Kazakhstan: “Kompromat” Wars · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

Rakhat Aliyev has lots of titles with an attribute “former”: former son-in-law of president Nazarbayev, former chief of special services, former media mogul and former influential clan leader. Today he is a figurant of the criminal case, accused of abduction and possible murder of heads of Nurbank, which was also controlled by Aliyev. Soon after the prosecution had started, he left the country and now lives in Vienna (Austria), sporadically enlivening the Kazakh politics with ejection of discrediting materials – “kompromats” – about the members of elite.
Recently, Rakhat came up with the series of very painful “kompromat” – audio-files of tapped telephone conversations of the key figures, including ministers, presidential administration officials and oligarchs. Although the content itself was not extremely dangerous, the very fact that telephones of the “people in power” can be intercepted and made public is certainly getting on their nerves.
Mantrov, a local journalist, believes [RUS] that there is possibly a coup brewing in Kazakhstan. “Rakhat Aliyev moved on from the threats to actions and now tells the world about the Kazakh regime”, whose staunch adherent and defender he was until recently. “It is rumored that several agents of special services, who were bugging the telephones of higher officials, have been arrested on suspicion of that they used those files for destabilization of political situation”, mantrov reports.
Although the opposition decisively rejects any support to Mr. Aliyev, seeing him as a person, who was behind persecution of the democrats, when president’s ex-relative headed secret services, a number of the opposition websites posted links to the mp3 files. They were soon blocked by the state-owned ISP Kazakhtelecom. The first Kazakh podcast website Inkar, which took a telephone interview from Aliyev, was blocked also.
Ivanalmazoff, a reporter of Inkar, comments [RUS] in the Livejournal community: “This is not the first time when the websites that support opposition are blocked in Kazakhstan. This means that the political crisis is already here”. The Kub weblog, owned by Kazakh film director Rachid Nougmanov, who lives in France and tends to support the opposition, was also blocked and deprived [RUS] of the right to use .kz domain.