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Simply sign up to the Financial services myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.<\/span><\/p>\n A former deputy prime minister of Kazakhstan has described a company with links to a Labour peer and a Kazakh oligarch as a \u201ccriminal enterprise\u201d, in evidence to a London employment tribunal. <\/p>\n The allegation by Yerbol Orynbayev, who was in office between 2007 and 2013, came on the second day of a hearing in a claim brought by Ilyas Seitayev, the former chief operating officer of Jusan Technologies Ltd. <\/p>\n According to court documents, Seitayev alleges that Jusan backdated documents and issued a large loan that was unlikely to be repaid as a \u201cruse\u201d to funnel money to its chief executive, Masudul Rony Wahid.<\/p>\n Jusan, a UK financial services holding company, was set up in 2020 and at one point had about $1.5bn in assets spanning real estate, telecoms, banking, logistics and insurance.<\/p>\n Seitayev alleges that after his concerns about a potential payment of as much as $47mn to Wahid were not taken seriously, he resigned in 2023 and did not receive a payout of $600,000 that was due to him. Seitayev is seeking the unpaid $600,000, plus damages and interest.<\/p>\n Orynbayev, a director of Jusan until 2022, told the employment tribunal on Tuesday that while Seitayev was \u201ca serious and credible guy\u201d, he thought the allegations Seitayev made when the pair met in London in 2023 could be \u201csome kind of rumours or hearsay\u201d.<\/p>\n When Seitayev showed him documents on his laptop, however, Orynbayev told the tribunal in Croydon, south London, that he believed \u201cthis was fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, potentially\u201d.<\/p>\n Orynbayev, who resigned as a consultant to the company in August 2023, described Jusan as a \u201ccriminal enterprise\u201d and accused it of \u201cretaliating against me and Ilyas\u201d. <\/p>\n The employment suit, brought by Seitayev against Wahid and Jusan, is the latest in a string of litigation involving the company. <\/p>\n Seitayev said in court documents that the purpose of Jusan was to generate profits from its assets, which at one time included Kazakhstan\u2019s First Heartland Jusan Bank \u2014 since renamed Alatau City Bank \u2014 to fund educational projects in Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n Jusan\u2019s directors included Labour peer Lord David Evans. Orynbayev is pursuing lawsuits in the US and UK against directors, including Evans, in relation to the sale of assets to Kazakh oligarch Galimzhan Yessenov. Evans declined to comment.<\/p>\n Lawyers for Wahid and the company said in court documents that \u201cthe critical context to these proceedings is extant litigation\u201d. Seitayev and Orynbayev \u201chave been closely coordinating and the claimant is seeking to assist Mr Orynbayev in his claims\u201d, they added.<\/p>\n The lawyers said that Seitayev\u2019s \u201cclaims to have been subjected to whistleblowing detriment are misconceived claims which are not brought in good faith\u201d. <\/p>\n Seitayev had failed to raise the claims with the board and instead disclosed confidential information obtained during his employment to a third party, they added. <\/p>\n Kulzhan Mehrabi, Jusan\u2019s general counsel at the time of Seitayev\u2019s exit, also gave evidence at the tribunal on Tuesday.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cNobody instructed me to backdate any resolution relating to shareholders, and it wasn\u2019t backdating as such. It was an administrative error.\u201d <\/p>\n The tribunal continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Financial services myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. A former deputy prime minister of Kazakhstan has described a company with links to a Labour peer and a Kazakh oligarch as a \u201ccriminal enterprise\u201d, in evidence to a London employment tribunal. The allegation by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[2071,4516,10697,4517,24253,24369,8001],"class_list":{"0":"post-48881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-company","9":"tag-criminal","10":"tag-describes","11":"tag-enterprise","12":"tag-exdeputy","13":"tag-kazakhstans","14":"tag-tribunal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}