What is behind powerful Kyrgyz crime boss’s murder? 

In a special operation on 4 October, Kyrgyzstan’s security service killed the country’s biggest crime boss, Kamchy Kolbayev, following it up with a wide crackdown on his criminal network. 

Given Kyrgyz politics’ known intertwinement with the criminal world, the development is more than about the ordinary fight against crime. 

In a statement about the clampdown on Kolbayev’s “criminal empire”, the Kyrgyz security service accused him of using his criminal resources “to influence, at various times, political processes in the country”. 

It said that among those who had fallen under Kolbayev’s influence, “fearing his criminal group’s resources”, were unnamed “high-ranking politicians”.

The service said Kolbayev, whose full official name is Kamchybek Asanbayev, acted with “a sense of impunity”.

The situation, it added, “represented serious threats to national security”.

The Kyrgyz security service has announced that in the ongoing operations against Kolbayev’s gang it has arrested dozens of suspects and seized various assets worth an estimated 1bn dollars.

It said the assets would be returned to the state or business owners robbed by Kolbayev’s group.

The US government in 2011 designated Kolbayev as a drug baron, linking him to the international criminal network known as The Brothers’ Circle.

Kolbayev’s links to the country’s top politicians have long been an open secret. He is believed to have been instrumental in bringing to power the current power-tandem of President Sadyr Japarov and Security Chief Kamchybek Tashiyev. 

Kyrgyz activist Shokhrukh Saipov, who is based in Berlin, has told Exclusive.kz that it was thanks to Kolbayev’s support, with the use of armed criminal mobs, that Japarov and Tashiyev came out victorious in the power struggle between various political groups following the disputed parliamentary elections in 2020.

“As a result, since coming to power, the two [Japarov and Tashiev] have been paying back their ‘debt’ to Kolbayev, through supporting his various business projects, like opening casinos and so on,” Saipov said. 

“They probably did not want to do that for the rest of their lives,” Saipov said. 

Kolbayev’s fate resembles that of another Kyrgyz crime boss, Rysbek Akmatbayev, who supported the overthrow of former president Askar Akayev in 2005, bringing to power Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

Akmatbayev was elected to parliament in 2006, turning into one of the most influential figures in the country. The same year he was shot dead.

The story also resembles the relationship between Russian President Putin and the Wagner mercenaries’ boss Vladimir Prigozhin, who was also closely linked to the criminal world, and that relationship’s eventual resolution – Prigozhin’s death in an accident after an attempted coup against Putin.

Saipov said that, following the busting of Kolbayev’s criminal network, Kyrgyzstan might go in two directions.

“One, a weakening of the criminal world’s unchecked influence on the country’s politics and economy.

“Two, a more likely one, an enormous strengthening of the powers of Security Chief Tashiyev, who has already hinted at having presidential ambitions,” he said.  

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