
Bota Jardemalie: The way from Harvard law graduate to prominent human rights defender
“Human rights are the cornerstone of our freedom and dignity, the basis for economic prosperity, and the foundation for a just and equitable society. Defending them in Kazakhstan is crucial because, without these fundamental rights, my country has no future. Without them, Kazakhstan is destined to be a failed state, where injustice, corruption, and repression will erode any hope for progress, stability, and its independence.”
– Bota Jardemalie
Bota Jardemalie, a Harvard Law graduate and New York licensed attorney, is a prominent human rights defender from Kazakhstan. She has been ruthlessly targeted by the Kazakh regime for over eleven years due to her successful human rights advocacy for regime opponents, activists, victims of torture, and political dissidents. Bota Jardemalie has been collaborating with the Open Dialogue Foundation for nearly 15 years. Among many other issues, she campaigned for the adoption of a personal sanction regime in the EU against human rights violators and kleptocrats, modeled on the US “Magnitsky Act,” and for the reform of INTERPOL. Following Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, Bota Jardemalie has been exposing Kazakhstan’s and other countries’ economic and military assistance to Russia and Russia’s circumvention of international sanctions. She is an elected member of the Leadership Council of the World Liberty Congress – chaired by Masih Alinejad, Leopoldo Lopez and Garry Kasparov – the largest global movement of pro-democracy leaders from a total of 180 countries.
Over the years, Bota Jardemalie has been raising awareness about the political situation in Kazakhstan, politically motivated persecution, torture, and other human rights violations during meetings and events with members of the European Parliament, U.S. congressmen and senators, diplomats, members of parliaments and governments of EU member states, Canada, the UK, Australia, Switzerland, and representatives of international human rights organizations. Amongst others, she defended the Zhanaozen oil workers and their families, imprisoned and persecuted after their strike in December 2011, where at least 16 protesters were killed by police. Her work included, among others, lodging complaints against the government of Kazakhstan before the United Nations bodies in the following years. She has been an outspoken critic of the government’s increasing repression against any opposition or dissent. This has included providing testimony on Kazakhstan’s human rights abuses to international bodies such as the European Parliament and the Council of Europe as well as briefing MPs and government officials in numerous EU states.
Bota Jardemalie also provided legal assistance to Kazakhstan’s opposition leader, Mukhtar Ablyazov, his wife, daughter, and other family members, as well as others associated with him who have been politically persecuted by the Kazakh authorities. Mukhtar Ablyazov is a prominent entrepreneur, former government minister, leading advocate for democratic reform in Kazakhstan and a founder of Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan. For more than 20 years, he remains a leading representative of the democratic opposition, which continue to struggle against Kazakhstan’s corrupt authoritarian regime. Nursultan Nazarbayev, who single-handedly governed Kazakhstan for almost 30 years, and now Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who became Nazarbayev’s successor in 2019, have systematically eliminated dissent and banned independent media outlets in the country. Their opponents (including Ablyazov’s associates) have been killed, imprisoned, or banished.
Numerous organisations and international bodies have defended Mukhtar Ablyazov over the years: OHCHR, European Parliament1,2, Members of the European Parliament [copies of the letters available upon request], Members of PACE1,2, Members of the OSCE PA [copies available upon request], International Federation for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Chief Executive Officer of the Hermitage Capital Management William Browder [copy of the letter available upon request], The Moscow Helsinki Group, Russian Historical, Educational and Human Rights Society “Memorial,” All-Russian Movement “For Human Rights” [copies available upon request], Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, Ukrainian Human Rights Information Centre, Kyiv House of Human Rights, Association of Ukrainian Human Rights Monitors on Law Enforcement, and the Centre of Civil Liberties.
Mukhtar Ablyazov used to be a leading donor of the country’s civil society, opposition, and independent media. Prior to its forced nationalisation in 2009, Mukhtar Ablyazov owned the majority of shares in BTA Bank and served as its Chairman of the Board of Directors from 2005 to 2009. After working at a renowned international law firm in New York, Bota Jardemalie joined BTA Bank as a managing director at the end of 2005. She left BTA Bank in 2009, after it was forcibly nationalised.
Since 2009 the state-orchestrated campaign against Ablyazov has made hundreds of political hostages, caught in the massive transnational repression campaign initiated by president of Kazakhstan against Mukhtar Ablyazov. To justify the abuse of domestic and international justice systems over decade against Ablyazov, regime in Kazakhstan forced to give false confessions and persecuted globally former BTA Bank managers, employees of companies, clients of BTA Bank, opposition activists, and even a former bodyguard of Ablyazov. Bota Jardemalie had defended those who have been subjected to politically motivated persecution by the Kazakh authorities, exposing abuse of power and human rights violations in those cases.
For example, inter alia, Jardemalie assisted Spanish legal counsel on the Ablyazov-related politically motivated extradition case of Alexandr Pavlov in Spain, in which Spain’s Tribunal Supremo ultimately blocked Pavlov’s extradition in February 2015 and ordered that he be granted political asylum.
Bota Jardemalie also worked on the case of Italy’s extraordinary rendition of Alma Shalabayeva and Alua Ablyazova (Ablyazov’s wife and then-six-year-old daughter) to Kazakhstan in 2013. Kazakhstani diplomats conspired with high-ranking Italian law enforcement officials to illegally transport the woman and child on a private jet from Rome to Astana, Kazakhstan, as political hostages. At the request of the victims’ family, Bota Jardemalie began working on the case and organised a legal team, ultimately helping to secure their return to Italy, where they were granted asylum in 2014.

When the authorities in Kazakhstan learned of her involvement, Bota Jardemalie was placed on the wanted list within days. About a month later, at Kazakhstan’s request, INTERPOL issued a Red Notice targeting Bota Jardemalie for arrest on a fabricated criminal case opened in Kazakhstan. The Red Notice was later cancelled for non-compliance with INTERPOL’s rules against political abuses of the INTERPOL1,2. In parallel, the Kazakhstani authorities launched an online smear campaign against Jardemalie in seven languages, using AI-generated propaganda, websites, and social media.
In 2013, Belgium granted Bota Jardemalie political asylum due to the extraordinary risks she faced in the form of reprisals by Kazakhstan against her for her legal and human rights work.
For more than three years, since July 2013, Bota Jardemalie worked extensively on the Ablyazov extradition case in France, which involved two simultaneous politically motivated extradition requests: to Ukraine and to Russia. The case concluded in December 2016 when France’s supreme administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat, canceled Ablyazov’s extradition to both countries. The court found that the cases in Ukraine and Russia were orchestrated by Kazakhstan and constituted a politically motivated abuse of the European Convention on Extradition. The Conseil d’Etat ruled that BTA Bank’s claims in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia against Ablyazov were politically motivated, stemming from his opposition to Kazakhstan’s dictatorial regime. It concluded that Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia had collaborated, using the allegations from BTA Bank as a pretext to prosecute Ablyazov for political reasons [full text of the decision of the Conseil d’Etat dated 9 December 2016].
This was only the second time in the history of France that the Conseil d’Etat canceled an extradition decree on the grounds that the extradition request was politically motivated; the first time was in 1977 in the case of an individual in France sought for extradition by the Franco regime in Spain.
Although it has been eight years since France refused to extradite Ablyazov, Kazakhstani authorities continue their attacks on him in France. Kazakhstan, both directly through diplomatic means and indirectly through its lobbyists, exerts pressure on France to revoke Ablyazov’s political asylum and expel him from the country. For example, France received diplomatic requests from the President of Kazakhstan, accompanied by references to flourishing economic cooperation, in a letter addressed to President Macron. These requests aimed to address what was described as “the Ablyazov problem,” which was presented as a major obstacle in Kazakhstani French relations in 2022 [copies of the letters available upon request]. There is valid concern that Kazakhstan has been effectively employing the same strategy in Belgium to deal with “the Jardemalie problem.”
Beginning in 2013, Kazakhstan’s authorities launched abusive and illegal acts of transnational repression against Bota Jardemalie on European soil, using the nationalised BTA Bank as an instrument of persecution. Despite her asylum status in Belgium, the Kazakh authorities have persistently pursued fabricated legal actions against her, blatantly misusing international legal mechanisms and undermining the institution of political asylum. Her case highlights how Kazakhstan exploits these mechanisms and abuses the justice systems of other countries. The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) recognises Jardemalie as “lawyer in danger.”1,2,3 The Brussels Bar Council considers her as a lawyer at risk due to her activities.
Kazakh bank as an instrument for transnational repression
Starting in 2009, Kazakhstan’s authorities have weaponized BTA Bank as an instrument of persecution within Kazakhstan and a means of transnational repression in the UK, US, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, other EU member states, Switzerland, Ukraine, and even Russia. This strategy has been employed against hundreds of individuals, making Kazakhstan a pioneer in such large-scale, transnational harassment through the manipulation of a financial institution and exposing vulnerability of the western countries to such abuses. Targets of this persecution include Mukhtar Ablyazov, his family, colleagues, associates, political supporters, opposition members, human rights defenders, and journalists1,2.
Illegal forced nationalization of BTA Bank at the request of President Nazarbayev. Between 2005 and 2009, when Mukhtar Ablyazov was a majority shareholder and chairman of its board of directors, BTA became the largest privately owned commercial bank in Kazakhstan and former Soviet Union countries [BTA Bank has received numerous international awards. For instance, in 2008, BTA was ranked as one of the 300 most influential banks in the world by The Banker, a well-known financial monthly publication. BTA has become the largest and most successful bank in Kazakhstan. In January 2009 (just before the forcible nationalization), an international financial magazine, Global Finance, named BTA the “Best Commercial and Financial Bank in Kazakhstan 2009”. At the time of the forced nationalisation on 2 February 2009, BTA had 25% of the banking sector in Kazakhstan]. Then-President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev1,2,3, issued an ultimatum to Ablyazov: if he did not transfer half of his bank’s shares by the end of April 2008, he would be arrested and his property confiscated. Ablyazov did not comply with the illegal ultimatum.
On February 2, 2009, the government, fully controlled by Nazarbayev, nationalized BTA under a false and artificially created pretext. The forced nationalization was authorized by the government of Kazakhstan on the basis of a secret decree, which was never provided to BTA Bank or its shareholders. Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund, Samruk-Kazyna, became the sole owner of BTA Bank.

Timur Kulibayev, the billionaire son-in-law of then-President Nazarbayev, who headed Samruk-Kazyna, and then-Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Karim Massimov [Karim Massimov, the former Prime Minister of Kazakhstan and head of the National Security Committee (KNB), was involved in gross human rights violations during his time in power under both President Nursultan Nazarbayev and, later, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Massimov’s tenure is marked by crackdowns on political dissidents, opposition figures, and activists. He played a central role in the killing of activists and in enforcing repressive measures, including surveillance, arrests, and harassment of those critical of the government. In January 2022, he was arrested following mass protests in Kazakhstan, as part of internal political struggles and not a genuine move toward justice or reform. In April 2022, after secret court hearings, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison on charges of high treason, abuse of power, and actions aimed at violently seizing power. The legacy of his leadership remains one of repression and authoritarian control in Kazakhstan], orchestrated the forced nationalization of BTA Bank. Kulibayev and his wife, Dariga Nazarbayeva, who is Nazarbayev’s daughter, owned Halyk Bank, which was then the second largest privately owned commercial bank in Kazakhstan, following BTA Bank.
As MP Baroness Hodge of Barking testified in the UK Parliament to sanction kleptocrats in Kazakhstan: “Evidence suggests that Kulibayev abused his position to accrue vast wealth. In 2020, the Financial Times showed that Kulibayev benefited from a secret scheme to divert profits from big state pipeline contracts. He has faced money laundering and bribery investigations in other jurisdictions [than Kazakhstan]. His worth, according to Forbes, is $2.9 billion, and he owns at least £60 million of real estate here in the UK.”

Ultimate beneficiary of illegal nationalization of BTA Bank – the family of President Nazarbayev. Since its forced nationalization, BTA Bank was artificially brought to default on its obligations to international creditors. Yet, the government accused Ablyazov and his colleagues of “embezzlement of the bank’s funds.” Through a series of non-transparent transactions, all of BTA Bank’s valuable assets, including those that were allegedly “stolen” by Ablyazov and his colleagues, were transferred to Halyk Bank, which is owned by Nazarbayev’s family. Currently, Halyk Bank is now the largest privately owned commercial bank in Kazakhstan with at least 30% of the market share. On June 23, 2015, BTA Bank voluntarily surrendered its banking license and ceased operations as a bank. BTA Bank has been kept in existence as an instrument of persecution and transnational repression.

By 2017, through a serious of non-transparent transactions, oligarch Kenes Rakishev became the sole shareholder of BTA Bank instead of the state. Kenes Rakishev is a business partner of Nazarbayev’s son-in-law Timur Kulibayev, whose bank Halyk Bank received all valuable assets of BTA Bank. Kenes Rakishev “has been dubbed in the media as ‘Nazarbaev’s banker’” and has business ties with the son of the current president of Kazakhstan, Timur Toqaev. “Kenes Rakishev is a mysteriously wealthy Kazakh businessman worth up to $1.6 billion, with close ties to the political elite, and a close associate of the head of the Chechen Republic [Ramzan Kadyrov], who has been sanctioned by the US.” Kenes Rakishev is the son-in-law of Imangali Tasmagambetov, who has held various top government positions, including Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Mayor of Almaty and Astana, Minister of Defense of Kazakhstan, and Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Russia. Since 1 January 2023 [CSTO is an intergovernmental military alliance in Eurasia consisting of six post-Soviet states: Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. https://en.odkb-csto.org/ ODF’s report “Kazakhstan: unprecedented acts of the regime’s terror against civilians and the Russian-led CSTO’s military intervention”]. Open Dialogue Foundation issued six reports on how Russia circumvents Western sanctions, explaining the role of Tasmagambetov and the CSTO, and recommending sanctions against them1,2,3,4,5,6,7.
