Rakishev's Russian Oil Klondike

Trading Russian oil has become an industry of rapid enrichment. Savvy intermediaries are making fortunes worth hundreds of millions of dollars within two or three years. Rakishev, who lost substantial sums in IT startups — reportedly the money of former President Nazarbayev's family and inner circle — appears to be determined to recoup his losses. In recent years, his holding company Fincraft has been systematically consolidating oil assets.

Fincraft Group recently transferred a 26.95% stake in the oil and gas company Tethys Petroleum Limited (Cayman Islands) to its wholly owned subsidiary FG Limited, registered at the Astana International Financial Centre in November 2025. Rakishev himself has stated his intention to acquire a full one hundred percent of Tethys, which develops the Akkulka, Kyzyloy and Kul-Bas fields. Around 40% of the company belongs to the American firm Pope Asset Management of Tennessee. In Kazakhstan, the offshore vehicle has a subsidiary — Tethys AralGas. Fincraft explained the restructuring as the creation of a new oil and gas holding designed to attract long-term investment.

A processing chain is being built in parallel. A company owned by Ilyas Tasmagambetov — a friend and relative of Rakishev, and nephew of CSTO Secretary General Imangali Tasmagambetov, whose daughter Rakishev married — is set to build an oil processing facility in the Aktobe region. The same region is home to the Aktobe Oil Refinery plant, which Ilyas Tasmagambetov managed until August 2019.

The story surrounding that plant is a criminal chronicle of its own. Executives charged with fraud claimed that Tasmagambetov was attempting to seize control of the enterprise by force. Investigators documented the illegal export of 13,000 tonnes of crude oil worth 1.4 billion tenge — over four million dollars. The shipments went out disguised as a petroleum blend called OilBlend; the buyer was China Petrol Company Junda, the largest refinery in Kyrgyzstan, built under China's Belt and Road Initiative. Almaz Kuzagaliyev, the plant's marketing director whose family held a stake in the company, refused to sell his shares. Eyewitnesses reported that he nearly came to blows with Rakishev, who was throwing his full support behind Tasmagambetov's takeover bid. Bystanders prevented the fight. The criminal case then went full throttle. Kuzagaliyev was sentenced to 19 years.

The balance of power shifted after Imangali Tasmagambetov resigned as Kazakhstan's ambassador to Russia in 2019. As a Nazarbayev loyalist, he lost his leverage under the new president. Kuzagaliyev's conviction was overturned, the charges were reduced, and in 2022 he was released directly in the courtroom. The plant is now run by Nurlan Karazhigitov — a co-owner and business partner of Tasmagambetov. It is widely believed that Ilyas Tasmagambetov retains real control over the enterprise.

His company Invest Oil Trade handles wholesale trade in fuel oil and gasoline. It is this firm that is building the processing unit near the village of Bestamak. A subsidiary, BSG Trading, registered in 2023, also trades in fuel. Combined with Rakishev's upstream assets, a closed loop emerges: extraction — refining — trading — delivery through IOT Logistics.

This system also encompasses the story of German trader Christopher Eppinger. He met Ilyas Tasmagambetov during an internship at KazMunayGaz. Tasmagambetov persuaded him to invest in the Aktobe refinery. Eppinger initially turned a profit and began raising funds from German investors. Then his Kazakhstani partners defrauded the Germans out of a substantial sum. Someone helped Eppinger relocate to Dubai and introduced him to Canadian-Pakistani trader Murtaza Lakhani — a specialist in sanctions evasion schemes. Lakhani had built such schemes first for Iran, then for Rosneft. He taught Eppinger the trade. Within two years, Eppinger made 250 million dollars trading Russian oil.

Lakhani operated for years out of London, where his Mercantile & Maritime UK Ltd is registered. His closeness to European elites explained his remarkable untouchability: tankers and counterparties fell under sanctions while he himself remained clear. Lakhani only appeared on sanctions lists in December 2025.

Rakishev moves in the same circles. As the son-in-law of Imangali Tasmagambetov, he spent years acting as a broker in international business dealings — helping wealthy foreigners gain access to the right offices, putting in a word on their behalf. A report by the Freedom for Eurasia Foundation documented his cooperation with Iskander Masimov, son of former Prime Minister and KNB chief Karim Masimov. Together they organized visits to Kazakhstan by foreign officials and US members of Congress that included meetings with their respective fathers. When testifying under oath in a US court, Rakishev refused to answer whether he had ever purchased gifts for Masimov. Karim Masimov was sentenced to 18 years for high treason after Tokayev came to power. His son changed his surname and is now known as Iskander Karim. He owns the Amanat Publishing House in the United States and has worked since 2017 at the Arab fund Mubadala, which has deep ties to Russia.

Equally telling is the story involving Prince Andrew. In 2007, Rakishev brokered the sale of the ancestral estate Sunninghill Park to Kazakhstani oligarch Timur Kulibayev — Nazarbayev's son-in-law. The price was so inflated that British journalists described the deal as a veiled bribe. The expectation was that the prince, then the UK's trade envoy, would persuade European bankers to manage the Kulibayev family's capital — that was precisely the subject of correspondence that leaked to the press. Through Rakishev, the prince also lobbied for Kazakhstani government contracts for a Greek water treatment company and a Swiss financial house, worth half a billion dollars. The scandal in Britain was enormous.

Today, Rakishev has Equus Petroleum Ltd registered in the United Kingdom. Its Dutch subsidiary, Equus Petroleum B.V., owns the Kazakhstani company Kumkol Trans Service, which holds an extraction contract for the Sarybulak field through 2039. The total assets of Equus Petroleum B.V. exceeded 126 million euros at the end of 2024.

Kazakhstan exports its oil to Europe via the Tengiz-Novorossiysk pipeline through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a joint venture with Russia. In 2022, Astana rebranded its crude from Urals to KEBCO — Kazakhstan Export Blend Crude Oil. That same year, international investigators found that a number of refineries were blending KEBCO with Russian crude and selling the result as purely Kazakhstani oil. The circle was complete.