When discussing the rich and powerful people of Kazakhstan, not all of them are easily seen. Aldiyar Kaztaev, an ordinary CEO of a partially state-owned company, was able to secretly move hundreds of billions of tenge. He did so casually and mockingly, and has managed to avoid legal consequences so far, enjoying a luxurious lifestyle on yachts and wearing a 60 thousand euro watch.
Since the start of this year, the Financial Monitoring Agency has been looking into 56 individuals suspected of withdrawing 440 billion tenge from the country. There are also ongoing verifications for transactions totaling about 300 billion tenge. It's unknown if Aldiyar Kaztaev is among these suspects, but it would be wise to investigate, given his position as Chairman of the Supervisory Board and First Deputy CEO of Eurasian Resources Group, which is 40% state-owned and controlled by Chodiev and Mashkevich.
In June 2017, the Italian shipyard Sanlorenzo Yachts delivered the superyacht SL96 Piccolino to a customer. Despite its name, the yacht is quite large, with a length exceeding 29 meters and a width of about seven. It features four guest cabins, two crew cabins, and a top speed of 29 knots (roughly 54 km/h) thanks to its two 2200 hp engines. The shipyard currently sells used yachts of the same model for $5.2 – $5.5 million, with new vessels costing slightly more.
In June 2017, two citizens of Kazakhstan established companies – one in the UK and one in Malta. The UK company, Piccolino Tender Ltd, loaned around €8 million (about 4 billion tenge) to the Maltese company, Piccolino Ltd, for the purchase of the same yacht. Reports from the Maltese company state that it was created specifically to maintain the vessel, which comes with significant annual upkeep costs. A former yacht captain mentioned that despite its size, the ship was difficult to maintain and required a lot of work.
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According to registers of companies in the UK and Malta, the companies to which the yacht is registered belong to Aslan Kaztaev and Galia Sargaskaeva, the parents of Aldiyar Kaztaev. Aldiyar holds positions at ERG and as president of the Kazakhstan Triathlon Federation, where the honorary president is the arrested former head of the KNB, Karim Massimov. Reports also suggest a connection between Kaztaev and Masimov – purportedly Aldiyar is engaged to the youngest daughter of the disgraced security official Sara Karim. However, records of Kazakh affiliates of Eurasian Resources Group in April 2022 indicate that Aldiyar is married, and his wife is named Madina.
Interestingly, the yacht registered to Aldiyar’s parents is almost five times more expensive than the scandalous yacht sold last year by state-owned KazMunayGas. However, in terms of value, she falls short of the superyacht of Alexander Mashkevich, one of ERG’s shareholders. The vessel Lady Lara cost Kazstaev’s boss $150 million, or more than 70 billion tenge. Here you can read how the tracks of Mashkevich’s yacht and personal plane helped us prove the involvement of the Eurasian Group in giving a bribe to the President of Guatemala, which, as the country’s investigators claimed, was wrapped in a carpet. So Aldiyar Kaztaev knows who to look up to. The main thing is that he should not participate in orgies, which the flabby AIDS-bearer Mashkevich loved so much.
