The old and new oligarchs of Kazakhstan

A figure completely unknown to the general public, the young builder Shakhmurat Mutalip, has put himself forward as a buyer for several billion dollars of Kazakhstan's leading mining company, the latest step in his meteoric rise in Astana. The suspicion is that he has inherited the legacy of the power groups that prospered in Tokaev's shadow.

Astana (AsiaNews) - A new figure has emerged on the economic scene in Kazakhstan: businessman Shakhmurat Mutalip, who is not listed by Forbes among the richest men in the country and is completely unknown to the general public, is now proposing to buy Kazakhstan's leading mining company for several billion dollars.

The owner of a construction company, he has already acquired the assets of a member of the ruling caste in ‘old Kazakhstan’, Kajrat Sharipbaev, husband of Dariga Nazarbaeva, daughter of former president Nursultan Nazarbaev. Mutalip has already been received twice by President Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev at the Akorda Palace, and everyone is wondering what his sudden rise is based on.

Born in 1990 in the Almaty region, Shakhmurat began working in 2008 as a mechanic at the Bent railway sleeper manufacturing company, and according to his official biography, he was simultaneously studying at Turan University in the southern capital of Kazakhstan, where he obtained two degrees, in economics and religious studies.

In seven years of work, he rose to the position of vice-president of Bent, then in 2016 became an advisor to the president of the construction company Kazakhselmaš and then director of Ist Group, a manufacturing and business supplies company. In 2020, he became general manager of the construction company Integra Construction KZ.

For 15 years, Mutalip was a top manager, albeit on a contract basis, until 2022, when he became the beneficiary of Integra Construction, which ranks 12th among Kazakhstan's leading companies and is rapidly rising in the business world.

The company was founded in 1997, changed its name several times and belonged to men very close to the “eternal president” Nursultan Nazarbayev, the oligarchs of the so-called “Eurasian trio” Aleksandr Mashkevich, Patokh Shodiev and Alijan Ibragimov. It was involved in the restoration of railway lines, becoming an important international player in this sector, and in a 2023 trial for unclear financial transactions, it emerged that it had been sold for an unknown sum to another company founded a few months earlier, of which Mutalip was the owner.

The National Bank requested the cancellation of these agreements, which were deemed invalid by law and designed to prevent the previous owners from being held liable for the large debts they had accumulated with the state. The dispute was settled in 2024, with the balance of these debts being acknowledged, and Mutalip was awarded Nazarbayeva's assets following a series of “Chinese box” transactions.

Now Integra Construction has 15 branches and carries out large projects, including on behalf of the state, until at the end of 2025 Mutalip's name appeared in the headlines of many articles in the international press; Bloomberg and the Financial Times published exclusive material on his presence in Kazakhstan's main mining sectors.

Šakhmurat Mutalip now actively participates in the social life of the country; in February 2024, he was chosen as president of the Kazakh Boxing Federation, taking the place of another oligarch, Kenes Rakišev, and is vice-president of the national Olympic committee. In 2025, in addition to meetings with the president, he made a name for himself with the project to build the metro in Almaty, which will be carried out in partnership with Chinese companies.

According to Orazali Erzanov, opposition politician and head of the Elge Kajtaru fund, “Mutalip is young, he is 35 years old and is no better than the other 20 million Kazakhs... he did not make his money through talent, but received it as an inheritance from powerful men, in order to continue the oligarchic politics of the last 30 years”. Several observers and protagonists of social and political life in Kazakhstan share his view, as the country seeks to renew itself with simple “personnel changes” and by putting young people in charge of doing what the powerful have always done.