Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1292560
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 SEPTEMBER 2020 NEWS If you had €8 ,500 to support Malta's youth, what would you do? One idea can change the future. Submissions must come from a registered charity by October 28 th . To celebrate our 70 th Anniversary, Argus Insurance is hosting a competition to let you decide! Share your ideas today at OurFutureIsYou.com for a chance to help shape the #Next70 years. MATTHEW VELLA THE wife of a former Kazakh oli- garch, found dead in an Austrian jail in a startling act of suicide, is suing the Maltese government in the European Court of Human Rights. Elnara Shorazova, an Austrian national who became the sec- ond wife of Rakhat Aliyev – a one-time exile living in Malta – is complaining that the Mal- tese government's compliance with a freezing order requested by the Kazakhstan authorities, breached her human rights be- cause the request stemmed from a regime that could not offer any guarantees of a fair trial. In her complaint, signed by law- yer Joe Giglio, Shorazova com- plains that the freezing order on her Malta assets – in place since 2014 – was based on politically motivated trumped-up charges. She said the measure had no genuine public interest, especial- ly in Malta, and that Malta was positively obliged not to be com- plicit in the breaches of human rights perpetrated in Kazakh- stan. She also complained that she had suffered a breach of her right to a fair trial because of the long constitutional proceedings in Malta in which she protested the asset freeze and the Maltese collaboration with the Kazakh investigation. Rakhat Aliyev, later Shoraz, was married to the daughter of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev, having occupied a high-ranking role in the coun- try's secret service. But he fell out of favour with his father-in-law, and by 2007 while serving as am- bassador in Vienna, he was forci- bly divorced from Nazarbayev's daughter. Aliyev has always claimed that his pro-democracy views imperilled Nazarbayev's iron grip on the country. Like similar dissidents Ali- yev went into exile, but he was dogged by accusations of having commissioned the kidnapping of two Nurbank bankers later found dead. In absentia, he was found guilty by a Kazakh court and sentenced to 20 years' jail. Austria refused a 2007 request for extradition, citing the former Soviet republic's human rights record. But at the same time, criminal proceedings were in- stituted against him in Vienna on charges of money laundering and the Nurbank murders. Aliyev came to Malta in 2010. His four-year stay was dogged by the Austrian investigation, as well as new money launder- ing accusations in Germany and Liechtenstein, and accusations of torture from two former security men who worked by his side. In 2014, the Austrian author- ities issued an arrest warrant against Aliyev when he left Mal- ta, intending to acquire citizen- ship in Cyprus. Aliyev has always insisted that Kazakhstan was funding lawyers and activists across Europe to persecute him on money laun- dering charges. Malta proceedings While in Malta, Aliyev was dogged by a request from Ka- zakhstan to Maltese police for an investigation and an attachment order. In April 2014, the Court of Magistrates issued a freezing order over Aliyev's properties in Malta, his yacht, and companies. Aliyev requested constitution- al redress, complaining that the proceedings by the Attorney General at the request of the Ka- zakh authorities were in breach of his right to a fair trial, given the political situation in Kazakh- stan. But in February 2015, Aliyev was found dead in an Austrian jail – ostensibly having killed himself – after turning himself to Austrian prosecutors in Decem- ber 2014 on the Nurbank mur- ders charge. His lawyers always insisted that Aliyev, 52, could not have killed himself. In October 2017, the Civil Court in its constitutional com- petence found a partial breach and ordered that the documen- tation collected by the Maltese authorities should not be sent to the Kazakh authorities as it had been collected in breach of the rights of the claimants. But it said legal assistance should be continued against Elnara Shorazova and that all documentation be sent to the Kazakh authorities in relation to the criminal charges against her. Shorazova complained to the ECHR that the Maltese court had been shown the various reports presented to it about the regular use of torture in political trials in Kazakhstan; but it had decid- ed that given the seriousness of the financial crimes with which Aliyev was charged, the Maltese authorities should not obstruct the investigation by not sending the collected information. The court did not consider it appropriate to make any gener- al assertions as to democracy in Kazakhstan, which was not rele- vant to the present case, as in it had not been sufficiently proved that the applicant's trial was po- litically motivated. Kazakh exile's wife accuses Malta of human rights breach Wife of Kazakh oligarch found dead in Austrian jail, claims breach of human rights by Maltese courts Elnara Shorazova (top), wife of Rakhat Aliyev (right). He was found dead in an Austrian prison after years being hunted down by the Kazakh regime he once formed part of