23 | 24 Avenue de la Tropicale, Cannes (AKA La Tropicale)

23/24 Avenue de la Tropicale, Cannes (AKA La Tropicale)

Four Level structure with Ionic columns and cornices, outdoor swimming pool, “four reception rooms, four small lounges, seven bedrooms with dressing room and bathroom, three kitchens, two wine cellars (…)six bedrooms with bathrooms, two lounges, and two kitchens.”

Known as La Tropicale, this property, built in the late 19th century, is perched on a south facing hillside plot overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in one of Cannes’ most exclusive neighborhoods. Many of the houses in the neighborhood are hidden behind high walls and appear to have bodyguards and security cameras.

According to city records, the last time the property changed owners was in January 2008, when a company called Khanika purchased it for 22.9 million euros ($34 million). Khanika’s ownership structure or beneficial owners could not be determined, though a company with a similar name appears in court records in nearby Monaco and a Monaco based bank appeared to provide financing for the transaction.

A real estate brochure published in August 2020 described the property as fulfilling “all the criteria corresponding to the mythology of the Riviera: a historical past, illustrious owners and an inordinate splendor, almost extraordinary.”

The property was one of several that Bolat Nazarbaev and his ex wife Maira battled over in a bitter US lawsuit that grew out of their divorce in the early 2010’s.

US court records indicate a settlement was reached sometime in 2014, though it is unclear what kind of agreement was reached concerning the Cannes property.

The court records also suggest the property was at one point owned by a trust registered in the name of the couple’s son, Khanbolat Nazarbaev, the nephew of former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev. Khanbolat was 9 years old when his parents divorced.

As of December 2020, it was not clear if the property was still for sale.

When RFE | RL journalists photographed the house in September, the property appeared to be inhabited. Laundry was visible hanging to dry in the courtyard and several open windows could be seen on the house.

Nazarbaev’s New York lawyer from the lawsuit told RFE | RL that he no longer represented Nazarbaev and did not know how to contact him. Emails sent to Nazarbaev-linked investment companies in Almaty and to a charity he heads went unanswered as of publication.

A message sent to a WhatsApp number for Kurmangalieva was opened and read but was not responded to. Kesikbaev did not respond to a Facebook message seeking comment.

Avenue Canyelles 2(B), Lloret De Mar, Girona, Spain

Avenue Canyelles 2(B), Lloret De Mar, Girona, Spain

13 bedroom suites; at least 19 bathrooms, at least one swimming pool, home theater, three saunas, large garage for luxury cars

Perched on a southern-facing hillside overlooking Spain’s Mediterranean coast, the sprawling property known locally as Can Juncadella was first developed by a Spanish industrialist around the end of World War II. It was later bought by a Japanese company that operated a school on the grounds. The property was sold in 2007 and since then it has become a regular source of legal controversy. Among locals, the estate is widely believed to belong to former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev himself, a theory referenced in a November 2012 court ruling in the nearby town of Blanes. The mansion is “said to be the property of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan,” the ruling stated. Unconfirmed news reports said Nazarbaev himself attended a party at the property.

Nazarbaev’s press secretary did not answer repeated phone calls made over several days by RFE | RL. An email sent to the main office for the Nur Otan political party, which Nazarbaev formally heads, went unanswered as of publication.

The assertion of Kazakh ownership is backed up in corporate filings. In the mid 2000’s, a company registered in Barcelona called Flinder Data acquired the property for an unknown price. Flinder Data was owned by a Dutchn incorporated company called Faltain, which was in turn owned by another entity called Steppe Unity Cooperative, registered in Singapore.

Steppe Unity is owned in part by Timur Kulibaev, one of Kazakhstan’s wealthiest men and husband of the former Kazakh president’s daughter, Dinara.

Flinder Data’s registered agent is Olga Aristova, who served in the same role for several companies linked to Kulibaev. Aristova was preceded in her role at Flinder by a Kazakh named Assylbek Karibaev, who worked for a subsidiary of KazMunayGas, the Kazakh state oil and gas giant. Kulibaev, who also headed the country’s sovereign wealth fund and, together with Dinara, controls the country’s largest bank by assets, was a top executive with KazMunayGas.

A London law firm that has represented Kulibaev for many years, Farrer & Co, did not respond to emails seeking comment. Emails sent to the charitable foundations that Dinara Kulibaeva heads in Switzerland and Kazakhstan also went unanswered.

Much of the paper trail regarding the Spanish property’s ownership stems from court battles over environmental permits. A local environmental group called SOS Lloret tried to block the expansion of the buildings on the property in the early 2010’s, saying the property was located in a sensitive, protected landscape. The Catalonian regional legislature also joined the fray, passing an ultimately unsuccessful measure to halt the expansion.

