Kazakh prosecutor: No plans to prosecute Nazarbayev’s family

The Kazakh Prosecutor-General's Office has no plans to prosecute members of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev's family.

"The task we have is not to initiate a criminal case against the first president's family or anyone else. We are engaged in checking and returning all the capital that has been illegally taken out of the country," Kazakh Deputy Prosecutor-General Aset Chindaliyev said on January 18, according to Vlast.kz. 

He added that after the law on the former president was repealed by the parliament, the Justice Ministry is now working to revise and harmonise the related legislation.

Chindaliyev said that members of Nazarbayev's family were still prosecutable but it was up to the Financial Monitoring Agency, the Anti-Corruption Agency, the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Committee to prosecute them or not.

"If they see any legitimate reasons, they can launch a criminal investigation," the deputy prosecutor-general said.  

The statement comes days after Nazarbayev was deprived of his special status as the country's first president when the upper and lower chambers of the parliament approved legal changes to declare the law "On the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan – Elbasy” (Leader of the Nation, a special title given to Nazarbayev) null and void. At a referendum in June 2022, Kazakhstan adopted constitutional amendments stripping Nazarbayev of his status as Elbasy.

In February 2022, the parliament passed a law abolishing Nazarbayev's life chairmanship of the country's Security Council and Peoples' Assembly after nationwide anti-government protests in January that escalated into deadly riots. The unrest resulted in the sidelining of Nazarbayev, who had maintained significant political influence despite stepping down as president in 2019.