How to Build a Customs Empire
For years, two powerful Central Asian families colluded to build a trading empire built on smuggling. Now, through relatives and trusted confidants, they control three of Kyrgyzstan’s key customs terminals.
For years, two powerful Central Asian families colluded to build a trading empire built on smuggling. Now, through relatives and trusted confidants, they control three of Kyrgyzstan’s key customs terminals.
The Matraimov family has long used its questionable wealth to gain social and political influence in its native Kyrgyzstan. For this year’s parliamentary elections, they’ve pulled out all the stops.
Raimbek Matraimov is a powerful Kyrgyz political operator known for his massive wealth. This investigation into his wife’s social media accounts reveals the opulent lifestyle his family enjoyed even as he declared only a modest salary in the country’s customs service.
A private resort village on the shores of Kyrgyzstan’s Lake Issyk Kul is among the clues that connect former Kyrgyz customs boss Raimbek Matraimov and notorious criminal leader Kamchy Kolbayev.
Not much has changed in Kyrgyzstan’s customs service since Matraimov’s firing and conviction. His successor, Zamirbek Karashev, appears to be part of his network — and his family also enjoys the finer things.
Here's how reporters used open-source investigative techniques to discover a new property apparently owned by the Matraimov family, a luxurious penthouse apartment in Dubai.
Reporters used open-source investigative techniques to discover a cottage the Matraimov family frequented near Lake Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan’s biggest tourist destination.
An open-source investigation suggests that the families of Raimbek Matraimov, Kyrgyzstan’s disgraced former deputy customs chief, and Zamirbek Karashev, his former underling and eventual replacement, vacationed together in Thailand.
According to an associate, Kyrgyzstan’s former deputy customs chief had to raise money from friends and relatives to pay the fine. This didn’t appear to prevent him from buying a new penthouse right next door to his old one.
After agreeing to compensate the Kyrgyz government for years of corruption, the powerful former official went on a last-minute shopping spree, buying up apartments across Bishkek to give to the authorities.
Here’s how Kyrgyz citizens banded together during a week of political chaos to take care of each other when their state couldn’t.
Enraged over an election they saw as undermined by rampant vote-buying, thousands stormed Kyrgyzstan’s parliament and presidential offices and took over government buildings throughout the country in an overnight revolution that on Tuesday forced election officials to declare the election void, OCCRP member center Kloop reported.
Over the span of five years, one man funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars out of Central Asia. What he knew may have cost him his life. But before his murder, he shared with reporters a trove of documents that reveal the source of this colossal wealth: A secretive family that ran an underground cargo empire with the help of a powerful political patron.
A money launderer told journalists what he knew about a secretive smuggling empire and a senior Kyrgyz official who enabled it. Now, leaked documents shed light on his shocking murder.
The wife of Raimbek Matraimov, a powerful former Kyrgyz customs chief, has a joint investment in Dubai with a shadowy Uighur family, the Abdukadyrs. Back in Central Asia, that family built a thriving cargo empire thanks to corruption in the customs service.
Nearly half of donations received by a well-known Kyrgyz charity run by the powerful Matraimov family have been linked to an illicit underground network.