Kazakhstan’s authorities have systematically weaponized BTA Bank to further their political agenda, using it as a facade of legitimacy to fabricate criminal cases against their opponents. As an oligarch loyal to the existing regime, Kenes Rakishev ensures that BTA Bank continues to work directly with the authorities of Kazakhstan in that capacity.
How criminal cases were fabricated to justify illegal nationalization and the theft of assets by Nazarbayev’s family. To fabricate criminal cases, the investigative bodies in Kazakhstan treated the total amount of money granted as loans by BTA Bank as “amounts embezzled by Ablyazov and his criminal group” without considering validity of the transaction, any collateral, the fact that part of these loans had been repaid, and the financed project itself. Arrears on loans were considered as losses for the bank. Additionally, some companies were unable to meet their liabilities because investigators had blocked their bank accounts following the nationalization of BTA Bank.
By positioning BTA Bank as a purported victim, they have constructed elaborate narratives of embezzlement and money laundering to justify abusive civil and criminal litigation and extradition demands, claiming these cases are purely economic rather than politically motivated. BTA Bank has also been employed in mutual legal assistance (MLA) requests, ostensibly seeking justice while actually furthering Kazakhstan’s repressive aims.
Beyond legal mechanisms, BTA Bank acts as a conduit for hiring agents to conduct illegal surveillance as it has been in the case of Bota Jardemalie. BTA Bank’s perceived status as a financial institution — despite its cessation of operations in 2015 — provides a veneer of independence from the Kazakh authorities, making accusations of financial misconduct appear credible and harder to contest.
Additionally, using BTA Bank as an instrument for persecution allows the authorities to financially destroy and confiscate property and businesses, thereby eliminating all real or potential financial support for the opposition and civil society. These actions enable Kazakhstan to disguise its political motives under the guise of combating financial crimes, such as money laundering, making defense of the victims of politically motivated prosecution more challenging and extending the reach of its repressive tactics internationally.
To fight Ablyazov, the regime in Kazakhstan is spending huge sums of money by hiring hordes of lawyers, detectives, lobbyists and PR professionals all over the world (Washington, Paris, London, etc.). Hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent in this fight against the main political opponent. The central objective of this sprawling war machine is to deny the political nature of Ablyazov’s involvement by portraying him as a crook who, after having dishonestly enriched himself, seeks to hide his greed by posing as a political opponent. The same is done to Ablyazov’s supporters, such as Bota Jardemalie.
“Injustice laundering”: How Kazakhstan abusing loopholes in Western jurisdictions for transnational repression
The Kazakhstani authorities have also developed a clever method of unscrupulously exploiting their own totally controlled judicial system to fabricate Kazakh proceedings that are then passed on to Western judiciaries. This method of “injustice laundering” makes it possible to inject into Western judicial systems politically motivated allegations fabricated by Kazakhstan’s controlled law enforcement bodies and its justice system. Result: a politically motivated criminal case fabricated in Kazakhstan benefits from all the appearances of legality in Western jurisdictions. This “injustice laundering” can be done in several ways. The initial complaint can be made either by the Prosecutor General of Kazakhstan, or by BTA bank (which is controlled by the regime), or by friendly countries such as Russia, or by corrupt officials in a country such as Ukraine, which would act knowingly on behalf of the Kazakhstani authorities.
Kazakhstan has polluted Western judiciary systems by orchestrating politically motivated extradition requests through Russia and Ukraine, as these countries, unlike Kazakhstan, have extradition treaties with the relevant Western states. For instance, to extradite Ablyazov from France, Kazakhstan leveraged both Russian and Ukrainian jurisdictions, which have extradition agreements with France. “Injustice laundering” can occur directly, for example, through an MLA request to a Western state based on charges fabricated in Kazakhstan, or indirectly, through a powerful international collaboration institution such as INTERPOL. The Kazakhstani authorities have routinely abused INTERPOL by requesting the issuance of Red Notices against their opponents.
This method of transnational repression is particularly effective when it infiltrates the Anglo-Saxon legal system, particularly in Great Britain and the United States, which has the characteristic of producing decisions by default, i.e. in the absence of the convicted party, who may be deprived of the right to defend himself. In other words, the Anglo-Saxon system has produced decisions that have made it possible to recycle without filter the entirety of the accusations fabricated by the Kazakhstani judicial system.
This method is and will remain extremely effective as long as the Western democracies do not first understand the instrumentalisation of which they are victims, and then develop a proper response to such acts of transnational repression.
Like Western courts, Western media are also victims of the “injustice laundering” method of transnational repression. Kazakhstan’s agents, including major Western PR agencies and law firms, contact Western journalists to pass on complaints and court decisions from the Kazakhstani judicial system. Few journalists resist the temptation to reproduce the accusations contained in these documents. As a result, hundreds of articles have been published in the West based on procedures whose legitimacy is not questioned by journalists, due to their lack of understanding of how authoritarian regimes operate. There is minimal awareness that these proceedings are fabricated by the Kazakhstani regime with the sole aim of silencing its opponents.
The method reaches its peak when Kazakhstan manages to present a Western journalist with a British civil court decision. The journalist, unaware of the deceit, may unwittingly fall into the trap and write an article repeating these accusations as if they are legitimate, without understanding their true nature or the fact that they are manipulated. Consequently, the journalist fails to realize that these decisions were obtained through manipulation by the Kazakhstani authorities, who are skilled at influencing Western legal systems.
Kidnapping plot against Bota Jardemalie in Belgium (2014-2019)
Despite having political asylum since 2013, Jardemalie has been in danger in Belgium and there has been a high risk to her physical safety. In 2014, when Bota Jardemalie was working on the Mukhtar Ablyazov extradition case in France, she received a credible threat “the Kazakhs have hired people to either kidnap you or ‘turn you into a vegetable’.” The Federal Police of Belgium launched an investigation of a criminal conspiracy targeting Jardemalie and identified a Russian citizen and two ex-members of the STASI, the former East German secret service. They faced charges of criminal conspiracy, forgery, using forged documents, identity fraud, and impersonating public officials. These alleged crimes were part of a plot to locate and potentially kidnap Bota Jardemalie. On the basis of those allegations, the German police, as requested by the Belgian Federal Police, conducted searches in the houses of those three individuals and arrested them in Germany in September 2015. On 29 November 2019 those individuals were sentenced by the Brussels Criminal Court.
On 15 September 2021, the Brussels Court of Appeal upheld and increased their conviction. The Court of Appeal recognised that the defendants had attempted to bribe Jardemalie’s lawyers to obtain information covered by professional secrecy, had harassed and monitored not only Bota Jardemalie, but also her relatives and other Kazakhstani dissidents, and had tried to bring her to a meeting in a country where she would not have the international protection she enjoys in Belgium, with a view to her abduction or extradition to Kazakhstan, “all this within the framework of a criminal organisation that enjoyed extraordinary human, material and financial resources, operating in Belgium as well as in France, Monaco, Italy, the UK, Germany and Russia” [decision available upon request].
Bota Jardemalie and her lawyers were the target of numerous intrusions into their computer systems and hacking attempts using booby-trapped e-mails. The Brussels Court of Appeal convicted the defendants for criminal organisation, private corruption, computer forgery, harassment by means of telecommunication, using a false name and illegal practice of the profession of private detective. The Court of Appeal found that the defendants’ activity was part of “an even broader plan to search for dissidents wanted by the Kazakh authorities, as was [Jardemalie].” [Decision of the Brussels Court of Appeal dated 15 September 2021. Available upon request.]
The Court of Appeal noted that:
“37. The nature and scope of the defendants’ investigations into [Jardemalie], the offences committed (including computer forgery and bribery (… )) and the methods (which relied heavily on fraudulent and intimidating maneuvers) used by them to this end, the broad spectrum of their surveillance which concerned not only the plaintiff but also other Kazakh dissidents who were wanted like her, the international ramifications of the defendants’ action (involving the carrying out of acts in several States and the participation of numerous third parties, identified or not), the outlay of human, technical and financial resources allocated to carrying out their mission demonstrate that the criminal project with which the defendants were associated was clearly part of a criminal organisation, within the meaning of article 324bis of the Criminal Code.” [Decision of the Brussels Court of Appeal dated 15 September 2021: “ 37. La nature et l’ampleur des recherches menées par les prévenus au sujet de la plaignante, les infractions commises (notamment des faux informatiques et la corruption (…)) et les méthodes (qui ont largement fait appel à des manœuvres frauduleuses et intimidantes) utilisées par eux à cet effet, le large spectre de leur surveillance qui concernait non seulement la plaignante mais également d’autres dissidents kazakhes qui étaient recherchés comme elle, les ramifications internationales de l’action des prévenus (impliquant la réalisation d’actes sur plusieurs Etats et la participation de nombreux tiers, identifiés ou non), la débauche de moyen humains, techniques et financiers qui ont été affectés à la réalisation de leur mission démontrent que le projet criminel auquel les prévenus étaient associés s’inscrivaient clairement dans le cadre d’une organisation criminelle, au sens de l’article 324bis du Code pénal ”. Available upon request.]
Illegal surveillance in Belgium (2017-present)
The Federal Police of Belgium completed another criminal investigation, recognizing Bota Jardemalie as a victim of illegal surveillance conducted on Belgian soil by a former UK military member working for the UK private intelligence firm Diligence. Diligence has been retained indirectly by BTA Bank through its UK lawyers. The case has now been sent to court in Brussels and is awaiting trial.
In 2017, Bota Jardemalie realised that she was once again the subject of unlawful surveillance. The Federal Police of Belgium arrested a suspect, who is a UK national and an expert in surveillance and communications, having operated in Iraq and Afghanistan, with ten years’ experience with the British Royal Marines.
The Federal Police investigation revealed the following:
- Bota Jardemalie was a ‘target,’ and she and her family were systematically observed in their apartment and during her travels, even abroad. These observations were the subject of extremely detailed reports.
- The apartment opposite hers was rented, for €3,300/month, from January 2017, in order to be able to carry out this illegal surveillance, extremely intrusive in her private life.
- 181,647 photos of her, her family and everyone around her, and her vehicle were taken.
- The Federal Police believe that it is not impossible that a beacon was placed on her vehicle.
- This illegal surveillance was carried out by several professionals.
On 14 December 2023, the criminal case against the identified person was sent to the Criminal Court on charges of harassment and breach of the law on private detectives. The case was scheduled for 15 April 2024. However, the case court hearing had to be postponed to 18 June 2024 because the file had been lost. On 17 June 2024, Bota Jardemalie’s lawyer was informed that the case would have to be postponed again due to a backlog.
The authors of the report raise serious concerns about the repeated delays in the hearing, especially in light of the recent brutal attacks on political refugees from Kazakhstan in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Vilnius, Lithuania. The apparent reluctance to prosecute and convict those responsible for illegal surveillance encourages perpetrators who pose a risk to Jardemalie’s security in Belgium to commit such crimes again. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Strategic lawsuit against public participation – SLAPP – in Belgium (2016 – present)
In 2016, the Kazakhstani regime, aiming to silence Bota Jardemalie and disrupt the Belgian Federal Police’s criminal investigation against its agents, weaponised BTA Bank to act as its proxy. Although presenting itself as an independent commercial bank, BTA Bank filed a civil complaint against Jardemalie in Belgium to open a criminal investigation, accusing her of laundering an astonishing 500 million euros on Belgian soil. In its civil complaint, BTA Bank, as a civil party, relied on a criminal case fabricated in Kazakhstan against Bota Jardemalie. The civil party provided copies of various orders and decisions from Kazakhstani investigators, prosecutors, and the judiciary, as well as several interrogation reports, as alleged proof of Jardemalie’s “criminal activity.”
At the same time, BTA Bank’s complaint was vague in terms of both facts and legal analysis. It neither clarified the facts nor the legal basis of its accusations, nor did it provide any decisions from Kazakhstan detailing the offenses alleged against Bota Jardemalie, or any information regarding her alleged role in the crime. Moreover, the representative of BTA Bank refused to travel to Brussels to be questioned by the Belgian investigating judge.
In April 2019, the investigating judge dismissed the BTA Bank’s request to continue the investigation against Jardemalie.In July 2021, the Federal prosecutor also confirmed the dismissal (non-lieu) of the case (“Il n’existe aucune charge contre Botagoz Jardemalie”).
On 25 April 2023, the Chamber du Conseil of the Tribunal of the First Instance of Brussels dismissed the criminal investigation against Jardemalie [available upon request], rejected BTA Bank’s vague and belated request to perform additional duties and found no grounds for money laundering charges. Additionally, the court ordered BTA Bank to pay Jardemalie the maximum procedural indemnity plus an additional €5,000 ex aequo et bono, as compensation for the irresponsible and harassing legal procedure. The court order criticized BTA Bank’s attitude and its lack of credibility in explaining the late production of documents, and it noted the political context in which BTA Bank’s case was brought.
