Last week, a court in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, fined notorious former customs official Raimbek Matraimov 100,000 som ($1,152) after he admitted guilt in the face of charges of illegal border crossing and hooliganism.
The court’s decision brings to a close the latest chapter in Matraimov’s colorful story, a saga that has stretched over several years and is filled with accusations of grand-scale corruption, alleged ties to a vast criminal network, and repeated arrests, releases, and fines.
The charges to which Matraimov admitted guilt are far removed from the allegations that precipitated his detention and extradition from Azerbaijan in March.
On March 23, as Central Asia was reeling from news of the Crocus City Hall attack on the outskirts of Moscow, Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (SCNS) reported that it had broken up an alleged assassination plot targeting unnamed members of the Kyrgyz leadership with the arrest of five Azerbaijani citizens. Almost immediately, the SCNS claimed that Matraimov was behind the plot and residing in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
Matraimov had been placed on a wanted list in January, under suspicion of abducting and illegally incarcerating unnamed individuals. Matraimov had reportedly fled Kyrgyzstan in late October 2023 having allegedly stiffed the government. Kaktus, a Kyrgyz media outlet, cited law enforcement sources saying that while Matraimov had promised to pay “several hundred million soms” into the state budget, he’d failed to do so.
Or perhaps the October 4, 2023 killing of the internationally wanted criminal kingpin Kamchybek Kolbaev in a Bishkek bar by the security services spooked Matraimov into flight. In the wake of Kolbaev’s killing, SCNS head Kamchybek Tashiev made several speeches in which he railed against organized crime in Kyrgyzstan, proclaiming that “from now on there will be neither Kolbaev’s mafia, nor Matraimov’s mafia, nor other mafias in Kyrgyzstan.”
Regardless of when and why Matraimov fled Kyrgyzstan, he was brought back in handcuffs along with three of his brothers: Tilek, Ruslan, and Islambek.
In April and May, Kyrgyzstan’s State Property Management Agency began auctioning off property that had belonged to Kolbaev and Matraimov.
In June, Tilek was sentenced in the Kara-Suu District Court on abuse of office charges. His 1 million som fine was reduced the following month on appeal in the Osh Regional Court to 300,000 soms and he was banned from holding state or local office for three years. Also in August, Ruslan and Islambek were found guilty of “illegal entrepreneurial or banking activities” and each fined 50,000 soms.
In September, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, Azattyk, reported that several properties belonging to Matraimov in Osh had been transferred to the city administration.
During the opening of yet another SCNS building in September, Tashiev promised that corrupt officials would be jailed. He said that a draft law was in the works to eliminate fines for corruption.
“Everyone agrees with the investigation, admits guilt, and is released with a fine. Now there will be no fines, there will be real terms,” Tashiev claimed.
Matraimov sat in pre-trial detention until November, when he was released on bail. In parliament, Tashiev explained the release to deputies by stating that Matraimov was being charged with illegal crossing of the state border, hooliganism, and laundering of criminal proceeds. Significantly, just as the original accusations – an assassination plot – vanished, by the time Matraimov was released in November, the money laundering charge seems to have disappeared, too.
Tashiev explained Matraimov’s release as justified because he’d paid a fine.
“Matraimov was released after paying $200 million, this is not $2 million and not $20 million,” Tashiev said, adding that Matraimov had previously paid 2.5 billion soms to the state. “In total, he paid 19.5 billion soms. Of course, all this is not cash, including property. We assessed the property at an underestimated value. There will be a trial soon, where he will either be punished for the charges brought against him or pay a fine. After the payment of the funds, keeping him in prison was of no use to either the state or himself.”
Tashiev additionally promised to provide detailed information on the property and funds yielded to the state by corrupt officials.
In early December, Tashiev returned to parliament to present his draft law eliminating fines for corruption, among other measures aimed at tightening punishment.
“Now all those detained for corruption and abuse of office must sit in prison if their guilt is proven. No one should escape this. A person who commits corruption must know that he will end up behind bars,” he said.
The following week, Tashiev repeated his promise regarding a full accounting of finds received by the state from corrupt officials. He said in a December 11 parliamentary hearing, that on December 15-16 he would present a report to the public. “I will tell you everything, how much money, property, etc. was received from whom, and I will also tell you where these funds are,” he said.
The Matraimov saga is, in part, an epic tale of kusturizatsia. As scholar Aksana Ismailbekova explained in a September 2023 article for The Diplomat:
Kusturizatsia, a term derived from the word for “vomiting” in Kyrgyz, is used to refer to those who damage the state through corrupt practices and economic crimes (such as stealing from the state budget or not paying taxes), and are then forced to pay compensation to the state when they are discovered.
When corrupt practices are detected, the perpetrators (mainly influential politicians and prominent businessmen) are given time to voluntarily pay compensation for the damage to the state, otherwise they face possible detention. Thus, kusturizatsia is essentially the legalization of corrupt activities by prominent businessmen and politicians. It occurs outside the rule of law, though has been offered up under the phrase “economic amnesty” by Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov.
This system has allegedly fed billions into state coffers, but it’s not clear that it has actually managed to effectively move the needle on corruption – ironically illustrated by Tashiev’s campaign to eliminate fines in parallel with Matraimov getting off with… a fine.
Although the latest chapter in Matraimov’s story did not, in the end, feature corruption charges, extensive investigative reporting by Kloop, RFE/RL, and OCCRP in 2019 alleged his intimate involvement in a massive scheme that saw $700 million laundered out of Kyrgyzstan.