On Jan. 8, Kazakh government officials charged Karim Masimov, the former head of the National Security Committee, with treason and put him under arrest. Masimov, a longtime and influential ally of the former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, had been dismissed from his post on Jan. 5, the same day that Nazabayev was dismissed as the head of the National Security Council (a different organization). The Jan. 8 legal charges pose the question as to how deep a shift President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is making, and to what end. Previously, it was conventional wisdom that Nazarbayev had resigned in 2019 to install the loyal caretaker, Tokayev, in his place, while he and his circle maintained effective control and rule.
Masimov has an interesting history. Besides having served as Prime Minister (2007-12 and 2014-16) and, in between, serving as Nazarbayev’s chief of staff (2012-14), he has also had posts as Transport Minister and Economics Minister. In the late 1980s, he had studied Chinese at the Peking University of Culture and graduated from the Law Institute at the University of Wuhan in 1991 with plans to work in trade relations between the Soviet Union and China. After the dismantling of the Soviet Union, he became a senior economist in Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, concentrating on trade and projects with China. Anti-China groups have accused him of scandals in connection with projects of growing soybeans and rapeseed for China in Kazakhstan, and the use of the Chinese Eximbank in Kazakh government projects.