In May 2024, backed by the unlimited financial resources of the oil-rich regime, BTA Bank, which no longer engages in any productive commercial activity other than participating in judicial and non-judicial persecution, appealed the decision to dismiss its civil complaint. Eight years after lodging its complaint and more than fifteen years after the alleged predicate crime was committed, BTA Bank submitted 110 new documents totaling over 2,700 pages. These documents, filled with “details” of its grievances, lacked both relevance and credibility. BTA Bank claims that it received the documents only in 2023 from the criminal investigation of case no. 170000131000012 in Kazakhstan, pursuant to which Jardemalie’s brother was arbitrarily detained and tortured, as detailed further below. This is another apparent case of injustice laundering. The appeal will be scheduled for a hearing before the Court of Appeal sometime in 2025.
In this case, BTA Bank acts as an instrument of transnational repression for the Kazakhstani regime, engaging in injustice laundering by contaminating the Belgian legal system and judiciary with documents from a non-free state. In Kazakhstan, parliamentary and presidential elections are neither free nor fair, authorities consistently marginalize or imprison genuine opposition figures, freedoms of speech and assembly are restricted and punished, corruption is endemic, the judiciary is subservient to the executive branch, and individuals can be illegally detained, tortured, and denied legal representation1,2. Should the Belgian authorities rely on documents produced by the authoritarian state, they will become de facto, and even de jure, allies in destroying its opponents.
This case is a clear example of SLAPP – Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, another instrument of transnational repression. This is pure judicial harassment that has a clear strategy:
- first, to destroy Bota Jardemalie’s professional and personal life, and, most importantly, her human rights advocacy work. For example, the Kazakhstani ambassador in Belgium personally emailed members of the European Parliament, warning them against meeting with Jardemalie as a criminal that involved in money laundering;
- second, to have access her personal information and human rights files under the guise of investigating money laundering;
- and third, to tarnish Bota Jardemalie’s reputation, destroy her and her family financially, and, ideally, detain her during the investigation—a common tactic for a SLAPP.
Extradition by proxy: International arrest warrant/extradition request from Ukraine (November 2016 – present)
In 2019, while analyzing documents from BTA Bank’s SLAPP complaint, Bota Jardemalie was surprised to discover that there had been a request from Ukraine for her extradition. The Ministry of Justice of Belgium refused to provide a copy of the extradition file. After four years of litigation against the Belgian State to access extradition requests, the Conseil d’Etat of Belgium ruled that the Belgian State must provide copies of these documents.
On June 3, 2024, Bota Jardemalie received copies of the Ukrainian extradition file. The documents revealed that Kazakhstani authorities, using BTA Bank as a proxy, illegally influenced the Ukrainian side and fabricated a case against Bota Jardemalie in Ukraine. The extradition request was executed by Deputy of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Ievgenii Yenin.
The request to extradite Bota Jardemalie to Ukraine was prepared and sent to Belgium when Jardemalie was working defending Abylazov against his extradition from France. The request was made in connection with the same criminal case that was used to extradite Mukhtar Ablyazov from France.
Criminal cases in Ukraine and Russia fabricated at the request of Kazakhstan. In its previous reports, the Open Dialogue Foundation provided an analysis of documents showing how Kazakhstani authorities illegally influenced the Ukrainian investigation, passed instruction to fabricate a criminal case against Mukhtar Ablyazov and his colleagues, and revealed extensive corruption ties between Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine (GPU), and the Kazakhstani authorities1,2,3. It its reports, ODF analyzed the correspondence that was published in the media in 2014-2015-2016, which confirmed that representatives of Kazakhstan had prepared the documents for the Ukrainian and Russian investigators on the case of Mukhtar Ablyazov and his associates1,2,3. The Kazakhstani authorities themselves questioned the defendants in the case, threatened them and forced them to sign testimonies. The coordination of the investigation on the case of Ablyazov was carried out at the level of senior officials of Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.
The extradition request for Ablyazov from Ukraine was considered together with the Russian extradition request in December 2016 in France by a fifteen-judge panel of the Conseil d’Etat Litigation Section, reserved for cases deemed to be of extraordinary importance [full text of the decision of the Conseil d’Etat dated 9 December 2016]. As it was mentioned earlier in this report, the French Conseil d’Etat canceled Ablyazov’s extradition to Ukraine, as well as to Russia, finding that the cases in Ukraine and Russia were orchestrated by Kazakhstan and constituted a politically motivated abuse of the European Convention on Extradition. The Conseil d’Etat ruled that BTA Bank’s claims in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia against Ablyazov were politically motivated, stemming from his opposition to Kazakhstan’s dictatorial regime. It concluded that Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia had collaborated, using the allegations from BTA Bank as a pretext to prosecute Ablyazov for political reasons.
In 2016, Ukrainian MP, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Preventing and Combatting Corruption, and one of the authors of the law on lustration, Yegor Sobolev urged the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office to carefully examine publicised incidents of abuse by Ukrainian investigators in the cases against Kazakh opposition. Unfortunately, corruption has persistently plagued Ukraine as a severe and enduring problem.
Criminal case in Ukraine against Jardemalie was orchestrated by Kazakhstan. This politically motivated Ukrainian case against Bota Jardemalie is another example of Kazakhstan’s transnational repression. Bota Jardemalie has never lived or worked in Ukraine; however, on March 17, 2016, Jardemalie was made a suspect, and a search warrant was issued for her by Ukraine. On November 3, 2016, Ukraine made a request to extradite Bota Jardemalie from Belgium. Even on its face, the Ukrainian case against Jardemalie lack territorial jurisdiction and simply incomprehensible. The irregularities, including the vagueness of the facts and the offenses prosecuted, were pointed out by the Ministry of Justice of Belgium on December 23, 2016, in its request to Ukraine to clarify the case.
The Ukrainian extradition file for Bota Jardemalie revealed interference by three Ukrainian Members of Parliament (MPs) from the Verkhovna Rada in the extradition process. In coordination with lobbyists of Kazakhstan, they individually contacted the Ministry of Justice of Belgium, expressing concern over the lack of response from Belgian state authorities to the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office’s request to arrest and extradite Bota Jardemalie. The MPs involved were Golovko M.I. on January 27, 2017; M. Palamarchuk, MP and First Deputy Chairman of the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada for the legislative regularization of law enforcement activity, on March 2, 2017; and Romanuk Viktor Mykolaïovytch on March 15, 2017.
The Ukrainian MPs admitted in their respective personal requests that they acted at the request of Ilyashev & Partners, the law firm formally representing Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank. In fact, over the years, Ilyashev & Partners have been coordinating all its actions directly with Kazakhstani authorities.
Statements of Noble Price awarded human rights defenders from Russia and Ukraine1,2,3 and the Open Dialogue Foundation’s reports1,2,3,4 have analysed the documents confirming that the Kazakh authorities illegally influenced a Ukrainian investigator through the law firm “Ilyashev and Partners.” Through this firm, the Kazakh side passed to the Ukrainian investigator personal data of defendants; prepared interrogation reports, written allegations and requests for extradition for the investigator; consulted the investigator regarding requests for the disclosure of bank secrets; gave instructions as to who should be declared wanted by INTERPOL, what questions should be asked during interrogations, and in what manner the investigation should be conducted.
For example, an employee of “Ilyashev and Partners,” Arseny Gerasymiv prepared and edited for the investigator, procedural documents pertaining to the criminal cases against Ablyazov’s associates: Tatiana Paraskevich, Igor Kononko, Syrym Shalabayev, and Alexander Udovenko. Gerasymiv also informed the investigator what “results” he should obtain during interrogations. Through the firm “Ilyashev and Partners,” Ukranian Investigator Melnik consulted the Kazakh side with regard to his actions. Whilst Arseny Gerasymiv ‘worked’ with Ukrainian investigators, his colleague, Roman Marchenko, constantly kept in touch with the Kazakh prosecutor’s office and BTA Bank.
With respect to Jardemalie, Ukraine sent three reminders to Belgium. On 2 September 2020, it was signed by Yevgenii Konovalchuk, Acting Head of the International Legal Cooperation Department of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine. Another reminder was sent on 28 August 2021. The third reminder was sent on 27 May 2022, three months after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They were signed by Dmytro Vlasov, Deputy Head of the International Legal Support Department, Head of the Extradition and Cooperation Department of the General Prosecutor’s Office.
Position of Belgian authorities on the extradition request from Ukraine. Belgium has not formally refused this extradition request. The Ministry of Justice of Belgium indicated that: “No decision on the two extradition requests has been adopted or notified to the Kazakh and Ukrainian authorities. It is usual not to make decisions when the person concerned has political refugee status.” However, the Coalition of signatories holds the position that the extradition request for Bota Jardemalie should be officially rejected by the Belgian Ministry of Justice, as it is politically motivated and orchestrated by Kazakhstan. This would send a clear and important message to corrupt Ukrainian politicians and state officials that Ukraine, as an EU candidate member, must immediately cease participating in the political persecution of Kazakhstan’s opposition and stop polluting the judicial system of an EU member state with politically motivated extradition requests.
Ukrainian authorities, on the other hand, should immediately cease participating in the injustice laundering orchestrated by Kazakhstan, withdraw the extradition request for human rights defender Bota Jardemalie, and investigate the well-documented abuses by Ukrainian investigators and prosecutors in the cases against Kazakh opposition.
Russian collaboration in transnational repression against Jardemalie: Wanted in Russia
On 13 February 2024, Mediazona, an independent Russian media outlet known for its critical reporting on state repression and human rights abuses in Russia, published an investigative article titled “Wanted in Russia. Mediazona Scraped and Analyzed the Entire Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Wanted Database — and Developed a User-Friendly Search Tool.” The article revealed the existence of a secretive database maintained by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, which lists individuals wanted for various reasons, including political opposition and activism.
The article noted, “We have collated all the wanted notices from the database on the Ministry of Internal Affairs website and discovered that Russia is actively seeking not only dozens of European politicians and officials on criminal charges, but also one head of state — Kaja Kallas, the Estonian Prime Minister. Our findings also include numerous high-ranking Ukrainian military officials and hundreds of individuals whom investigators label as ‘foreign mercenaries’ in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. For anyone curious, we’ve included a user-friendly database search function, allowing you to look up yourself, a namesake, or anyone else.”
As the article revealed, this database, part of Russia’s broader efforts to track and target dissidents, included the names of high-profile figures such as assassinated Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and former political prisoners Ilya Yashin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The article not only exposed the extent of Russia’s surveillance but also provided a user-friendly search tool that allows readers to check the database for specific individuals.
Despite having no ties to Russia, Jardemalie’s name was also found in this database. By entering her surname, “ДЖАРДЕМАЛИ,” in Cyrillic into the search tool provided at the end of the article, her information appeared listed among those wanted by Russian authorities. However, the database does not specify when she was added. This finding underscored the transnational reach of Kazakhstan. It appears that, just as in Mukhtar Ablyazov’s case, Kazakhstan orchestrated the politically motivated transnational persecution of Bota Jardemalie not only through Ukraine but also through Russia.
Given that, following Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, Bota Jardemalie has been exposing Russia’s circumvention of international sanctions, facilitated by Kazakhstan’s and other Central Asian countries, Russia’s involvement in the January 2022 shootings of peaceful protesters in Kazakhstan, and her defense of Mukhtar Ablyazov, this development is predictable and further underscores the close collaboration between Russia and Kazakhstan in executing transnational repression. The inclusion of her name in the Russian database demonstrates the depth of this cooperation, revealing how these two countries have coordinated their efforts to target dissidents and critics across borders, using a multi-faceted approach to silence opposition.
Coercion-by-proxy: Hostage taken of a family member of Jardemalie (2017 – 2020)
By November 2017, Kazakhstan’s authorities were unsuccessful in neutralizing Jardemalie’s work as a human rights defender whether by having her arrested, extradited or kidnapped. On 13 November 2017, Kazakhstan arrested Jardemalie’s brother, Iskander Yerimbetov, who, unlike Jardemalie, still lived in Kazakhstan. The authorities of Kazakhstan decided to prosecute Yerimbetov in order to exert pressure on Bota Jardemalie.
Fabricated basis for arrest of a political hostage. Iskander Yerimebetov was arrested on the basis of false allegations by BTA Bank in money laundering in a criminal case no. 170000131000012. According to the absurd allegations made on 15 November 2017 against Yerimbetov, twelve years earlier, in 2005, political opponents of the Kazakh regime, Mukhtar Ablyazov and his sister Bota Jardemalie, allegedly involved Iskander Yerimbetov in the money laundering activities of Ablyazov’s “criminal group” Allegedly, Yerimbetov was engaging in entrepreneurial activity in Kazakhstan “with Ablyazov’s money,” “stolen from BTA Bank.”
When arrested, officers of the secret service of Kazakhstan – National Security Committee (KNB) – demanded that Iskander Yerimbetov persuade his sister to return to Kazakhstan and give false testimony against regime opponent Mukhtar Ablyazov. They also tried to force Yerimbetov to “cooperate with the investigation bodies” and “admit his guilt.”
