Kazakhstan Issues Warrant For President’s Son-in-Law

MOSCOW, May 28 — The authorities in Kazakhstan announced Monday that they had issued an international arrest warrant for Rakhat Aliyev, the son-in-law of President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev and one of the Central Asian oil state’s most powerful and loathed men.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev no longer supports his son-in-law.

Rakhat Aliyev, seen with his wife in 2005, had been accused of kidnapping. Then he made the mistake of publicly criticizing the president.

Mr. 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, on charges of running an organized crime network, was announced by the Interior Ministry in Astana, the Kazakh capital. The charges issued from 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.

Mr. 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.

President Nazarbayev often insists that the country, situated 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 Mr. 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.

Mr. Aliyev, who married Mr. Nazarbayev’s daughter before the Soviet Union’s collapse, had been near the center of power since the country became independent in 1991. He held senior posts in the Foreign Ministry, amassed a media and banking empire and led part of the country’s intelligence service.

His fortunes appeared to change abruptly early this year when he was accused of having two bank managers kidnapped and then of beating them and demanding that they sign over their families’ interests in the bank.

In what had appeared to be an effort to defuse the accusations, in February the government sent him to Vienna as ambassador to Austria.

But the intrigue continued. Palace tensions reached open conflict last week when Mr. Aliyev publicly criticized his father-in-law after a change to the Kazakh Constitution cleared the way for Mr. Nazarbayev to become president for life.

The government dismissed Mr. Aliyev as ambassador late last week, indicating that any residual support from the president had evaporated. The charges and arrest warrant soon followed.

The most prominent television station owned by Mr. Aliyev and his wife, Dariga Nazarbayeva, has been forced off the air for several days; Ms. Nazarbayeva, often called a possible successor to her father, has been publicly silent as well. The phone number of her assistant was switched off 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 Mr. Aliyev “a pretty logical extension of the existing political system in Kazakhstan.”

“As a person, Aliyev is a bad guy, totally,” Mr. 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.”

He added, “Now Rakhat is politically finished.”

The only question, Mr. Zhandosov said, would be whether Mr. Nazarbayev’s daughter would choose to be loyal to her father or to her husband. “This is what everyone is waiting to see,” he said.

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