DUSHANBE, June 6, 2016, Asia-Plus — Kazakhstan”s security service accused a detained businessman with Russian ties of financing recent anti-government protests as part of a plot to seize power.
Tokhtar Tuleshov, best known as the chief executive of one of Kazakhstan’s largest breweries, Shymkentpivo, has been imprisoned since January, but authorities had not up to now given details of any charges.
“His plan included destabilizing the situation in the country by creating flashpoints, organizing protests and mass unrest,” Ruslan Karasyov, a spokesman for Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (SNB), told reporters on June 6.
“We have proof that protests against the so-called land reform that took place in Atyrau, Astana, Almaty, Uralsk, and Kyzylorda had been instigated and financed by Tuleshov,” Karasyov said.
According to him, the SNB had detained several suspected accomplices of Tuleshov over the weekend, including former Frist Deputy Prosecutor-General Ilyas Bakhtybayev, former head of the Police Directorate of the South Kazakhstan Region, Major-General Doskaliyev, and two colonels in charge of military units of 35748 and 556653 of the Ministry of Defense.
According to
Reuters
, Tuleshov ran the Kazakh office of a Russia-based organization called the Center for the Analysis of Terrorist Threats.
Its website,
catu.kz
, reportedly published anti-Western and pro-Russian articles, including one piece alleging Islamic State militants were sending reinforcements to Ukrainian nationalists.
We will recall that thousands of Kazakhs took part in street protests across the country in April and May which were triggered by a planned land reform but quickly became an expression of general discontent with the government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, in power since 1989.