Torture in detention. Yerimbetov refused to cooperate and give false testimonies. He was severely tortured in the detention center 1,2. The torture included, for example, corporal punishment. Under the orders of the authorities, other inmates choked my brother multiple times and beat him repeatedly, targeting his chest, back, and head, and even breaking one of his ribs. The inmates were trying to hang him, threatening to kill him by faking an accident. There were threats of physical violence from law enforcement officials, who threatened to drown Jardemalie’s brother in a bucket of excrement; they threatened to infect him with AIDS through injecting him with infected blood; they threatened to rape him with a broom handle or with the participation of other inmates. Bota Jardemalie’s brother was held in inhuman detention conditions (he was held in a cold cell in unsanitary conditions, without water or clothing, and was only provided with a mattress from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.). On January 26, 2018, Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, sent a letter to the Government of Kazakhstan expressing his “grave concern” over reports that Yerimbetov had been tortured and mistreated in custody. Yerimbetov was held in extended pretrial detention, a year in solitary confinement.
Propaganda campaign to justify fabricated allegations. A propaganda campaign was launched in Kazakhstan’s state-controlled media, suddenly asserting that criminal collusion between Yerimbetov and Ablyazov allegedly occurred years ago, whereas the only link between the two individuals was the fact that Yerimbetov happened to be Jardemalie’s brother. Iskander Yerimbetov never worked at BTA Bank, did not know Ablyazov and had never any business connections with him. Iskander Yerimbetov was a well-known entrepreneur in Kazakhstan in his own right, completely independent of Ablyazov. Given the enormous state resources that have been exhaustively applied to target Ablyazov since 2009, it was simply not credible that it took until 2017 for investigators to determine that Iskander Yerimbetov, who was domiciled and operating his businesses in Kazakhstan throughout this period, was involved in any financial transactions with Ablyazov, and that his arrest was suddenly warranted.

Abusive legal assistance request and extradition demand. On 30 March 2018, while holding tortured Jardemalie’s brother in solitary confinement, Kazakhstan cynically requested Belgium’s legal assistance in his criminal case no. 170000131000012. This request was part of a broader strategy to destroy Bota Jardemalie, whom Kazakhstan also accused of money laundering in the same case as her brother. As detailed further in this report, Belgium’s Justice Minister approved the request in April 2018 without conducting the necessary verification required by law, thereby failing to protect a refugee and uphold the rights of a lawyer and the legal profession.
Moreover, on April 24, 2018, Kazakhstan issued an extradition request to Belgium for Bota Jardemalie, seeking her extradition as a suspect in the same case (no. 170000131000012), as detailed further in this report.
New criminal allegations against Jardemalie’s brother. When Yerimbetov’s arrest made news in Kazakhstan, the authorities and state media loudly parlayed the aforementioned baseless allegations of money laundering and a supposed connection to Ablyazov. Yet, when the emptiness of those allegations became evident, the authorities decided to pivot away from the politicized BTA-related accusations in order to portray Yerimbetov as a common criminal, regardless of his ostensible links to the renowned political opponent. As a result, he was charged (and subsequently tried and convicted) not for alleged money laundering, but rather on unrelated fraud allegations, unconnected to Ablyazov. A fraud case was opened, and a pretrial investigation was commenced on 1 March 2018. On 3 March 2018, while in detention, Yerimbetov was served with the fraud allegations and 45 minutes later he was officially notified that the pretrial investigation was finished. In October 2018, he was convicted of fraud unrelated to BTA Bank and sentenced for 7 years of imprisonment.
International scrutiny of the Yerimbetov case. The international community and civil society have spoken out forcefully again Yerimbetov’s detention since the very beginning. In particular, they have (1) noted that his detention and prosecution were politically motivated and intended to pressure his sister, Bota Jardemalie, to falsely implicate regime opponent Mukhtar Ablyazov and cease her human rights advocacy; (2) recognised him as a political prisoner; (3) observed that Yerimbetov’s business activities were perfectly legal and clearly did not constitute fraud under Kazakh law; and (4) condemned the fact that he was tortured during his detention. International institutions, including the European Parliament, and organisations that demanded his immediate release1,2,3,4.
On December 7, 2018, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UN WGAD) concluded that Yerimbetov was detained in Kazakhstan in violation of international law and urged his immediate and unconditional release, and also called upon Kazakhstan to investigate the torture allegations and to pay compensation to Yerimbetov for his unlawful arrest and detention since November 2017.
In its decision, the UN Working Group states:
“The deprivation of liberty of Iskander Yerimbetov, being in contravention of articles 3, 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is arbitrary and falls within categories I and III . . . The Working Group considers that, taking into account all the circumstances of the case, the appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Yerimbetov immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparation, in accordance with international law.”
A Category I violation occurs “when it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty.” A Category III violation occurs “when the total or partial non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial … is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character.”
The UN WGAD’s decisions are binding under international law and, in many countries including Kazakhstan, also binding under domestic constitutional law. However, despite its obligation under international law, Kazakhstan has never complied with the UN WGAD’s opinion and failed to release Yerimbetov and to compensate him for his unlawful arrest and detention.

Release of Yerimbetov due to his critical health condition. Yet, in 2019, Yerimbetov’s health deteriorated to a critical state due to the medical negligence and severe torture to which he endured following his arrest. Yerimbetov was diagnosed with various illnesses, including a brain aneurysm in its most severe stage, which was most probably due to head trauma caused by beatings in detention. On 1 November 2019, due to his critical health condition, Yerimbetov was taken from the prison colony, where he was serving the sentence, to a hospital for urgent treatment. On 11 December 2019, the court rendered a decision to release Yerimbetov from the reminder of the sentence in connection with his serious illness that was determined by the Special Medical Commission on 4 December 2019.
In 2020 he and his family received humanitarian visas from Switzerland, and in 2021, they were granted political asylum in Switzerland. Iskander Yerimbetov remains a suspect in criminal case N170000131000012 in Kazakhstan, facing false allegations of money laundering. Bota Jardemalie’s elderly parents were also forced to leave Kazakhstan in 2019 due to the fear of reprisal, and they were granted political asylum in Belgium in 2022.
Abuse of mutual legal assistance request (2018- present)
Abusive Kazakh MLA request is tied to the criminal case with gross human rights violations. On 30 March 2018, while holding arbitrarily detained, tortured Jardemalie’s brother, Iskander Yerimbetov, in solitary confinement, Kazakhstan cynically requested Belgium’s legal assistance in his criminal case no. 170000131000012. This MLA request was part of a broader strategy to destroy Bota Jardemalie, whom Kazakhstan also accused of money laundering in the same case as her brother.
Jardemalie’s case illustrates how the abuse of AML/CFT-based MLA requests has become one of the most effective tools for authoritarian states to erode the institution of political asylum in Western countries, undermining its role as a safeguard against repression. This is a blatant and outrageous example of “injustice laundering,” where a politically motivated case, fabricated by Kazakhstan’s controlled law enforcement and justice system—marred by gross human rights violations—is injected into Western judicial systems. The result is that a politically motivated criminal case, manufactured in Kazakhstan, takes on the false appearance of legality within Western jurisdictions.
Should Kazakhstan succeed in its MLA request, the next step will be the full whitewashing of the politically motivated criminal case no. 170000131000012. Kazakhstan will then claim that all necessary evidence of Jardemalie’s guilt, as well as that of other defendants, was obtained through cooperation with Belgian law enforcement, thereby legitimizing their politically motivated case through the involvement of a respected Western judicial system like Belgium’s. This could make the charges appear credible and deflect international criticism. In doing so, Belgium risks turning into an instrument of an authoritarian state, actively participating in its transnational repression and becoming complicit in gross human rights violations, ranging from due process violations to torture.
Details of the Kazakh MLA request. The MLA request from Kazakhstan sought authorisation for two representatives of Kazakhstan’s law enforcement to search Bota Jardemalie’s apartment in Belgium. Additionally, it sought access to and transfer of Jardemalie’s banking information, all electronic devices, personal records, professional legal and human rights files, and, most outrageously, her refugee file from the Belgian government. Kazakhstan also sent a very extensive list of questions and requested to interrogate Jardemalie in the presence of two Kazakhstani investigators. The request has been a clear case of “fishing expedition.” The vague and wide-ranging nature of the MLA request indicates that the instrument is being used as an instrument of transnational repression against an individual.
Belgium’s Justice Minister approved the request in April 2018 without conducting the necessary verification, thereby failing to protect a refugee and uphold the rights of a lawyer and the legal profession.
Warrantless search of the political refugee’s home at the request of the prosecuting state. On 1 October 2019, at Kazakhstan’s MLA request, Belgian police conducted a warrantless search of political refugee and lawyer, Bota Jardemalie’s apartment in Brussels. The policemen seized her electronic devices, as well as her father’s, and documents, which included privileged and confidential work relating to her advocacy as a human rights defender and a lawyer. One of the most worrying facts is that – despite Jardemalie having been granted asylum due to persecution by the Kazakhstani regime – the Belgian police brought two unidentified Kazakh agents along for the raid, and they were allowed to conduct their own search of Jardemalie’s apartment, including documents she had there, without supervision. Soon after the search, Jardemalie’s email accounts were accessed by unknown and unauthorized users. They contained privileged and confidential communications (protected by lawyer’s professional secrecy) and sensitive information related to those she defended and activists from Kazakhstan.
Bota Jardemalie was not present during the search – she was at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg at that time, advocating for human rights in Kazakhstan. The police officers did not knock or ring the doorbell; instead, they opened the door with a universal key. Inside, Bota Jardemalie’s elderly mother, her son (who is a refugee in Belgium alongside his mother), and her nephew were sleeping and woke up when the police entered their bedrooms, causing them psychological trauma.

Jardemalie’s nephew, the son of her brother Iskander Yerimbetov, was staying at her home in Brussels. In November 2017, after Iskander Yerimbetov was illegally arrested in Kazakhstan, two officers from the National Security Committee (KNB) — Vitaly Patsan, head of a unit in Department 10 of the KNB, and Daniyar Suleimenov, head of a unit in the Almaty Department of the KNB — interrogated him in the basement of the detention center without the presence of his lawyer. During these interrogations, they threatened Iskander Yerimbetov that his son would be detained and raped if he did not cooperate in persuading Jardemalie to return to Kazakhstan. To protect Jardemalie’s nephew, the family had to shelter him outside of Kazakhstan. The presence of two Kazakh agents at Jardemalie’s home in Brussels was an extremely psychologically traumatic experience for him.
Threatening arrest, the Belgian police officers forced Jardemalie’s son to countersign a very general list of items they seized, while at the same time refusing to enter his actual surname into the document – putting the nephew’s surname (Yerimbetov, corresponding to his father Iskander Yerimbetov’s) instead.
At no point during the search did the Belgian police provide a search warrant, despite being asked for one by Jardemalie’s family. The search continued for around two hours, without the presence of a lawyer. When two of Jardemalie’s lawyers, Ronit Knaller and Antoine Matz, finally reached the apartment, the police prevented the attorneys from entering.
No information was provided to Jardemalie’s lawyers regarding the grounds for the raid. In fact, Jardemalie’s lawyer was told that the grounds for the search were “secret.” Later, it became apparent that these actions were the result of a Kazakhstani MLA request. However, the authorities refused to provide access to the file or any official information, and it took over three years of litigation for Jardemalie to receive a copy of the MLA file and understand the nature of the request.
Position of the Council of the Brussels Bar Association on the warrantless search of the refugee’s home. 5 November 2019, the Council of the Brussels Bar Association (Conseil de l’Ordre du Barreau de Bruxelles) adopted a resolution noting that Jardemalie, as a political opponent of the authoritarian Kazakhstani regime and a lawyer recognised as being in danger by international organisations dedicated to the protection of lawyers, had her rights violated because the search occurred without the presence of the Head of the Brussels Bar Association. The Bar Council concluded that all the documents seized indiscriminately, some were covered by professional secrecy, and all should be returned to Jardemalie.
Interrogation of the refugee in the presence of the Kazakh agents. In a further violation of the protective rights that Jardemalie is supposed to enjoy as a political refugee, she was summoned to appear before the Belgian Federal Police to answer questions provided by Kazakhstani authorities. She immediately returned from Strasbourg to Brussels and voluntarily appeared at the Federal Police, where she was temporarily arrested at the request of the Kazakhstani authorities. During her detention, Belgian interrogators warned her with continued detention until she answered the questions from Kazakhstan. Three years later, when she gained access to the MLA file, she discovered that her interrogation had actually occurred in the presence of representatives from the prosecuting state. She did not see them in the room where she was questioned, and she was not informed about their presence.
Belgium provided the prosecuting state with banking information of the political refugee. Jardemalie later learned from the police that Belgian authorities had already collected and provided information to Kazakhstan about her banking history. Two Belgian banks supplied all of the political refugee’s banking information to the persecuting state. This allowed the Kazakh authorities to obtain a comprehensive array of details about Jardemalie’s daily life, whereabouts, and movements, as well as similar information about her son (also a refugee) and other family members. Given the context, it is astonishing and concerning that there were no safeguards in place to prevent the Belgian authorities responsible for international legal cooperation from disclosing such private and sensitive information to Jardemalie’s persecuting state—the very regime from which Belgium had granted her asylum.
