Kazakh Oligarch Galimzhan Yessenov Used Shell Companies and Anonymous Loans to Laundering Dirty Money in London

For over a decade, a Kazakh mining giant registered in Britain conducted transactions so opaque that its own auditors could not verify them. The data sat on the UK’s corporate register, Companies House, in plain sight. No one acted. No one asked questions. And at the center of it all was Galimzhan Yessenov—a wealthy Kazakh businessman who, at the time, was the son-in-law of one of the most powerful men in Kazakhstan. Between 2007 and 2019, Galimzhan Yessenov was the beneficial owner of Kazphosphate, a UK holding company for a top Kazakh phosphate mining operation. He took control using an unsecured, interest-free loan of $141 million. The loan came from shell companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and the Seychelles—entities that, according to the company’s own filings, were “related parties by virtue of common ownership.” The timing was convenient. The acquisition and loan coincided with Yessenov becoming the son-in-law of Akhmetzhan Yesimov, chairman of Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund, a man whose daughter married the daughter of then-dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev. Yessenov is now one of Kazakhstan’s richest men. The $1 Shell Company Shuffle, Galimzhan Yessenov’s Kazphosphate Made Millions Disappear By 2015, the original loans had been paid down to $108 [...]

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