Kazakh Billionaire Says He’s Got Nothing to Hide

When Bulat Utemuratov’s boss told him to go to Europe and open the first trading house for their newly independent Kazakhstan, his reaction was pure Soviet. “Oh no, They want to exile me,” Utemuratov remembers thinking with alarm.

The year was 1992. The Soviet Union had just been disbanded, and Russia had introduced its own ruble, sparking hyperinflation in former republics such as Kazakhstan that were still using the old Soviet currency. The first, and still only, president, former Politburo member Nursultan Nazarbayev, was desperate for hard currency.