Direct prosecutorial cooperation with the prosecuting state. In addition to the usual diplomatic channels for international cooperation for its MLA request, Kazakhstan used a more informal route by establishing a direct communication channel with the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office through its Belgian lawyer. Consequently, in 2019, the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office relied solely on the assertions of Kazakhstan’s lawyer that the case was not political and did not conduct any independent assessment. The prosecutor disregarded the fact that Kazakhstan is a notoriously dictatorial state known for systematically using torture in its “investigations,” and that Bota Jardemalie has been recognized as a refugee precisely because of the unjust politically motivated proceedings she faced in Kazakhstan. The fact that Kazakhstan requested Jardemalie’s refugee file from Belgium and that the MLA request was related to proceedings in which her brother was arbitrarily detained and tortured — a situation internationally recognized as political persecution — did not prompt the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office to question Kazakhstan’s allegations in the slightest.
Concerns of the UNHRC special mechanisms. On 1 November 2019, three special mechanisms of the United Nations Human Rights Council – the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, and the Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy – expressed to the Belgian authorities their “serious concerns since the physical integrity of Ms Jardemalie and that of her clients appear to be at risk”, and expressed their deep concern that “by cooperating in this way with the Kazakh authorities and allowing them access to Ms Jardemalie’s documents, the Belgian authorities [could] be putting Ms Jardemalie and her clients at risk despite her protected refugee status.”
Jardemalie’s legal struggle to access the MLA file and defend her rights in Belgium. Since the date of the search and seizure of her documents and electronic devices on 1 October 2019, Bota Jardemalie has been fighting to end the criminal cooperation that is used as an instrument of transnational repression against her.
At the time of the execution of this MLA request, no judicial remedy – right to appeal – was available in Belgium to enable Jardemalie to protect her fundamental rights and prevent further violation of those of her clients, including Kazakh political activists, journalists and victims of torture. Moreover, Belgian authorities refused to grant access to the MLA request, making it impossible for Jardemalie to defend in an effective manner her rights in Belgium. However, the Court of Appeal of Brussels referred her case to the Constitutional Court of Belgium.
On 13 January 2022, the Constitutional Court of Belgium in its judgment 1/2022 ruled that, despite the absence of a right explicitly provided for by the law, the remedy should exist for someone in Jardemalie’s position when the request for mutual legal assistance comes from a non-EU Member state, and it was necessary to provide Jardemalie a right of appeal in Belgium against the actions the State of Belgium in order to be able to challenge the legitimacy of the mutual assistance in criminal matters requested by Kazakhstan (Constitutional Court, judgment 1/2022). The Constitutional Court also ruled that, in order for her to defend her right to appeal, she must have access to the MLA file.
Position of the Minister of Justice of Belgium. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a partnership of FIDH and the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) called upon the authorities of Belgium to put an end to any form of international cooperation, including judicial cooperation, with Kazakhstan regarding Jardemalie.
Despite overwhelming evidence demonstrating the political nature and severe human rights violations of the Kazakh prosecution— including the fact that Jardemalie’s own brother was tortured as part of these proceedings—, the Minister of Justice of Belgium refused to reconsider his position. Following the Constitutional Court’s ruling that granted Jardemalie the right to appeal, the Minister of Justice assured that cooperation with Kazakhstan would be suspended pending the outcome of her appeals. He also confirmed that no documents would be forwarded to Kazakhstan during the legal proceedings initiated by Jardemalie against the Belgian State/the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office (“Jardemalie vs.State of Belgium”) to end this cooperation.
Blatant violation of Jardemalie’s rights during the appeal process. However, alarmingly, on 21 March 2023, Kazakhstan, represented by a Belgian lawyer, filed a request with the investigating judge in Brussels to access the MLA litigation file “Jardemalie vs.State of Belgium” and to take a copy of it. Somehow, Kazakhstan’s lawyer was aware of confidential information to which normally should not have had access: the identity of the investigating judge and other case details of the litigation to which Kazakhstan was not a party. Despite the absence of any justification for the admissibility of Kazakhstan’s request, the investigating judge, while the case was being dealt with at the level of the Court of Appeal, granted Kazakhstan access to and a copy of the MLA litigation file “Jardemalie vs.State of Belgium”, without any legal basis. Thus, the materials of the case ended up in the hands of the prosecuting state, despite the Belgian authorities having firmly declared that they would ensure no documents were communicated to that state. Bota Jardemalie was not informed about this action and had no opportunity to intervene. Meanwhile, the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office was aware of Kazakhstan’s actions and had both the ability and obligation to oppose the access in order to protect Jardemalie’s fundamental rights. They should have also appealed the manifestly illegal order issued, especially given that the main issue in the ongoing litigation in Belgium is to prevent any transmission of information to Kazakhstan. However, this was not done.
Additionally, the prosecuting state Kazakhstan, through its Belgian lawyer, was invited by the General Prosecutor’s Office to join the proceedings in Belgium “Jardemalie vs.State of Belgium” without even informing political refugee Jardemalie. Such an invitation was contrary to Belgian law. The Court of Appeal barred Kazakhstan from becoming a party to the proceedings “Jardemalie vs.State of Belgium.”
Position of the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office on the abusive MLA request. Most astonishing in the case is that the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office has taken the position in the Court of Appeal proceedings that the case is not political, and Belgium should cooperate with Kazakhstan on the matter of criminal case no. 170000131000012 in full. According to the position of the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office, without even sorting through the millions of files and documents seized from Bota Jardemalie to distinguish between those that might be useful to Kazakhstan, those covered by professional secrecy, and those of a political nature, it would be appropriate to transmit all the seized material to execute Kazakhstan’s MLA request related to criminal case no. 170000131000012, in which her brother was tortured. In doing so, the Belgian Prosecutor General is also diverging from the conclusions reached by other democratic states, such as Liechtenstein and Germany, which have recognized Kazakh injustice laundering manipulations and refused Kazakhstan’s MLA requests, as detailed further below.
The Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office has ignored extensive documentary evidence provided by Jardemalie, which demonstrated that the MLA request from Kazakhstan was part of a politically motivated and irreparably unfair procedure that lacks credibility and should be classified as a “flagrant denial of justice” according to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. On the contrary, the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office stated that “[T]he documents produced by the State of Kazakhstan as an annex to its request for international judicial assistance reveal that the investigation appears to be based solely on criminal (financial) offences, and not political ones. No political persecution therefore seems to have been established on the basis of the documents in the file.” By taking this position, the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office actively supports Kazakhstan’s injustice laundering and transnational repression against the political refugee. The hearing at the Court of Appeal is scheduled for 15 October 2024.
International arrest warrant/extradition request from Kazakhstan (24 April 2018 – present)
It was to her great astonishment, in June 2024, Bota Jardemalie learned that Kazakhstan had requested her extradition on 24 April 2018 in the same file no. 170000131000012. It was done while her brother was kept in solitary confinement in Kazakhstan, and after Kazakhstan’s MLA request in connection with criminal case no. 170000131000012, in which her brother was tortured. Sending this extradition request, years after its removal from Interpol’s files, is clearly a facet of the transnational repression suffered by Bota Jardemalie. Just as the Ukrainian extradition request, Belgium has not formally refused this extradition request. As indicated earlier, the Ministry of Justice of Belgium stated that: “No decision on the two extradition requests has been adopted or notified to the Kazakh and Ukrainian authorities. It is usual not to make decisions when the person concerned has political refugee status.”
The Coalition of signatories firmly believes that the Belgian Ministry of Justice should officially reject Kazakhstan’s extradition request for Bota Jardemalie. By doing so, Belgium would unequivocally affirm its commitment to protecting refugees and upholding human rights. Officially rejecting this request would not only safeguard Jardemalie from politically motivated persecution but also send a powerful message to Kazakhstan and the international community that Belgium stands resolutely against the misuse of legal systems for transnational repression. Such a decision would reinforce Belgium’s reputation as a defender of justice and human rights, ensuring that its legal processes are not co-opted by authoritarian regimes seeking to silence dissent.

Hacking Case (2019-2021)
Bota Jardemalie has been recognized as a victim of hacking that occurred following the search of her home on 1 October 2019, which was conducted pursuant to the Kazakhstani MLA request accepted by the Belgian Ministry of Justice without any independent assessment of Kazakhstan’s allegations, its human rights situation, its judiciary, or Jardemalie’s history of politically motivated persecution. Two Kazakh agents were present during the search and were given direct access to Jardemalie’s home, allowing them to examine and photograph documents that were protected and confidential, some of which were written in Cyrillic, so that only they could understand the content.
Immediately after the search, Bota Jardemalie discovered that her email accounts and iCloud had been hacked. She filed a civil party complaint in that regard. The Belgian investigation confirmed the new computer intrusion into Jardemalie’s systems. Unfortunately, on 26 May 2021, the General Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the case because “the investigation does not make it possible to impute the facts of the preventions to one or more specific persons.”
Smear campaign and subsequent closure of bank accounts in Belgium
Bota Jardemalie has been a target of ongoing, very aggressive smear PR campaign in seven languages online and in the press, using AI-generated propaganda, sponsored by the Kazakh regime. The Kazakh regime, with assistance of BTA Bank, have employed tactics described below in the section “Kazakhstan’s global media manipulation” of this report, using disinformation to falsely associate her with criminality. These baseless allegations are first disseminated through anonymous blogs, and then legitimised by their appearance in mainstream media outlets across different countries, thereby amplifying the smear campaign globally. By recruiting “agents of influence,” including journalists and lobbyists, Kazakhstan ensures these narratives reach an international audience, manipulating public perception of Jardemalie and undermining her credibility as a human rights defender. This strategy reflects Kazakhstan’s broader use of global media manipulation to discredit political opponents and silence dissent through reputational destruction.
As a result of negative PR, as well as abusive MLA requests accepted by Belgium, Jardemalie experienced problems with banking. Banks in Belgium closed her bank accounts without any explanation and refused to open her a bank account. She also was blocked from making any Western Union transfers.
Moreover, to undermine Jardemalie’s human rights advocacy work, the ambassador of Kazakhstan in Belgium personally emailed every member of the European Parliament, warning them against meeting with Jardemalie, and falsely accusing her of being guilty of criminal offenses. In 2018, prior of the event “Persecution of lawyers: selected cases from Moldova, Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan” at the European Parliament, the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Belgium sent propaganda materials to MEPs Julia Ward and Jaromír Štětina. The materials contain defamatory information regarding the Open Dialogue Foundation and Bota Jardemalie. In particular, the Embassy of Kazakhstan sent a link to the Kazakhstani propaganda Internet resource “Enemies of the People of Kazakhstan.” The publications on the website contain the hate speech and direct threats against specific individuals, including Bota Jardemalie.
Kazakhstan’s failed attempts at injustice laundering in other western jurisdictions: lasting harm to victims
Kazakhstan has been initiating abusive legal proceedings in various Western jurisdictions, not just in Belgium. In Germany and Liechtenstein, it exploited the judicial systems through the misuse of MLA requests. Although both countries ultimately ruled in favor of the targeted individuals and dismissed Kazakhstan’s demands, the mere potential for procedural abuse as a tool to drain financial and moral resources, damage reputations, and exert pressure on professional and family lives has proven effective. This underscores the urgent need for decisive countermeasures from Western nations to prevent such abuses.
Germany discontinues criminal investigation against Ablyazov on suspicions of false testimonies from Kazakhstan. Kazakhstani authorities submitted by way of international legal assistance to the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office criminal complaint against Mukhtar Ablyazov and other defendants, accusing them of fraudulently damaging the management of the former German bank HypoVereinsbank between 2005 and 2009, resulting in a loss of approximately 23 million euros. BTA Bank also joint the complaint as an injured party and submitted additional documents.
In a decision dated 19 August 2021, the Munich Public Prosecutor dropped the charges on the grounds that, “in the absence of any objective evidence and in view of the uncertainties involved in assessing the plausibility of the statements of the other persons involved that are available to us, we have no sufficiently solid basis to enable us to prove the guilt of the defendant” [decision of the Munich Public Prosecutor II dated 19 August 2021. Available upon demand].
In the decision, the Public Prosecutor noted that:
- “the presumption of guilt [was] based solely on statements of fact and documents provided by the Kazakh authorities […] and, in part, by BTA Bank,” that excluded any correspondence between Mukhtar Ablyazov and other persons allegedly involved;
- the transcripts of the September 2017 interrogations of Mr. Volkov, Mr. Bondarenko, Mr. Belov and Mr. Vorontyntsev, which took place shortly after they had been sentenced in Moscow to terms of imprisonment of several years, and while they were defendants in another criminal proceeding, were “are essentially identical in content and in some sections practically identical in wording,” and “in view of the length of the interrogation transcripts (between 9 and 16 pages) and the complexity of the facts on the one hand, as well as the relatively short duration of the interrogations stated in each case (between one and two and a half hours) on the other hand, it is obvious that the texts of the interrogation transcripts were at least largely pre-formulated” before the persons interrogated signed them.
- Similarly, the hearing of Mr. Trofimov on 22 April 2019, while he was in custody, was “in part identical, almost word for word, to the hearing of the respondent Mr. Volkov” and included “a large number of details relating to the exact dates on which the contracts were concluded, the exact sums of the loans, […] etc., for which it seemed almost impossible to quote them from memory – especially when decades had passed since then“;
- there was “no written evidence of any involvement of the defendant Mr. Ablyazov in the credit fraud“, no “compromising communication“, and that the suspicion of criminal behavior was based solely on the interrogation records of the defendants submitted by the General Prosecutor’s Office of Kazakhstan, the transcripts of which were “essentially identical” or contained a number of implausibilities [decision of the Munich Public Prosecutor II dated 19 August 2021. Available upon demand].
