Family Fight Leaves Kazakhstan's Power Couple on the Outside

Aliyev, a physician by training, married Nazarbayeva 25 years ago. Together they rose in the business and political worlds. Nazarbayeva held a seat in parliament, ran a pro-government political party and headed a media company and the Kazakh Congress of Journalists. Aliyev developed holdings in banking and media and variously served as deputy head of the National Security Committee, the successor to the KGB; head of the Financial Police; and deputy foreign minister.

Charges of hardball tactics and corruption have swirled around Aliyev for years, as they have with other parts of the Kazakh elite, including the president himself. In a pending corruption trial in New York, an American businessman is accused of bribing senior Kazakh officials, including Nazarbayev, to secure oil rights in the country. Nazarbayev, who was not charged in the case, described the allegations as a "setup."

For years, Kazakh analysts had been seeing signs of tension between the couple and the presidential father. In 2001, rumors circulated that Aliyev had created a parallel structure inside the National Security Committee and was planning a coup.

One of the people who presented evidence to the president about this was Altynbek Sarsenbayev, according to former deputy prime minister Oraz Zhandosov. In an interview, Zhandosov, now an opposition leader, said Sarsenbayev told him that on hearing about his son-in-law's machinations, Nazarbayev fell to his knees in distress. "I can't trust anyone," said the president, according to Zhandosov's account.

Later that year, Aliyev was sent to Vienna as ambassador to Austria. This was depicted as a prize appointment, but many people saw it as banishment. Allegations of an attempted coup have never been confirmed and Aliyev denies any such plan. "That's dogma," he said. "I wanted to replace the old KGB with a new reformed special service."

The couple remained controversial. Sarsenbayev, who became leader of the opposition, was murdered in February 2006 and Aliyev and his wife began saying publicly that the National Security Committee, controlled by men loyal to the president, was involved. The chief of staff of the chairman of the Kazakh Senate was eventually convicted of organizing the murder.

With the word that the Nurbank executives had been kidnapped, opposition politicians and newspapers began campaigning for a formal investigation of claims that Aliyev was involved.

Three weeks after the alleged abduction, Aliyev was dispatched to his second Austrian posting.

On May 23, Kazakhstan's Interior Ministry unexpectedly announced it was charging Aliyev and several associates with abduction, assault and running a criminal enterprise. Bagdat Kozhakhmetov, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said in an interview that there might have been some hesitance to act earlier because of Aliyev's position. But he said the investigation didn't get off the ground quickly because elements in the Financial Police, which were loyal to Aliyev following his heading of the service in the 1990s, hid critical evidence from the Interior Ministry.

"Our president said, 'I ask you to do a very detailed, careful investigation without paying attention to the fact that he is my relative,' " Kozhakhmetov said. "We have all evidence and facts that Aliyev managed these operations."

In the interview, Aliyev said the charges stemmed from meetings with the president in which Aliyev expressed concerns about Kazakhstan's lack of democratic development and stated his ambition to succeed his father-in-law in 2012, when the president's term would end.

At the time, the pro-presidential party that controls Kazakhstan's parliament was formulating a constitutional rewrite that would effectively allow Nazarbayev to serve indefinitely. Aliyev said the changes amounted to the "establishment of a monarchy in Kazakhstan and several times I tried to talk him out of this."

Aliyev's claim of concern for democratic values is greeted with deep skepticism in Kazakhstan. "Complete nonsense" is how Zhandosov, the opposition leader, described it. A group of business leaders released a statement saying that "many of us have experienced his methods of doing business and using law enforcement agencies to apply political pressure for his own ends."

"I was part of the system," Aliyev said in the interview, noting that he did not engender much "trust or love" as head of the tax police. "But I never broke the law."

Last month, divorce papers were slipped under the front gate of Aliyev's Vienna home in the middle of the night. Aliyev said his wife, with whom he has three children, was "under pressure" to divorce him. "They destroyed my family," he said.

Nazarbayeva, contacted through a former colleague in her media company, declined to be interviewed, as did her father.

She too appears to be suffering from her father's wrath. Media outlets in Kazakhstan that she and her former husband control were suspended from operating in May, then reopened under new management. She is no longer on the ticket for reelection.

Zhandosov predicted that Nazarbayeva will reemerge in a couple of years after repenting for her reputed sins. In the meantime, a second presidential daughter, Dinara, and a second fabulously wealthy son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, appear newly ascendant in the family pecking order.