More recently, the property’s owners sought to block access to a section of public road that ran close to the estate. The road was closed for several years, but environmental groups won a series of rulings in local courts, which ordered that the road remain public. In August, the region’s highest court dismissed an appeal by Flinder.

Meanwhile, while the fight over the road played out in courts, the property’s owners aggressively tried to block people from walking on the road, erecting menacing signs and loudspeakers that blared warnings, according to environmentalists, one activist, and local media. They told RFE | RL that some of the loudspeakers also broadcast sounds of gunfire, an apparent attempt to frighten locals.

Chateau de Bellerive, N° 25 and N°. 27 Chemin du Milieu, Collonge Bellerive, Canton of Geneva

Mansion with stone facade flanked by two square towers; designated a Swiss cultural site of national importance

Built in the 17th century, the Chateau de Bellerive was for many years owned by Sadruddin Aga Khan, the former UN diplomat and jet-setting global celebrity known for his philanthropic work.

In 2019, the lakeside property was purchased by Dinara Kulibaeva, the daughter of former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev,for 62 million Swiss francs ($ 63.8 million).

Kulibaeva expanded her lakeside holdings in January 2020, when she purchased an adjoining tract of land totalling about 1.5 hectares for 44 million Swiss francs ($ 49.3 million). As with the Chateau de Bellerive, the property, which includes a smaller house – a historical building reportedly once owned by a 19th century French military commander – was acquired from an extended member of the Sadruddin family.

The Swiss magazine Bilan last year ranked Kulibaeva as Switzerland’s 59th wealthiest person.

Villa Galli, Via Cantonale 3, Melide (AKA La Romantica)

Site currently under construction; five story hotel with restaurant and swimming pool reportedly planned

Until 2013, the property on Lake Lugano housed a famed 19th century building known as Villa Galli, or more affectionately as La Romantica, popular among generations of Lugano locals for a luxury restaurant, tea room, nightclub, dance hall, and its shoreside promenades.

Seven years earlier, the property was quietly obtained by a company called Stott Limited, incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, a jurisdiction famous for hosting offshore firms with opaque ownership. The company was closely linked to Behget Pacolli, a Kosovar businessman who over two decades has built a slew of massive buildings in Kazakhstan, including government palaces, concert halls, and the airport terminal in the capital, Nur Sultan, where he is also an honorary citizen.

Pacolli’s construction company, Mabatex, is headquartered in Lugano.

In 2008, Pacolli publicly revealed the ownership of the property where La Romantica was housed, saying that he owned three neighboring buildings, while Stott Limited, for whom he said he was the official representative, owned the La Romantica building itself.

In 2010, Pacolli denied that he had purchased La Romantica “on behalf of third parties” and threatened legal action against those who suggested this was the case. He also said that as far as he knows, “no member of the family of President Nazarbaev is or ever has been the owner” of La Romantica or Stott Limited, local media reported.

Despite public outcry from historic preservationists, Pacolli demolished the aging La Romantica in 2013. Since then, however, the developer has been fighting with local authorities over zoning permits. The land is now home to a tennis club and three nondescript office buildings.

An investigation by Swiss journalists published in 2010, meanwhile, found that Stott Limited was 50 percent owned by another company, Transasian Oil, headed by an Indian businessman and partner of Timur Kulibaev, whose name appears on several Kulibaev owned companies.

Transasian Oil loaned Stott more than 10 million Swiss francs ($ 12.4 million), according to the investigation by Swiss public broadcaster RTS, and received the Villa Galli property as collateral. The debt pledge on the property totaled 8.5 million Swiss francs ($ 10.5 million), making Transasian Oil the ultimate owner of Villa Galli, the RTS investigation said.

In a 2015 report on the threat facing Switzerland from money laundering and terrorism, Swiss Federal Police detailed an example of a scheme in which an unnamed Swiss property is purchased under circumstances that raise suspicions.

While the scheme does not name the people or companies involved, it closely mirrors details in the RTS investigation and publicly known information about the Villa Galli property and the individuals it has been linked to.

Like Kulibaev, the person identified as “Suspect A” in the Swiss Federal Police scheme is described as someone “accused of having benefited from his position as a manager in the national oil company of an oil producing country to enrich himself illegally.” This person’s money, in this scheme, “would have passed through different companies to finally be used by a front man to acquire property in Switzerland,” the document states.

According to the scheme, the company resembling Stott gains ownership of the property using a loan of 8.55 million Swiss francs from a company resembling Transasian Oil that is ultimately controlled by someone who has been “a confidant and front man” of “Suspect A” for “many years.”

