Threats against the Khrapunovs’ son

Ever since our son Iliyas’s wedding to Madina Ablyazova, Victor and I have regularly received threats of physical violence against our children, coming from Nazarbayev’s entourage.

“Should we fail to have Mukhtar Ablyazov extradited, we will be hitting his children hard to make him writhe in pain”, Nazarbayev’s emissaries made it clear to us.

In December 2010, Nursultan Nazarbayev’s envoy, the Kazakhstani tycoon Alexander Mashkevich, one of the key shareholders of the Eurasian National Resources Corporation, ENRC PLC, voiced a threat against my son, Iliyas Khrapunov, in the course of his meeting with Victor Khrapunov in the Geneva airport.

Yet another threat came in January 2011, again from Alexander Mashkevich, on behalf of president Nazarbayev, in Courchevel.

It looked as if the Eurasian National Resources Corporation sought to make the show more convincing and convey the magnitude of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s threat to kill our son in any corner of the world by meeting not only with Victor but also with me, the mother of the threat’s target and the would-be victim of Nazarbayev and his family.

As we later realized, the dictator’s threat was meant to be especially ominous and poignant as it was voiced to the target’s mother and father amid the festive New Year’s eve atmosphere of the popular ski resort Courchevel.

“Your son would be unable to hide from us, we can reach and kill him anywhere in the world”.

It was clear that the threats against our son were made to put pressure on both us and him so as to make us give up our family ties with Mukhtar Ablyazov.

As the Eurasian National Resources Corporation’s Alexander Mashkevich explained, president Nazarbayev was expecting repentance from our son, who married his enemy’s daughter and was therefore proclaimed a conspirator against the state.