Crossroads Asia

Who is the Kyrgyz Tycoon with a Posh London Apartment?

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Crossroads Asia

Who is the Kyrgyz Tycoon with a Posh London Apartment?

Hint: his company once hired U.S. rapper Chingy to plug its vodka.

Who is the Kyrgyz Tycoon with a Posh London Apartment?
Credit: RubinowaDama / Shutterstock.com

When it comes to Western involvement in questionable or corrupt commercial practices with Central Asia, much of the discussion over the past few months has been focused on capital and connections out of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Between the massive telecom bribery scandal engulfing the daughter of Uzbekistan’s president, to the multiple connections made to Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s family via the Panama Papers leak, to new details surrounding Buckingham Palace’s suspicious fiscal relationship with those close to Nazarbayev, Astana and Tashkent have coopted much of the news on Central Asian funds shuffled outside the region.

A new round of investigations, however, have shown that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are by no means the only Central Asian states whose elites continue taking advantage of Western financial opportunities. As The Guardian found last week, some two-thirds of the homes in the Tower, London’s tallest residential skyscraper, are owned by individuals of foreign origin. All told, approximately one quarter of these homes are “held through secretive offshore companies based in tax havens” – much like those front companies unveiled in the recent Panama Papers fracas.

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