The mortgage note for the historic building is then held by the company resembling Transasian Oil as collateral for the loan that the firm resembling Stott uses to buy the property, the scheme shows.

Asked whether the property cited in the scheme in the 2015 report was the La Romantica building, Swiss Federal Police spokeswoman Katrin Schmitter said: “We are subject to official secrecy and cannot comment on specific cases.”

Schmitter told RFE / RL, however, that the examples “described in our reports are generally based on real life cases.”

The federal police report also echoes the real-life case of Kulibaev, who was investigated by the Swiss Attorney-General’s Office for possible money laundering, bribery, and theft of state property. The probe was dropped in 2013 after authorities said they found no evidence of wrongdoing.

The report states that the allegations against “Suspect A” are determined to be “unfounded” and the proceedings dropped due to “lack of evidence as to the criminal origin of the assets.”

As in the case of La Romantica, the property cited in the scheme is “demolished” amid media reports that “Suspect A” and “an acquaintance and presumed accomplice” intend “to replace it with a luxury hotel.”

The London law firm that has represented Kulibaev for many years, Farrer & Co., did not respond to emails seeking comment. RFE | RL also left a voice mail with Kulibaev’s lawyer.

In two separate e-mails sent to RFE | RL, Pacolli’s longtime representative in Lugano said Stott Ltd.was, in fact, “100 percent the company of Mr. Behget Pacolli” and “Stott is the 100 percent owner” of the La Romantica property.

The representative said the purchase of properties more than a decade ago, and the construction of a luxury hotel now planned for the former location of La Romantica, were “100 percent financed by Mr B Pacolli.”

“There [was] no working relationship with Mr.Kulibaev at all!” she said in her email.

She did not respond to a follow-up e-mail seeking further details of when Pacolli gained control of Stott, and the discrepancy with Pacolli’s earlier public statements about the ownership of the Villa Galli properties.

Swiss journalists also reported that Dinara Kulibaeva lived in a nearby villa between January 2007 and December 2009, which they said she rented from Pacolli for a reported 50,000 Swiss francs ($ 57,000) annually.

Pacolli’s representative confirmed that his villa in Lugano was rented at one point for an unspecified 12-month period to the Kulibaev family “while their son and nephew were visiting the American school in Lugano, and for that period of time the two students were living in the villa.”

“After the end of the semesters, the tenancy has been terminated,” she told RFE | RL.

10225 Collins AveNUE, Unit 1801, Bal Harbour, Florida

Luxury three-bedroom, five-bath beachfront apartment in a 24-story building featuring a spa, fitness center, and oceanfront swimming pool

This oceanfront apartment with a wraparound balcony and sweeping view of the Atlantic Ocean was purchased for $3.4 million in 2006 by Daniyar Kesikbaev, the stepson of Bolat Nazarbaev, the brother of then-Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev, according to Florida property records.

The property, however, became part of a rancorous lawsuit in the United States between Bolat and his ex-wife, Maira Kurmangalieva, who is Kesikbaev’s mother. That dispute also involved millions of dollars in Manhattan real estate as well as what Bolat’s lawyer described as “over $50 million” worth of jewelry purchased with his client’s money.

Amid the dispute, Kesikbaev ultimately transferred ownership of the Florida oceanfront apartment to Bolat in October 2014, Florida property records show. In March 2016, Bolat transferred the deed for a nominal $10 to a now-inactive Florida company, which two months later sold it to the current listed owner, another Florida firm that is also now inactive. The listed sale price to the current owner was $3.5 million. The asking price was originally listed at $4.35 million.

The Real Deal, a real estate industry site, reported shortly after the sale that the apartment had been on the market since the previous fall, around a year after Kesikbaev transferred ownership to Bolat.

The fight over the Florida apartment was not the only property dispute for Bolat Nazarbaev in the Miami area. In 2012, he sued a developer for alleged breach of contract over a balcony he claimed was insufficiently private.

His complaint stated that Bolat paid a $1.2 million deposit for an apartment that the developer indicated would feature “private” balconies. In reality, the balcony for the apartment he planned to purchase “was not private at all,” the complaint said.

“The privacy of the balcony is particularly important for the buyer in this case. Bolat Nazarbayev is the brother of the President of Kazakhstan. A private balcony is necessary for security reasons,” the Courthouse News Service cited the complaint as saying.

Bolat requested that the developer return his deposit, and court records indicate the two sides reached a confidential settlement.

