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Wall Street Journal journalists decided to study in detail the business connections of Kazakh millionaire Rashit Mahat, who, shortly before the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency empire of Sam Bankman-Fried, managed to receive almost $500 million from an American businessman by selling to his hedge fund most of his stake in the Bitcoin mining enterprise Genesis Digital Assets.
This interest is not idle: the funds he received are part of what US prosecutors during the recent trial of Bankman-Fried called a “waste of money” stolen by Bankman-Fried from FTX clients.
According to the WSJ ( translation of the article into Russian is here ), Mahat has long been a business partner of Kairat Satybaldy, the nephew of the first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
In 2022, Satybaldy was sentenced to six years in prison on the following charges:
Agree, today it is better not to mention such a partnership, and therefore Mahat’s lawyers claim that he never had a close relationship with Satybaldy.
Meanwhile, the WSJ material mentions that for some time Mahat was not only a partner but an adviser to Satybalda: from 2006 to 2009, he was allegedly an adviser to the chairman of the board of Dunie Corp., a small company 70% owned by Nazarbayev’s nephew.
“The material appeared on the archived websites of the Kazakhstan Engineering company, as well as in the annual reports of Kazkommertsbank for 2015 and 2016, minutes of the meeting of the board of directors for April 2016 and a press release. Mahat’s biographical information on the archived website of a third company, Estate Management Company, indicates that he worked at Dunie,” says the WSJ (Mahat was an independent director at various times in these companies).
Rashit Mahat
Journalists also cite the fact that in 2017, Mahat was Satybalda’s representative at the meeting of shareholders of Kaspi JSC, according to the minutes of the board of directors. Satybaldy, one of Kaspi’s largest shareholders, gave Mahat a power of attorney so he could vote on his behalf.
However, Mahat’s lawyers call references to his role in Dunie in the biographical materials false.
"Our client has not worked and has never worked for Mr. Satybaldy either as an adviser or in any other way in relation to Dunie Corporation or any other company," the WSJ quoted them as saying.
As for representation at the shareholders’ meeting of Kaspi JSC, lawyers claim that Satybaldy could not physically attend the meeting, so he allowed Mahat – a member of Kaspi’s advisory board – to act as his confidant at the meeting, however, his powers were limited to this purpose and Mahat did not receive a general power of attorney.
Rashit Makhat himself is a non-public person, and he is better known to Kazakhstanis as a “victim of extortion”. Recall that it was from him that blogger Makhambet Abzhan allegedly extorted 50 million tenge, who wrote about the alleged assets of the nephew of the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kanysh Izbastin.
It was just about cryptocurrency mining farms in Kazakhstan, owned by Genesis Digital Assets. And in the public domain there is his only interview , where the businessman talks about his relationship with the relatives of the powerful of this world.
"Abzhan wrote that among the owners (of Genesis Digital Assets - Author) – nephew of the current president, the previous president. These are speculations, some false facts (...) The company was founded in 2013, began its work in Kazakhstan in 2016, and at no stage did Kairat Satybaldy have anything to do with it. The opinion that I am the nominal owner of a number of businesses that actually belong to Satybaldy is wrong. I communicated with him, we participated in the hajj together with. him, but it is not true to be his nominal representative. I was not his partner, I did not represent his interests," Makhat answered a direct question whether he was Satybaldy’s confidant.
In Mahat’s personal biographical note , there is also no mention of Dunie: it says that during these years he worked as deputy general director of L&K BUILDING LLP and vice president of Prime investment company LLP. However, UlysMedia, talking about the "team of Kairat Satybaldy", calls Makhat "the right hand, without whom Satybaldy allegedly did not make a single decision."
And the community on VKontakte "White Spring", talking about the entourage of the Russian athlete Khabib Nurmagomedov (Makhat himself is also no stranger to martial arts and in 2011 was the world champion in jiu-jitsu), writes the following about our hero:
"Next to Khabib (in the photo - Author .) — Rashid Mahat. The right hand of the oligarch, NSC general and Nazarbayev’s nephew Kairat Satybaldy. In Satybaldy’s team, Rashid Mahat was responsible , among other things, for various kinds of violent actions . By violent actions, we mean, for example, the beating of a businessman right in Satybaldy’s office and so on in the same style."
However, it must be said that the authorized bodies did not show any interest in Rashit Mahat during the investigation of Satybaldy’s criminal case.
And if we return to the WSJ article, it seems that nothing serious threatens Rashit Mahat in the United States either.
"The deal with Genesis Digital in early 2022 was one of the largest that prosecutors noticed, showing jurors a chart showing how more than $1 billion in funds flowed from customers to an account owned by the Bankman-Fried hedge fund and then into Genesis Digital shares .
Prosecutors did not mention Mahat, who has not been charged with wrongdoing.
FTX’s new executives are investigating Genesis Digital, but a Genesis Digital spokesperson said the Bankman-Fried deal was "a simple secondary sale of the company’s shares - as is common in many industries during strong markets."
Mahat’s lawyers added that the sale "was carried out in accordance with all applicable market rules and regulations, and reputable law firms acted on both sides of the transaction. According to them, "his shares were acquired along with the shares of a number of others founders of the company," the article says.
In addition, Rashit Mahat, according to his lawyers from the London law firm Mishcon de Reya, no longer works at Genesis Digital, but runs a venture capital firm in Dubai.
BY THE WAY
A curious photo is circulating on social networks: President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar and Almaty Mayor Yerbolat Dossaev in the company of the founder of the FTX crypto exchange Sam Bankman-Fried.
