Mukhtar Ablyazov: Kazakh billionaire to be extradited to Russia from France

Mr Ablyazov went on the run during a fraud case at the High Court

Mukhtar Ablyaz (Reuters)

The former billionaire businessman Mukhtar Ablyazov, who fled a British jail sentence in 2012, has been ordered by the French Prime Minister to be extradited to Russia to face fraud charges.

Mr Ablyazov is famed for going on the run during what was the biggest fraud case ever heard in the British High Court. He is accused of stealing up to £4bn from the BTA bank in his native Kazakhstan, where he was once chairman and majority shareholder.

He disappeared in 2012, after being sentenced to jail by the High Court judge for contempt of court. He was eventually tracked down by private investigators working for BTA when they tailed a close friend from Heathrow airport to the South of France.

British newspapers revelled in the detail of his exploits running between the three luxury villas he used as hideouts there, particularly as he was spied in one making a bed in his underpants. He was finally arrested in one of them in July 2013, in a dramatic Swat-team raid by the French police.

However, over the period of his incarceration, his defence team, assisted by his wife and daughter, painted him as a victim of a political witch-hunt by Kazakhstan’s dictatorial President Nursultan Nazarbayev. These claims were based on his previous leadership of an opposition political party.

Human Rights Watch has urged France not to send him to Russia, claiming he will be quickly dispatched to Kazakhstan where he will face an unfair trial.

His extradition hearings in France have been labyrinthine, as he has fought every level of court in the country to prevent expulsion. However, the decision by the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, means that he is finally running out of rope. He will now apply to the Conseil d’État to block the decree; it would be highly unusual for it to be overturned.