This case in Germany initiated by Kazakhstan serves as another compelling example of how the Kazakhstan authorities fabricate criminal allegations that fail to withstand the scrutiny of the Western law enforcement. This case in Germany serves as a clear instance of “injustice laundering,” where Kazakhstan attempted to inject fabricated criminal allegations into a Western legal system. Despite their efforts, the Kazakhstani authorities’ fabricated testimonies and manipulated evidence were exposed and ultimately rejected by the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Liechtenstein’s refusal to cooperate in criminal matters with Kazakhstan. In the end of 2018, following the arrest of Jardemalie’s brother, Iskander Yerimbetov, Kazakhstan’s Office of the General Prosecutor issued a MLA request to Liechtenstein seeking international criminal assistance. The MLA request was for information about Yerimbetov in relation to the criminal case in Kazakhstan, where he was accused of money laundering funds allegedly stolen from BTA Bank by Ablyazov.
Liechtenstein reviewed the MLA request from Kazakhstan and requested Kazakhstan to provide additional information to explain the allegations. Following the additional information received from Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein rejected Kazakhstan’s request for mutual assistance on 5 December 2019 [decision available upon request]. Kazakhstan’s explanations failed to persuade the Liechtenstein court, which observed that numerous reports and documents presented compelling reasons to question the adherence to international legal norms in the Kazakh criminal proceedings, especially those involving Iskander Yerimbetov. The court specifically referred to reports and documents highlighting Yerimbetov’s circumstances, which raised significant doubts regarding the MLA request in connection with the BTA Bank’s allegations, suggesting it might be part of the politically motivated criminal proceedings against Ablyazov and Yerimbetov. This MLA request was another failed attempt at “injustice laundering” by Kazakhstan, where their efforts to manipulate international legal cooperation for politically motivated purposes were thwarted.
As it did in Belgium against Bota Jardemalie, BTA Bank made a criminal complaint and initiated a money laundering investigation in Liechtenstein against Mukhtar Ablyazov and its associates. A preliminary investigation was opened; but, due to a lack of evidence, as was the case in Germany, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Liechtenstein ended the preliminary investigation.
Kazakhstan’s global media manipulation
In August 2014, on the portal kazaword.wordpress.com (“Kazaword” portal), unknown persons began to index and publish links to stolen correspondence of senior officials of Kazakhstan. Appoximately 100,000 documents (69 gigabytes of data) have been published there. The emails and documents of the state official exposed on the “Kazaword” portal revealed a network of corruption and abuse, as well as brought to light the scale of the repression, including transnational repression, organized by this dictatorship. The disclosed correspondence has been referred to by numerous European media outlets: Le Temps, Mediapart, The Financial Times, Le Nouvel Observateur, RFI, Atlantico, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Tages Anzeiger, SonntagsZeitung, Blick, Yahoo France, L’Espresso, La Provence, El Pais, as well as the Ukrainian media outlets: “Trust.ua” and “Obozrevatel.”
On 12 March 2015, Kazakhstan filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in which it confirmed the theft of correspondence and confidential documents from the Gmail account of Marat Beketayev (until December 2015, he served as the executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice, after Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration and Ministry of Justice), Andrey Kravchenko (then Deputy General Prosecutor) and other state officials.
An e-mail forwarded to then-executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Marat Beketayev [“In 2006, Beketaev became advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan. From 2007, he was advisor to the Prime Minister. From 2007 to 2010, he held the position of Deputy Minister of Justice. In 2010, Beketaev became executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice. On 11 December 2015, he was appointed Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Kazakhstan. Beketaev held the post of Minister of Justice (…) from 13 September 2016 until the dismissal of the Mamin cabinet on 5 January 2022. Since January 2022, he has been an advisor to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marat_Beketaev. On 21 October 2023, the former Minister of Justice Marat Beketayev had been arrested on suspicion of “abuse of office.”], dated January 2014, contained a memo proposing to use research for a documentary as a cover for espionage against Mukhtar Ablyazov and anyone around him. The memo was entitled “Saint or Sinner?” and referred to Mukhtar Ablyazov as the “Little Man” [Attachment 1]. This operation would involve “covert operations” subjecting Ablyazov and everyone around him to “cyber assaults” and “sabotage.” There would be “media manipulation globally.” The proposal went on: “We will be contacting everyone whether they be friend, associate, family member in Little Man’s life and he will find that we are in every aspect of his existence, further undermining his confidence.”
The memo to the executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice of Kazakhstan describes a highly orchestrated project divided into two main components:
“LAUREL 1
1. The first part of the project is called Laurel 1, and involves the production of an actual, real full-length documentary film provisionally called «Saint or Sinner ?» (…)
2. This will be a focused documentary exploiting all weaknesses of our target while outwardly having the appearance of complete balance.
(…)
4. But showing the documentary on television is NOT the main purpose of Laurel 1. The main purpose is to provide the perfect cover for a more sophisticated project called Laurel 2 (see below).
(…)
7. A legitimate film production company will be incorporated in the UK with mainstream banking facilities.
(…)
9. An initial investment of 250.000 will be deposited in the bank account of the production company to finance the feasibility study. (…) Only about 50,000 of this budget will be spent on researching the study, however. The rest will be used to finance the preliminary phase of Laurel 2.
LAUREL 2
(…)
2. The Laurel 2 investigation is designed both as an intelligence gathering exercise in support of the documentary film project (Laurel 1), and as a stand-alone body of largely covertly obtained data.
(…)
8 (…) The “Little Man” may not be the only target in these fields, as others close to him may prove of greater interest to us – family, lawyers, close friends, spiritual advisers, lovers, fiduciaires, PR consultants, tame journalists, senior staff, former staff, domestic staff and so forth.
9. Covert projects will include:
(…)
a. Cyber-assult on the Little Man and those close to him, (family, friends, advisors and so forth). Email monitoring in particular is likely to be of interest.
(…)
e. Recruit “agents of influence” (journalists, academics, politicians, religious leaders, corporate spokesmen, international lobbyists, etc.)
(…)
g. Covert entry specialists (breaking and entry) for bugging, sabotage, Intel gathering and so on. The specialists we use are the “best of the best”.
(…)
j. Media manipulation globally.
(…)
l. Anonymised blogs to gather Intelligence and disseminate disinformation, perverted sexual proclivities, allegations of extreme criminality, jihadi sympathies + financing and so forth. (Once such allegations are “established” they can legitimately be reported in the mainstream media. This is potentially one of the most powerful psychological weapons in our armoury.)
m. Dissemination of disinformation and deflection.
(…)
o. We will be contacting everyone whether they be friend, associate, family member in Little Man’s life…” [emphasis added].
Another e-mail related to this project was sent to Marat Beketayev by Patrick Robertson, CEO WorldPR, in October 2014 [“WorldPR has nearly thirty years’ experience in providing strategic consultancy and professional communications services to governments, businesses, NGOs, political parties and campaigning organisations.Our particular expertise lies in the design and execution of large-scale cross-border public relations assignments that are of vital importance to sovereign nations and strategic players. Our success is based on our ability to focus the energy and creativity of large teams of world-class professionals to achieve precise and measurable results“]. “During a 25-year career as what he calls a “strategic communications adviser”, Patrick Robertson has sought to burnish the image of figures such as the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the disgraced British politician Jonathan Aitken. He is well-connected among the Conservative establishment: Margaret Thatcher was honorary president of the Bruges Group, the Eurosceptic organisation he co-founded in 1989.”
In this email dated 16 October 2014 and entitled “Phase 2 Letter and first Payment Urgently Required – Private & Confidential”, WorldPR’s CEO revealed that the contracting party formally was BTA Bank, an instrument of transnational repression for the regime in Kazakhstan. Robertson requested “urgent assistance and support in securing the necessary letter and first payment from BTA JSC so that we can proceed to Phase 2 was agreed, without interruption.” [Attachment 2] The email continued: “Under our Contract with the Bank, it is specified in Annex No. 1 (see p.10) that we may expect to receive instructions to proceed to Phase 2 within 7 days of delivery of service on Phase 1. Since we delivered our report and Treatment to you and the Bank on 3rd October in Astana, it means that we should have received an official letter to proceed no later than 10th October. That is already a week ago. (…) We are incurring significant costs and my people are taking big risks every single day.” [Attachment 2]
Kazakhstan has implemented the strategy advocated in LAUREL 2. Bota Jardemalie, as a lawyer and human right defender, who among many others, defended Mukhtar Ablyazov against politically motivated extradition requests became one of the many victims of this sophisticated and multi-layered strategies of transnational repression deployed against opponents of the regime in Kazakhstan.
This memo provides a glimpse into how authoritarian states use transnational repression to target opponents, combining traditional intelligence tactics with modern tools of disinformation, cyber warfare, and psychological operations. By exploiting both legal loopholes and covert means, authoritarian regimes can act beyond their borders, repressing dissent in exile or across international jurisdictions. These actions constitute a significant threat to the safety and freedom of political dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists, and activists worldwide.
Attachment 1
Attachment 2
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
download statement
Paul Van Tigchelt, Minister of Justice
Cellule stratégique et secrétariat du Vice-Premier ministre et
Ministre de la Justice et de la Mer du Nord
FINTO – Boulevard du jardin Botanique, 50/65 – 6ème étage
1000 Bruxelles, Belgique
[email protected]
Direction Générale « Législation, Libertés et Droits fondamentaux »,
Boulevardde Waterloo, 115,
1000 Brussels, Belgium,
[email protected]
The European Parliament, European Council and European Commission,
The U.S. Congress and U.S. Senate, U.S. State Department,
Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
23 September 2024
STATEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND RULE OF LAW DEFENDERS
on the Transnational Persecution of Bota Jardemalie
by the Regime of Kazakhstan and its Agents in Western Countries
- Western countries, and particularly Belgium, must put an end to the transnational repression of human rights defender Bota Jardemalie on their soil, orchestrated by Kazakhstan and its agents through the abuse of AML/CFT laws and interstate cooperation agreements.
- Political refugee Bota Jardemalie has been subjected to a multi-faceted, longstanding, and extensive transnational persecution, orchestrated by Kazakhstan to suppress her activism and human rights advocacy.
- Jardemalie’s case demonstrates the near-limitless ability of Kazakhstan and other non-democratic regimes to undermine the institution of asylum and international protection within Western democratic systems.
- Belgium risks turning into an instrument of an authoritarian state, actively participating in its transnational repression and becoming complicit in gross human rights violations, ranging from due process violations to torture.
- It is imperative to close legal loopholes and hold Kazakhstan and other actors accountable for transnational repression and the gross misuse of the Belgian and Western judicial systems, ensuring the prevention of such abuses by non-democratic regimes and their agents in the future.
The Kazakhstani authorities are attempting to convince the international community that President Tokayev is implementing democratic reforms in the country. However, the facts suggest otherwise. Like his predecessor, President Nazarbayev, President Tokayev continues to persecute opponents and dissidents both within Kazakhstan and abroad. Large-scale political repression against opposition and critics of the regime continues in Kazakhstan. To restrict civic space and freedom of expression, association, and assembly, Kazakhstan has been systematically prosecuting activists, journalists, bloggers, lawyers, and their family members under the guise of anti-extremism measures and anti-money laundering efforts1,2,3,4. Kazakhstan has become one of the most sophisticated regimes in systematically weaponising local banks to eliminate dissent.
At the same time, “[t]he government [of Kazakhstan] engaged in acts of transnational repression to intimidate or exact reprisal against individuals outside the country.” The Kazakhstani authorities use various methods to target their political opponents living abroad, including abuse of instruments of international cooperation, such as INTERPOL Red Notices, extraditions and mutual legal assistance requests, political pressure, abuse of foreign judicial systems, illegal surveillance, online and physical harassment, coercion via proxy—family members and/or colleagues, and even murder. Unfortunately, authorities, law enforcement, and the judiciary in Western democratic states fail to recognise the overarching pattern of Kazakhstan’s transnational repression, treating various instances as isolated events rather than acknowledging the “big picture.”
As experts in human rights and the rule of law, politicians with extensive knowledge of the political dynamics within the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) member states, we, the Coalition of signatories, urge you to carefully consider the recommendations following this statement. These are based on the well-documented case of Kazakhstan’s virtually unchecked ability — along with its agents and other non-democratic regimes:
- to undermine the institution of asylum and the international protection offered by Western democracies through longstanding, multi-faceted forms of transnational repression; this includes the abuse of AML/CFT laws and the misuse of international legal mechanisms, such as mutual legal assistance requests (MLA) and extradition demands, as exemplified in the case of Bota Jardemalie, a human rights defender, lawyer, and political refugee in Belgium;
- and to escape accountability for the gross misuse of Belgian and Western judicial systems, as despite extensive evidence of politically motivated persecution against Jardemalie. Belgian authorities have failed to recognize the broader pattern of transnational repression, treating each instance as an isolated case rather than addressing the systematic abuse.
We reached these conclusions based on the following facts:
- Despite being granted political asylum in Belgium in 2023, Bota Jardemalie continues to be subjected to politically motivated persecution as a reprisal for her work during all this time.
