Last month, the Constitutional Court determined that President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev can legally stand for the presidency again under the new basic law that entered force on July 1. This ruling leaves his earlier pledge not to seek office again—his current term ends in 2029—firmly in the balance. Whether Tokayev decides to exercise that privilege or not, Kazakhstan’s business elite is being recast in his image, right in time for a new electoral cycle. Despite his criticisms of the “oligopolies” formed under predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, some of the country’s most powerful companies outside of the oil sector are now concentrated in even fewer hands, following a series of megadeals first reported in the second half of last year. Simultaneously, there has been a subtle shift, with the new captains of industry visibly more tethered to officialdom than the Nazarbayev-loyal oligarchs who preceded them.
One of the clearest examples of this trend is the Luxembourg-domiciled Eurasian Resources Group (ERG), a mining group whose critical minerals output is globally significant and whose contribution to the Kazakh economy is estimated between 2 and 4 percent of GDP. In a series of Instagram clips posted in June, Kudrat Shamiyev, the 36-year-old chairman of Integra Construction KZ and chief of Kazakhstan’s Taekwondo federation, discussed his business philosophy. Shamiyev, who was appointed CEO of Eurasian Group LLP—the Kazakh division of ERG—by the time the third clip was posted, described his approach as “similar to China-style,” noting that it is “easier for us, easier for now.” Shamiyev oversees the production of iron ore, bauxite, alumina, and ferrochrome, which are central to geostrategic competition between Beijing and the West. ERG is also a major producer of cobalt, vital for battery production, with assets in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Shamiyev’s appointment followed a move by Integra’s owner, Shakhmurat Mutalip, dubbed Kazakhstan’s “youngest oligarch,” who secured 39.3 percent of the group in May. Shamiyev and Mutalip are childhood friends who attended the same school outside Almaty. The financing for Mutalip’s buy-in, the implications for ERG’s large outstanding loans to Russian banks sanctioned by Western governments, and the potential impact on supply chains have reignited Western press interest in the company, formerly known as Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC). The company was once associated with a founding “Troika” of post-Soviet oligarchs: Aleksander Machkevitch, Alijan Ibragimov, and Patokh Chodiev. Of these, only Chodiev, an Uzbekistan-born Belgian citizen, remains alive. He and the heirs of Machkevitch, a Kyrgyzstan-born Israeli national who died last year, sold their shares of 18.6 percent and 20.7 percent respectively to Mutalip’s Nature energy solutions Ltd. for undisclosed sums. The Ibragimov family has not sold its shares, and Alijan Ibragimov’s son, Shukhrat, became the group’s chairman in 2024.
The Kazakh state’s stake in ERG grew from less than 12 percent to 40 percent after the company delisted from the London Stock Exchange in 2013, following a decade-long investigation by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office that ended without charges. This increased heft granted Astana the right to send two representatives to the group’s five-member board. In March, Roman Sklyar, then the first deputy prime minister, replaced Serik Zhumangarin as a government representative. By May, Sklyar became Tokayev’s chief of staff, a role typically not combined with boardroom positions. The board is now a four-person affair, with Ibragimov the last remaining member with blood ties to the founding Trio. Kudrat Shamiyev, Nature energy solutions Ltd., ERG, and the Kazakh presidential administration all declined to comment on these developments.
