WANTED MAN: THE STORY OF MUKHTAR ABLYAZOV: A Manual for Criminals on How to Avoid Punishment in the EU

With the tenth anniversary of his flight from the authorities in his homeland of Kazakhstan fast approaching, the raft of transnational court cases involving fugitive embezzler Mukhtar Ablyazov show no sign of abating. 

In a global saga which stretches from an institutional aversion to tackling kleptocracy in the United Kingdom to United States President Donald Trump’s shady business partners, the murky world of Mukhtar Ablyazov even led his family to make a pit stop in the Central African Republic to pick up diplomatic passports. 

Yet despite having judgements against him totalling $4.9 billion in the British courts alone, almost six years since he fled from the UK to avoid three concurrent 22-month sentences for contempt of court, Ablyazov remains a free man.   

So who is this criminal mastermind, a man found to have committed ‘fraud on an epic scale’ in the UK and sentenced in absentia in his homeland of having ordered the assassination of his erstwhile business partner? A country boy turned kleptocrat, current estimates as to the total amount embezzled by Ablyazov stand at in excess of $10 billion, yet from his villa in France, Ablyazov continues to bemoan his plight to be a simple case of ‘political persecution.’ 

This is an argument supported by parties such as the NGO, the Open Dialog Foundation, whose activities, a report from a conference held in the European Parliament in November 2017 found, are funded by companies ‘flagged and sanctioned by the West.’


Now available from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WANTED-MAN-ABLYAZOV-Criminals-Punishment/dp/1910886955

“In his book, Cartwright shines a light on the extraordinary antics of the fugitive kleptocrat and his retinue. Exhaustively researched, yet succinct and easily comprehensible, Wanted Man: The Story of Mukhtar Ablyazov lays bare the startling facts behind this opaque tale.”

Stephen M. Bland

Award winning author & Journalist

“For those of us who have fought tirelessly for Human Rights, it feel like a punch in the stomach when someone abuses mechanisms to slyly promote their own self interest.  Such actions undermine the work of genuine Human Rights activists and deserve to be highlighted. I commend this book for doing just that.”

Nikki Sinclaire

Former Member of the European Parliament

Member of the EP Committee on Human Rights 2009-2014 

"Gripping... an expose of how money talks in the EU and in individual member states. Corruption is a growing problem and as always, as this book shows, the guilty remain at large, and the taxpayer foots the bill."

Colin Stevens, Publisher, EU Reporter.