The authorities of Kazakhstan found multiple ways how to circumvent Jardemalie’s protection in Belgium. They have persistently sought to silence her and use her case to intimidate other human rights defenders and lawyers both domestically and transnationally. Bota Jardemalie has defended Kazakh opposition members, political activists, and victims of torture for over a decade. Since 2011, she has worked on the release of political prisoners in Kazakhstan and documented cases of human rights violations, including harassment, torture, political murders, and mass shootings. The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) and the International Observatory for Lawyers in Danger (OIDA) recognizes her as a “lawyer in danger.”1,2 The Brussels Bar Council considers her a lawyer at risk due to her activities. She was granted political refugee status in Belgium in 2013. She is an elected member of the Leadership Council of the World Liberty Congress – chaired by Masih Alinejad, Leopoldo Lopez and Garry Kasparov – the largest global movement of pro-democracy leaders from a total of 60 countries. - Bota Jardemalie’s case exemplifies an extraordinary instance of transnational repression against a political refugee.
As detailed further in the enclosed report, Kazakhstan has targeted her through judicial abuses, misuse of international cooperation mechanisms (including INTERPOL), illegal surveillance, attempted kidnapping, arbitrary detention and torture of her brother, hacking, lobbying, and a systematic smear PR campaign. The regime in Kazakhstan has misused MLA requests to target Jardemalie, seeking access to her banking information, electronic devices, human rights, and legal files. The European Parliament in a resolution of 11 February 2021 noted that the Kazakhstani authorities have abused international criminal cooperation mechanisms, including Interpol Red Notices and Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA), “with a view to persecuting opponents of the regime abroad and gaining access to confidential information,” as well as noting the systemic and political nature of Kazakhstan’s repressive apparatus and its misuse of civil and criminal proceedings. - Lack of accountability for gross misuse of the Belgian and Western judicial systems by Kazakhstani regime and its agents established pattern of developing “injustice laundering” to undermine the international institute of political asylum in Belgium.
The Kazakhstani authorities have developed a clever method of unscrupulously exploiting their own totally controlled judicial system to fabricate Kazakhstani proceedings that are then passed on to Western judiciaries. As described further in this report, this method of “injustice laundering” makes it possible to inject into Western judicial systems politically motivated allegations fabricated by Kazakhstan’s controlled law enforcement bodies and its justice system. “Injustice laundering,” as a method of transnational repression, can take the form of politically motivated Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) requests or abusive civil and criminal complaints based on proceedings initiated in Kazakhstan. For instance, in the case of Bota Jardemalie, Kazakhstan has employed this tactic through both MLA requests and fabricated criminal charges in an attempt to manipulate the Belgian legal system and undermine her status as a political refugee. - Kazakhstan and its agents weaponized AML/CFT laws and banking system for transnational repression.
Jardemalie’s case is deeply intertwined with the authoritarian nature of Kazakhstan and its widespread political and judicial corruption. To prosecute Jardemalie and others, the regime in Kazakhstan weaponised a local bank, BTA Bank, to turn it into an instrument of transnational repression. Using BTA Bank as its proxy solely for politically motivated persecution, for 15 years, the regime in Kazakhstan has been abusing international legal cooperation and undermining democracy and legal and judicial systems in Belgium, in other EU member states, and in Ukraine. Moreover, the abuse of AML/CFT-based MLA requests has become one of the most effective tools for authoritarian states to erode the institution of political asylum in Western countries, undermining its role as a safeguard against repression.
It is important to notice, that Kazakhstan has been initiating abusive legal proceedings in various Western jurisdictions, not just in Belgium. In Germany and Liechtenstein, it exploited the judicial systems through the misuse of MLA requests. Although both countries ultimately ruled in favor of the targeted individuals and dismissed Kazakhstan’s demands, the mere potential for procedural abuse as a tool to drain financial and moral resources, damage reputations, and exert pressure on professional and family lives has proven effective. - Kazakhstan is using coercion-by-proxy as a method of transnational repression.
Kazakhstan used BTA Bank even for coercion-by-proxy — a common tactic of transnational repression — to pressure the political refugee into returning to Kazakhstan. On 13 November 2017, Kazakhstan arrested Jardemalie’s brother, Iskander Yerimbetov, who still resided in Kazakhstan. Yerimbetov was detained based on false allegations of money laundering by BTA Bank, in criminal case no. 170000131000012. He was taken as a political hostage in an attempt to force Jardemalie to return to Kazakhstan and to provide false testimony. - Belgian authorities fail to address transnational repression occurring on Belgian soil organized by Kazakhstan and its agents.
Despite clear violations of Bota Jardemalie’s fundamental rights, the Ministry of Justice of Belgium fails to recognize the pattern of transnational repression against her, treating each abusive act as isolated and unrelated [Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA), “Concern for the situation of Kazakh lawyer Botagoz Jardemalie”, 18 December 2019]. The Ministry of Justice has authorized the execution of Kazakhstan’s MLA request, without considering the authoritarian nature of the Kazakhstani regime, its systemic gross human rights violations, and the violations of fundamental rights of Bota Jardemalie.
Additionally, the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office maintains that the MLA request and a related criminal case in Kazakhstan are non-political and insists on cooperating with Kazakhstan, ignoring concerns about professional secrecy and the political, legal and human rights implications. The Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office insists on cooperating with Kazakhstan by transmitting all of Jardemalie’s files and electronic devices (computers, phones, and memory sticks), even though it acknowledges that this transmission is likely to breach professional secrecy or involve the disclosure of political material related to the opposition and civic activists in Kazakhstan. This stance completely overlooks the authoritarian nature of Kazakhstan’s kleptocracy, its systemic gross human rights violations, and the fact that this MLA request is connected to case no. 170000131000012, in which Jardemalie’s brother was arbitrarily arrested and tortured.
We regret, that the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office has ignored extensive documentary evidence, which demonstrates that the MLA request from Kazakhstan is part of a politically motivated and irreparably unfair procedure that lacks credibility and should be classified as a “flagrant denial of justice” according to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. We believe that the stance of the Belgian General Prosecutor’s Office raises serious concerns about the integrity of international legal cooperation and the protection of political refugees and victims of transnational repression, especially given the position of the Ministry of Justice of Belgium. The hearing at the Court of Appeal is scheduled for 15 October 2024. - Kazakhstan is using proxy states and former militaries for transnational repression.
In June 2024, Bota Jardemalie learned that Ukraine had requested her extradition in 2016 in connection with a criminal case in Ukraine fabricated at the request of Kazakhstan. In 2024, she also discovered that she is wanted in Russia, a part of Kazakhstan’s transnational repression and injustice laundering efforts.
In fact, Kazakhstan is known for using third countries to carry out transnational repression against political refugees in Western countries. For example, previously, Kazakhstan orchestrated politically motivated criminal investigations both in Russia and in Kazakhstan against Mukhtar Ablyazov, the leader of Kazakhstan’s opposition. Russia and Ukraine have posted INTERPOL notices for Ablyazov’s arrest and issued extradition requests, assisting the Kazakhstani regime in its campaign against its principal political opponent. On 9 December 2016, France’s supreme administrative court – the Council of State (Conseil d’État) – halted Ablyazov’s extradition to Russia and Ukraine. France’s supreme administrative court concluded that Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia had acted in concert seeking to prosecute Ablyazov, using BTA Bank-related allegations, for a political purpose. In the case of Tatiana Paraskevich, Mukhtar Ablyazov’s former colleague, Kazakhstan also orchestrated criminal investigations against her in Russia and Ukraine. In parallel, Kazakhstan tried to cancel her subsidiary protection that she had in the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic refused her extradition to Russia and Ukraine.
Moreover, Kazakhstan cooperates with Russia in executing transnational repression of Jardemalie. Following Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, Bota Jardemalie has been exposing internationally Russia’s circumvention of international sanctions, facilitated by Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries, as well as Russia’s involvement in the January 2022 shootings of peaceful protesters in Kazakhstan, and her defense of Mukhtar Ablyazov. For this human rights work Jardemalie was placed to a secretive database maintained by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, which lists individuals wanted for various reasons, including political opposition and activism.
The inclusion of Jardemalie’s name in the Russian database demonstrates the depth of this cooperation, revealing how these two countries have coordinated their efforts to target dissidents and critics across borders, using a multi-faceted approach to silence opposition. - Kazakhstan’s request to extradite Bota Jardemalie.
While her brother was being tortured and held in solitary confinement, in 2018, Kazakhstan requested Jardemalie’s extradition in connection with the same criminal case no. 170000131000012. This request, coming years after her removal from INTERPOL’s files, exemplifies the transnational repression Jardemalie faces. Belgium has not yet officially refused extradition requests from Kazakhstan and Ukraine, citing a common practice of not making decisions when a person has political refugee status. - Kazakhstan is behind the illegal surveillance and a kidnapping attempt on Belgian soil.
In 2014, the Belgian Federal Police launched an investigation of a criminal conspiracy targeting Bota Jardemalie. Three individuals, two former agents of the STASI (the East German secret police) and a Russian national, came under scrutiny by the Federal Police of Belgium for criminal conspiracy. On 15 September 2021, the Brussels Court of Appeal convicted the defendants for criminal organisation, private corruption, computer forgery, harassment by means of telecommunication, using a false name and illegal practice of the profession of private detective.
But Kazakhstan continues hunting. The Federal Police of Belgium concluded another criminal investigation, officially recognising Bota Jardemalie as a victim of unauthorised surveillance by a former UK military member employed by the private intelligence firm Diligence, which was hired indirectly by BTA Bank — an instrument of transnational repression for Kazakhstan’s regime. On 14 December 2023, the perpetrator of the illegal surveillance was charged with harassment and violating private detective laws and was scheduled for trial on 15 April 2024. Since then, the trial has been delayed twice. The authors of the report raise serious concerns about the delays in the trial. The apparent reluctance to prosecute and convict those responsible for the illegal surveillance encourages perpetrators who pose a risk to Jardemalie’s security in Belgium to commit such crimes again [The court hearing was postponed twice on the case of the perpetrator, who was charged with harassment and violating private detective laws against Jardemalie on Belgium soil: the first hearing was scheduled for trial on 15 April 2024, then due to the loss it was postponed on 18 June 2024. On that day, the hearing was postponed again.]
Details of transnational repression against Bota Jardemalie are provided in the report enclosed with this statement:
– Kidnapping Plot in Belgium (2014-2019): Belgian Federal Police uncovered a plot involving former STASI agents and a Russian national aiming to kidnap Jardemalie. The plot was thwarted, and the perpetrators were convicted.
– Illegal Surveillance in Belgium (2017-present): Jardemalie was subjected to unauthorized surveillance by a former UK military member hired by a private intelligence firm linked to Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank. The Belgian courts are currently handling the case, with repeated delays in the trial.
– Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation – SLAPP – in Belgium (2016 – present): BTA Bank, acting as an instrument for the Kazakh regime, filed a baseless civil party complaint against Jardemalie, accusing her of money laundering. The case was dismissed in 2023, but the bank continues its judicial harassment through appeals.
– Extradition by proxy: international arrest warrant/extradition request from Ukraine (November 2016 – present): Kazakhstan orchestrated an extradition request from Ukraine for Jardemalie, despite her never having lived or worked in Ukraine. The request is part of a broader strategy of transnational repression.
– Russian Collaboration in Transnational Repression (2024): Jardemalie discovered her inclusion in Russia’s “wanted” database, demonstrating Kazakhstan’s broader efforts to suppress her through allied authoritarian states.
– Coercion-by-proxy: hostage taken of a family member of Jardemalie (2017-2020): Kazakhstani authorities arrested and tortured Jardemalie’s brother, Iskander Yerimbetov, to pressure her into returning to Kazakhstan and testifying against political opponents.
– Abuse of Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) (2018- present): Kazakhstan abused the AML/CFT laws and MLA process to obtain personal and legal documents and electronic devices from Jardemalie in Belgium, despite her status as a political refugee. The Belgian authorities conducted a warrantless search of her home, further compromising her safety and legal rights.
– International Arrest Warrant/Extradition Request from Kazakhstan (2018-present): Kazakhstan had requested Jardemalie’s extradition in 2018, in connection with her brother’s criminal case while her brother was tortured in Kazakhstan. Belgium has yet to formally refuse this extradition request.
– Hacking Case (2019-2021): Jardemalie discovered her email accounts and iCloud had been hacked. Despite confirming the intrusion, Belgian authorities dismissed the case in 2021.
– Smear campaign and financial exclusion in Belgium (2018-present): Jardemalie has been targeted by a Kazakh-sponsored smear campaign in multiple languages, leading to the closure of her bank accounts in Belgium. - Kazakhstan conducted similar transnational repression in other countries against its critics:
Political killing of opposition journalist Aidos Sadykov in Kyiv, Ukraine. On 18 June 2024, in Kyiv, Ukraine, the regime of Kazakhstan orchestrated a brutal assassination attack on opposition journalist and political refugee Aidos Sadykov. The assassin shot Aidos in the head in broad daylight, in full view of his wife, journalist Nataliya Sadykova, as they arrived at their home. Aidos Sadykov died from the head shot wound on 2 July 2024 in a hospital in Kyiv. Aidos Sadykov and his wife fled Kazakhstan in 2014 and sought refuge in Ukraine. The Sadykovs continued to face transnational repression in the form of intimidation, harassment, politically motivated charges, and placement on the international wanted list after leaving Kazakhstan. Following the assassination attack on Sadykov, Ukrainian authorities identified two Kazakhstani citizens as suspects in the attempted murder, who then fled to Kazakhstan. Maulen Ashimbayev, Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan, publicly denied any involvement of Kazakhstani authorities in the crime and stated that Kazakhstan would not extradite anyone to Ukraine.
