Kazakh leader's son-in-law says owns tenth of Sucden

By Olzhas Auyezov - Exclusive

ALMATY (Reuters) - Rakhat Aliyev, the powerful son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, said he owns 10 percent of major international sugar merchant Sucden, as well as various other business interests in the oil-rich nation.

Aliyev, married to Nazarbayev's eldest daughter Dariga, recently has come under a barrage of criticism from the Central Asian state's opposition accusing him and the president's family of excessive involvement in business.

"This is obviously nonsense," Aliyev, who rarely comments to the foreign media, said late on Wednesday in written answers to Reuters questions.

"This is an open secret that opposition politicians and their sponsors have accumulated in their hands incomparably larger commercial, media and other assets."

The 44-year-old Aliyev, who only occasionally comments via the media in which he has stakes, said the opposition's allegations were spread by "those who once had problems with the law due to tax-dodging or corruption" when he worked in state bodies.

He held top posts in the tax police and security in 1996-2002.

"Before I entered public service, I was involved in the sugar business. I own a number of sugar refineries and have 10 percent of the shares in the large international sugar trader Sucden," he said without elaborating.

Sucden (Sucres & Denrees), founded by Maurice Varsano in 1952 and now chaired by his son Serge, accounts for about 20 percent of free market volumes of sugar trade in the world, the company said on its Web site www.sucden.com.

A Sucden spokesman declined to comment.

MEDIA, FINANCIAL INTERESTS

Aliyev said that besides sugar he also held "media and financial assets which I have handed over to lawyers to manage".

He said the media assets partly owned by him and his wife Dariga included Kazakhstan's main television channel Khabar, which is 50 percent state-owned, the private channel KTK, the Karavan popular weekly paper and information agency Kazakhstan Today.

Aliyev, who until last Friday held the post of first deputy foreign minister, also owns more than half the voting shares in a mid-sized Kazakh bank called Nurbank. His son Nurali, 22, is on Nurbank's board of directors.

Last Friday, Aliyev was suddenly appointed ambassador to Austria just days after a criminal probe was opened into the activities of former top Nurbank managers.

Aliyev already has served one stint as Kazakhstan's envoy to Austria. Government sources and analysts say both stints could be linked to his falling out with the president.