The authorities in Kazakhstan announced on Monday that they had issued an international arrest warrant for Rakhat Aliyev, the son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and one of the Central Asian oil state's most powerful and loathed men.
Aliyev, long trailed by reports that he was involved in criminal activity, was accused early this year by the victims' families of kidnapping two senior officials of a Kazakh bank. One of the officials remains missing and is feared dead.
The warrant, announced by the Interior Ministry in Astana, the Kazakh capital, is the latest scandal involving violence, corruption and intrigue to captivate political life in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic with deep reserves of oil and natural gas.
Aliyev, who is believed to be in Austria, has denied a role in the kidnappings. In a statement released before the warrant was announced, he said he was being punished by his father-in-law for privately expressing ambitions to become president. He made no public comment on Monday, as the scandal left Kazakhs guessing about his fate.
Nazarbayev often insists that the country, located on the steppe south of central Russia, is evolving toward democracy. But since Soviet days it has been a centralized nation controlled by the president, his family and their entourages, and dogged by accusations of election rigging, corruption, censorship and the suppression of perceived political threats.
Throughout out it all Nazarbayev has appeared to remain durably popular and is often credited, with the help with oil and gas revenues, of steering Kazakhstan wide of the personality cults, civil strife and economic stagnation that have in varying degrees afflicted other Central Asian countries.
The most prominent television station owned by Aliyev and his wife, Dariga Nazarbayeva, has been forced off the air for several days; Nazarbayeva, often called a possible successor to her father, has been publicly silent as well. The phone number of her assistant was switched off on Monday, and she could not be reached.
Oraz Zhandosov, a former government official who is now a leader in an opposition party, True Bright Path, called the evident purge of Aliyev "a pretty logical extension of the existing political system in Kazakhstan."
"As a person, Aliyev is a bad guy, totally," Zhandosov said. "The conditions under which he achieved such high status, both in business and as a state official, were possible only through our political system, where being a relative of Nazarbayev guarantees you almost everything."
"Now Rakhat is politically finished," he added.
The only question, Zhandosov said, would be whether Nazarbayev's daughter would choose to be loyal to her father or to her husband.
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