Abuse of INTERPOL’s Red Notice and the weaponization of Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) laws to hold family members and associates as political hostages in the case of Barlyk Mendygaziyev. For years, Kazakhstan has been targeting entrepreneur Barlyk Mendygaziyev for his environmental activism, for financing the legal defense costs of activists, and for supporting the families of the politically persecuted in Kazakhstan. Barlyk Mendygaziyev, who resides in the U.S., had all his businesses seized and destroyed in Kazakhstan through attacks organized by the Kazakhstani authorities, and he was politically charged with money laundering. Kazakhstan abused INTERPOL’s Red Notice mechanism against Mendygaziyev. Barlyk Mendygaziyev’s brother, Bekizhan, and associates were arrested as political hostages and sentenced on trumped-up charges of nonpayment of taxes, money laundering, and participation in an organized criminal group to force Barlyk Mendygaziyev to stop his political activities. Another Barlyk’s brother, Kalyk Mendygaziyev, was harassed and tortured by the authorities that eventually led to his death. Kazakhstani authorities weaponized Chevron Corporation, one of the world’s largest U.S. energy companies with substantial commercial interests in Kazakhstan, and used it as an instrument of transnational repression to target Barlyk Mendygaziyev. The Mendygaziyev case demonstrates once more that any business in Kazakhstan can be destroyed if its founder falls into disfavor with the authorities or oligarchs close to the authorities.
Violent attack in Vilnius, Lithuania, against Zamanbek Tleuliev, a political refugee and youth leader of the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan oppositional movement. In March 2024, Zamanbek Tleuliev, a political refugee and coordinator for the peaceful opposition movement Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan’s Coordinating Council, was violently attacked in Vilnius, Lithuania. He was beaten beyond recognition, suffering kicks to his head and body, and had his teeth knocked out. This is the second attempt on Tleuliev’s life; previously, on 6 January 2022, he was attacked in Kyiv, Ukraine. Tleuliev asserts these attacks were orchestrated by the authorities of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan persecutes activists of the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan both domestically and internationally. The Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DCK) was founded by the long-standing political opponent of the regime in Kazakhstan, Mukhtar Ablyazov. In 2018, a district court in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, banned DCK as an “extremist organization” and prohibited its activities throughout the country, including online and on social media networks. As a result, hundreds of people were imprisoned for their affiliation with DCK on charges of “participation in an extremist organization.” The European Parliament recognised DCK as a peaceful opposition movement.
Illegal surveillance and assassination attempts against Mukhtar Ablyazov, the founder of DCK and leader of the Kazakhstani opposition, in France. Since 2014, several media reports have detailed failed attempts on Ablyazov’s life1,2,3. In 2021, the French press reported on assassinations and assassination attempts carried out by former General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) officers and police working for a criminal organisation, targeting, among others, foreign opposition members residing in France. They conducted an attempt on the life of a Congolese leader General Ferdinand Mbaou and confessed during the investigation to have Mukhtar Ablyazov on their list. Furthermore, Ablyazov himself reported these operations, which he feared were targeting him, to the French police. In June 2020, he filed a complaint with the Paris Judicial Court regarding “preparatory acts of kidnapping.” He supported his complaint with evidence demonstrating that he was under 24-hour surveillance and feared an imminent armed attack. The tracking and surveillance team comprised at least 20 people. He was constantly followed by a team of at least five motorcyclists, and five to seven cars were on duty around his apartment day and night.
Unfortunately, there has been little information about the actions taken by French law enforcement or the judiciary afterward. Ablyazov was not granted police protection, despite French courts acknowledging the direct danger and the prior warning [“On 29 January, 2011, the London police gave Mukhtar Ablyazov an ‘Osman warning’, which stated: “You may be subject to kidnapping or physical damage, which may be politically motivated. The police cannot ensure your protection against this threat on a day-to-day and hour-to-hour basis.”] he received during his stay in Britain in 2011. Additionally, he was not notified of any investigation into the reported facts, which may be regarded as a gross dereliction of duty. We firmly believe that these events must be thoroughly investigated and that those responsible must be held accountable. These are just a few examples of the transnational repression Mukhtar Ablyazov has experienced over the years due to his firm political stance and ever-growing political influence in Kazakhstan.
Kidnapping of Mukhtar Ablyazov’s wife and six-year-old daughter from Italy. One of the most severe cases of transnational repression orchestrated by Kazakhstan occurred in 2013, involving the abduction and illegal expulsion of Mukhtar Ablyazov’s wife, Alma Shalabayeva, and their six-year-old daughter, Alua Ablyazova, from Italy to Kazakhstan. Ablyazov’s wife and six-year-old daughter were located in a house in Rome by Israeli private investigative services. The woman and girl were illegally handed over by Italian police to two diplomats from Kazakhstan who escorted them on a private jet from Rome to Astana. The deportation triggered a political crisis in Italy when it became known that Kazakhstan’s ambassador in Rome had colluded with Italian interior ministry officials to deliver Ablyazov’s wife and daughter as hostages to Kazakhstan. There were no arrest warrants or lawful grounds for the deportation of Ablyazov’s wife and daughter to Kazakhstan. On 18 July 2013, the United Nations issued a press release stating: “The circumstances of the deportation give rise to the appearance that this was in fact an extraordinary rendition.” On 22 July 2013, Hugh Williamson, the director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of the Human Rights Watch, stated: “The scandal which erupted in Rome, has adversely affected both Rome and Astana. In order to prevent further deterioration of the situation, Kazakhstan should return Shalabayeva and her daughter and deal with the growing concern regarding the violation of human rights.” Facing international pressure, the Kazakhstani authorities were forced to allow Ablyazov’s wife and daughter to temporarily leave the country at the end of December 2013, after seven months under house arrest on fabricated charges against Alma Shalabayeva. In April 2014, Italy granted political asylum to Ablyazov’s wife and daughter. In 2020, six Italian law-enforcement officers were sentenced to 6-year prison terms on abduction charges, while one justice of peace received a sentence for forgery of documents. On appeal, the defendants had been acquitted. That decision was challenged by the Attorney General of Perugia. The Supreme Court overturned the acquittal and ordered a new trial before the Court of Appeals in Florence.
RECOMMENDATIONS TO BELGIUM, UKRAINE, THE EU, THE U.S., AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES TO END IMPUNITY AND LIMIT OPPORTUNITIES TO TARGET EXILES:
1. Recommendations to Belgian Authorities to Address Bota Jardemalie’s Situation in Belgium:
- The Belgian Ministry of Justice should officially reject the extradition request from Ukraine for Bota Jardemalie, as it is politically motivated and orchestrated by Kazakhstan.
- The Belgian Ministry of Justice should officially reject Kazakhstan’s extradition request for Bota Jardemalie.
- The Belgian Ministry of Justice should immediately cease any ongoing cooperation with Kazakhstan related to any Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) requests that pertain to Bota Jardemalie and reject the outstanding MLA request.
- The Belgian authorities should promptly refuse to transmit the materials and devices seized from Bota Jardemalie during the warrantless search of her home, which was conducted in response to Kazakhstan’s MLA request.
- Belgium must guarantee the physical and psychological well-being of Bota Jardemalie and her family, ensuring they are protected from further acts of transnational repression.
- Belgian authorities should ensure compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights standards and adhere strictly to the provisions of Article 8 of the ECHR, as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights, particularly in cases involving searches of lawyers’ premises. This includes ensuring that any interference with professional secrecy is necessary, proportionate, and accompanied by adequate safeguards to protect lawyer-client confidentiality.
- Belgian authorities should uphold the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, especially Principle 16(a), ensuring that Bota Jardemalie can perform her professional duties without intimidation, hindrance, harassment, or improper interference, and that she is adequately protected when her safety is threatened due to her legal work.
2. Recommendation to the Ukrainian Authorities:
Ukrainian authorities should immediately cease participating in the injustice laundering orchestrated by Kazakhstan. Ukrainian authorities should:
- withdraw the politically motivated extradition request for human rights defender Bota Jardemalie and
- conduct a thorough investigation into the well-documented abuses by Ukrainian investigators and prosecutors in cases involving the Kazakh opposition.
Such actions would demonstrate Ukraine’s commitment to upholding human rights, ensuring justice, and distancing itself from the repressive tactics of authoritarian regimes.
3. Policy Recommendations to Prevent and Address Transnational Repression:
The European Parliament, European Council and European Commission, the U.S. Congress and U.S. Senate, U.S. State Department, Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe should:
- Include the case of Bota Jardemalie as an example of transnational, multi-faceted persecution in their reports and policy discussions on combating transnational repression. It is crucial to incorporate this case into the development of comprehensive preventive measures, including the establishment of standardized definitions of transnational repression and enhanced legal frameworks to prevent the misuse of international cooperation tools.
- Establish an official definition of transnational repression to be used by all government agencies. Use this definition to create a process for systematically recording cases of transnational repression that occur in the respective jurisdictions.
- Ensure that law enforcement officials, judiciary, personnel at key agencies, and those working with refugees and asylum seekers are trained to recognize the targeting of exiles and diasporas.
- Reinforce their legal frameworks to prevent the misuse of their judicial systems by authoritarian regimes. This includes enacting legislation that explicitly prevents the execution of MLA requests, extradition demands, and other forms of legal cooperation that are politically motivated and aimed at repressing dissidents and human rights defenders.
- Develop mechanisms to detect and counteract “injustice laundering,” where authoritarian regimes attempt to legitimize politically motivated cases through the legal systems of democratic states. This could include establishing independent oversight bodies to review MLA requests and other forms of international cooperation to ensure they are not being used for transnational repression.
- Hold accountable those within their jurisdictions who facilitate transnational repression, whether through legal, financial, or other means. This could include sanctions against individuals and entities that assist authoritarian regimes in persecuting political refugees and human rights defenders abroad.
- Work together to share information on cases of transnational repression, ensuring that those targeted by authoritarian regimes receive consistent protection and that any attempts to abuse international legal mechanisms are swiftly identified and countered.
- Provide targeted support to victims of transnational repression, including legal assistance, security measures, and platforms to raise awareness about their cases. This support should extend to those like Bota Jardemalie, who are persecuted for their human rights work and opposition to authoritarian regimes.
Sincerely yours,
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, President of the Open Dialogue Foundation; coordinator of the human rights monitoring group #ActivistsNotExtremists, Ukraine
Bakhytzhan Toregozhina, Head of the human rights organization “Ar-Rukh-Hak”, 2023 International Women of Courage Award, Kazakhstan
Dr. Leyla Yunus, Director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD), Azerbaijan
Emin Huseynov, Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety, Azerbaijan
Oleksandra Matviichuk, human rights lawyer, Head of the Center for Civil Liberties, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2022
Human Rights Centre “ZMINA”, Ukraine
Antonio Stango, President of the Italian Federation for Human Rights – Italian Helsinki Committee, Professor of International Organisations and Human Rights at Rome Link Campus University, Italy
Garry Kasparov, co-founder of the Free Russia Forum, Vice President of World Liberty Congress, Russia
Masih Alinejad, President, World Liberty Congress, Iran
Leopoldo Lopez, Secretary General, World Liberty Congress, Venezuela
Carine Kanimba, Director of Office of Freedom Affairs and Head of Africa Regional Network, World Liberty Congress, Rwanda
Ammar Abdulhamid, Parliamentarian and Director of Policy, World Liberty Congress, Syria
Carmen Lau, International Advocacy and Program Associate, Hong Kong Democracy Council, Member of Leadership Council, World Liberty Congress, Hong Kong
Nilofar Ayoubi, Regional secretary for Middle east & North Africa, World Liberty Congress, Afghanistan
Andrei Sannikov, Head of European Belarus Foundation, Belarus
Joey Siu, Ombudsperson and Executive Council Member, World Liberty Congress, USA
Chemi Lhamo, Campaigns Director, Students for a Free Tibet, and Member of Leadership Council, World Liberty Congress, Tibet/Canada
Jonathan Duarte, Executive Director, Fundación para la Libertad de Nicaragua, Member of Leadership Council, World Liberty Congress, Nicaragua/USA
Natalia Pelevina, Coordinator, Transitional Justice for Russia, Russia
Medeni Sungur, President, Digimar Institute, Türkiye
Marat Danebayev, victim of political persecution in Kazakhstan, brother of political prisoner and torture victim Timur Danebayev
Sayat Adilbekuly, victim of torture and political prosecution during January 2022 events in Kazakhstan
Nurgul Kaluova, former Kazakhstani political prisoner, member of the Human Rights Initiative “Bostandyq.Kz”
Human Rights Protection Foundation “Qaharman”, Kazakhstan
Human Rights Movement “405”, Kazakhstan
Human Rights Initiative “Bostandyq.Kz”, Kazakhstan
The Human Rights Movement “Veritas”, Kazakhstan
Human Rights Movement “Femina Virtute”, Kazakhstan
Human Rights Movement “Article 14”, Kazakhstan
The Human Rights Movement “Elimay”, Kazakhstan