The FT has just published an investigation into who benefited from a multi-billion-dollar pipeline project involving Russia, Central Asia and China. Documents the FT has seen indicate that a big beneficiary — whose interest has until now been secret — was Timur Kulibayev, billionaire son-in-law of a former Kazakh president and one of the most influential people in the energy industry of the former Soviet Union. Under the scheme outlined in the documents, after Mr Kulibayev oversaw the award of state contracts to the Russian pipeline group ETK, it appears that ETK’s owner Alexander Karmanov agreed to an arrangement to divert part of the company’s profits to Mr Kulibayev.
Mr Kulibayev’s lawyers say no such scheme existed. They add that he has been the victim of a “campaign of disinformation”. The FT is publishing some of the documents that underpin our reporting. You can see them in a PDF here, both the originals and our translations. They’re…