Private Eyes

BTA’s Prosyankin says Ablyazov had been using the bank as his personal private-equity fund.

“He controlled the bank as chairman and headed its credit committees, but on the other hand, he was the beneficiary and controlling shareholder of the borrowers,” Prosyankin says. “He controlled both sides of the deals.”

Proving Ablyazov’s ownership in court was going to be tough, Hardman says.

“We couldn’t just follow the money,” Hardman says. “We had to follow his people.”

Diligence detectives hired by BTA watched Ablyazov’s seven- bedroom mansion in London’s Hampstead neighborhood. They saw that a silver Lexus SUV made regular visits to the home, and on Oct. 11, 2010, they tailed the Lexus to a nearby self-storage facility.

When the driver got out of the car and walked inside the Big Yellow facility, the private eyes recognized him as Salim Shalabayev, Syrym’s younger brother.

Beat-Up Van

The gumshoes set up a stake-out in a beat-up white construction van parked across the street from the storage location.

On the afternoon of Dec. 10, 2010, investigators saw Salim and another man remove 25 document boxes from storage and transport them to Eastbridge’s accounting firm in the City of London. The next morning, according to court records, they watched the pair return the boxes to unit E2010.

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