Kazakh sports official Gadzhi Gadzhiev, husband of Raushan Kazhibayeva, head of the Kazakh Presidential Television and Radio Complex, has been found to have close ties to Russia. As VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info discovered, he holds a Russian passport and has a large family and business partners living in Dagestan who do business in Russia. His brother works for the Federal Tax Service, and a longtime friend owns restaurants and a chain of electronics stores in Makhachkala.
Kazakh journalists have long referred to Gadzhiev as the "Khorgos overseer" and linked him to the smuggling of Chinese goods through Kazakhstan to Russia, not only household goods but also components for the Russian military-industrial complex. The flow is believed to be organized via road and rail transport. The containers are then sent to the port of Aktau, where they are loaded onto ships bound for Russia. Local investigators even estimated the approximate volume of shadow shipments from China. They compared the two countries' trade turnover data and discovered a $13.8 billion "gap." According to Kazakhstani customs data, trade turnover for 2024 was $30 billion, while Beijing's was $43.8 billion. In other words, goods left China, but for some reason, they never formally entered Kazakhstan.
Accusations against Gadzhiev of overseeing shadow customs flows were reinforced by Kazakh businessman Adlet Musin. He publicly revealed that Gadzhiev showed him correspondence with Ali Altynbayev, First Deputy Head of the National Security Committee, containing customs reports on how many trucks had crossed the Chinese border, what goods they carried, and so on. According to him, Gadzhiev told him not to interfere with customs, otherwise he would create problems for him with law enforcement.
Despite being a well-known public figure, the head of the Kazakhstan Weightlifting Federation, the Republican NOMAD MMA Federation, and a member of the Executive Committee of the National Olympic Committee of Kazakhstan, Gadzhiev's biography contains many blank spots. As the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info discovered, Gadzhi Gadzhiev is a native of the Dagestan SSR, born in Buynaksk and even receiving a Russian passport in 2003. However, he prefers to use Kazakhstani documents when traveling within Russia. In 2022 alone, Gadzhiev visited Russia at least three times, traveling both by air and in a Lexus. Before the war, Gadzhiev also regularly visited Russia and took his children to Moscow.
The phone number of the Kazakhstani public organization "NOMAD MMA Federation," of which Gadzhi Gadzhiev was the head, has been preserved online. His Facebook account was also registered to this number. According to leaked documents, this number has been used for many years to purchase airline tickets for people flying between cities in Kazakhstan and Russia—specifically, Astana, Makhachkala, and Moscow. For example, in 2022, tickets from Kazakhstan to Moscow were purchased for Gadzhi Gadzhiyev himself, and in 2023, tickets from Almaty to Makhachkala and from Moscow to Makhachkala were purchased for a certain Gadzhiali Gadzhialiev. He is a Dagestani businessman, former deputy of the People's Assembly of the Republic of Dagestan from the "Just Russia" party, former owner of "Impulse-21" LLC, and now a sole proprietor and restaurant owner in Makhachkala. Gadzhialiev has been selling audio and video equipment and household appliances at his "Impulse" store since the 1990s, and in 2022, as an individual entrepreneur, he switched to wholesale electronics. The store has now been registered to his relative, Bariyat Gadzhialieva. It's a fairly large company with its own website and delivery services throughout Russia. It's a "golden" business, especially when your old acquaintance controls a customs point on the Chinese border. If the suspicions of Kazakh journalists are correct, dual-use goods for the Russian military-industrial complex could also be shipped this way, disguised as consumer electronics from China.
To be continued
