A Gazprom director profited from a secret scheme linked to the construction of a multibillion-dollar gas pipeline between central Asia and China, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.
The documents indicate that staff and consultants working for Timur Kulibayev designed a scheme for the Kazakh billionaire to receive at least tens of millions of dollars from contracts related to the vast project.
Kulibayev, who has served on the Russian energy giant’s board since 2011, is the son-in-law of a former Kazakh president and has wide-ranging business interests, including in banking, mining and real estate. As one of the most powerful officials in the country, he oversaw the state companies that awarded contracts to build the pipelines across Kazakhstan.
Emails sent between 2008 and 2014 and leaked by a whistleblower contain detailed descriptions of a setup that appears to allow Kulibayev to receive a share of the profits from