widely viewed as a quasi-exile after a falling-out with the president, one that culminated in his dismissal by Nazarbayev.

“The police foresee the possibility that Aliyev may attempt to flee, therefore so-called red cards have been sent throughout the world obstructing his personal travel from one country to another,” Interior Ministry spokesman Bagdat Kozhakhmetov said at a news conference Monday in Astana, the Kazakh capital. He said police had searched Aliyev and Nazarbayeva’s home in Almaty.

The spokesman accused Aliyev of heading a group that had “illegally come into the possession of office buildings, land and businesses through extortion, forgery and raiding properties.”

Authorities last week suspended operations of the newspaper Karavan and KTK television station, both owned by Aliyev. Two managers of KTK have been missing since Sunday and are believed by staff to be in police custody, Artur Platonov, one of the station’s anchors, said in a telephone interview.

Aliyev spoke out again Monday with a statement from Vienna posted on the gazeta.kz website.

In it he charged that “there is credible information about torture at police stations” and that “commercial companies are taken away from lawful owners by way of state robbery.”

“All this is taking place on personal orders of President Nazarbayev,” Aliyev declared. “The main executors of this are the interior minister and the mayor of Almaty, who are directly connected with stealing money from the bank of which I am a stockholder.”

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david.holley@latimes.com

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.