2 Margo Way, Alpine, New Jersey

2 Margo Way, Alpine, New Jersey

Eight bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, eight-car garage, indoor basketball court, saltwater pool, outdoor spa, gourmet and catering kitchens, billiards lounge, wine cellar

When it was last sold, the Margo Way mansion, located in a cul-de-sac in one of the wealthiest postal codes in the United States, was reportedly among the most expensive homes sold in state history.

The purchaser was hidden behind an anonymous company, a common technique for buyers of U.S. properties looking to avoid scrutiny. Initial press speculation suggested a Russian oligarch was behind the purchase. But records filed in U.S. federal court suggest that the home purchase was funded by Bolat Nazarbaev, the brother of former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev.

The house was purchased in late 2012, just a few months after Bolat became embroiled in a bitter legal fight with his ex-wife, Maira Kurmangalieva, and her son Daniyar Kesikbaev, over ownership of several Manhattan properties.

A proposed settlement submitted by Bolat’s lawyer in New York State Supreme Court in March 2014 stated that his client would relinquish any claim against Kurmangalieva relating to the property “located at 2 Margo Way, Alpine, New Jersey.” Court papers filed as part of the lawsuit identified 2 Margo Way as the residence where Kesikbaev and Kurmangalieva lived, and where court papers were served.

New Jersey property records show that the property has not been sold since the anonymous New Jersey-incorporated company bought it for $20 million in 2012.

Precisely where the money for the home purchase came from remains unclear.

But in a February 2014 e-mail to Kurmangalieva’s U.S. lawyer, Bolat Nazarbaev’s attorney wrote that “we believe” the New Jersey property “was purchased with Mr. Nazarbayev’s money” and estimated its value as more than $20 million.

In the same letter, attorney John Snyder also indicated that Bolat Nazarbaev had acquired more than $50 million in jewelry that Kurmangalieva was holding onto.

“[A]s part of the settlement, Mr. Nazarbayev has agreed to release claims against your clients relating to jewelry that Ms. Kurmangaliyeva has appropriated for herself, valued in excess of $50 million,” Snyder wrote.

Kurmangalieva has been listed as an executive or shareholder in several Kazakh companies, including one that mined precious metals.

In 2015, Kesikbaev married the daughter of Malaysia’s prime minister.

In a separate lawsuit filed later in U.S. federal court, a seller of expensive Hermes handbags in New York sued Kurmangalieva after she refused to pay a bill of more than $400,000 for the bags she had purchased. Kurmangalieva at one point threatened the seller, according to the lawsuit, telling her in a phone call: “You know who my son is! He is the son-in-law of the prime minister of Malaysia. Do you know what we can do to you and your family! I will hurt you!”

Ultimately, Kurmangalieva agreed to pay for the bags.

Kurmangalieva and Bolat Nazarbaev have a son together: Khanbolat Nazarbaev, who was born in 2002.

Nazarbaev’s New York lawyer from the lawsuit told RFE/RL that he no longer represented Nazarbaev and did not know how to contact him. E-mails sent to Nazarbaev-linked investment companies in Almaty and to a charity he heads went unanswered as of publication.

A message sent to a WhatsApp number for Kurmangalieva was opened and read but was not responded to. Kesikbaev did not respond to a Facebook message seeking comment.

Hotel Corso, Stará Louka 460|38, Karlovy Vary

Six-story, 24-room boutique hotel with heated swimming pool and wellness center; overlooking the Tepla River in the center of Karlovy Vary; underwent major reconstruction in 2018.

Located in the heart of Karlovy Vary, the Hotel Corso is owned by a Czech-registered company called Kalma II, which is controlled by Zelina Katranova, whose daughter is married to the son of Timur and Dinara Kulibaev. Registered in 1999, the company Kalma II is headquartered at the same address as the hotel.

The company’s stated activities include “hospitality activities, the sale of fermented alcohol, potable alcohol and spirits, road motor transport, rental property, residential and nonresidential premises and cosmetic services.”

In Kazakhstan, Katranova is a general director of a company called Vostochnoye Rudoupravlenie, the largest producer and supplier of specialized minerals used by several oil- and gas-producing companies in Kazakhstan and the former Soviet Union. She has held positions in several other major companies in Kazakhstan, including a rail-freight shipping company, Doszhan Temir Zholy, which is a subsidiary of the state-owned railroad Kazakhstan Temir Zholy.

The hotel appeared to not be open when visited by RFE/RL reporters in September. Waiters working in cafes and restaurants nearby said the hotel had not been operational in recent memory.

E-mails sent by RFE/RL to three Kazakh companies on whose boards Katranova sits, including the rail-freight company, went unanswered as of publication. No one answered the main office phone at Hotel Corso on two separate days.