Kulibayev is the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s then-president and was one of the most influential officials in the central Asian country’s oil and gas industry. The BBC has also learned that, in another case, an Italian businessman pleaded guilty to bribing the oligarch.<\/p>\n
Kulibayev’s lawyers told us he has never engaged in bribery or corruption, and the funds used to acquire Sunninghill Park were entirely legitimate.<\/p>\n
The revelations raise questions about whether the then-prince may have inadvertently benefited from the proceeds of crime and whether he and his advisers conducted the proper checks required by law to avoid this.<\/p>\n
Money laundering expert Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Security, said the deal had “blatant red flags” which should have prompted detailed checks to ensure it was not “helping to launder the proceeds of corruption”.<\/p>\n
Kulibayev reportedly paid \u00a33m more than the asking price and an estimated \u00a37m more than the property’s market value.<\/p>\n
The former prince did not respond to the BBC’s requests for comment. He told the Daily Telegraph in 2009, after criticism of the deal: “It’s not my business, the second the price is paid. If that is the offer, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and suggest they have overpaid me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kulibayev is the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s then-president and was one of the most influential officials in the central…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-681743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115858393235329005","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}