A cousin of the jailed former head of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee (KNB) has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of bribery and embezzlement amid President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev's crackdown on predecessor Nursultan Nazarbaev's allies.
Nurlan Masimov, who served as police chief of the northern Pavlodar region before deadly anti-government protests in January 2022, was sentenced on August 10 by a court in Pavlodar.
The court also stripped Masimov of the rank of police major general and state awards.
The court also found Masimov's former deputy, Damir Sirazidimov, guilty of bribery and sentenced him to eight years in prison.
Another co-defendant, businessman Yevgeny Yevkovich, was sentenced to seven years in prison on a charge of embezzlement.
Kazakh authorities said in July 2022 that Nurlan Masimov was detained while trying to cross the border into Russia using forged documents.
His cousin, Karim Masimov, a close ally of Nazarbaev, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in April over his role in deadly events that followed the unprecedented protests in the former Soviet republic in January 2022.
Karim Masimov's former deputies, Anuar Sadyqulov, Daulet Erghozhin, and Marat Osipov, were sentenced to 16, 15, and three years in prison respectively at the trial in April.
The 58-year-old Masimov was arrested along with Erghozhin and Sadyqulov days after the protests turned into mass unrest, leaving at least 238 people -- including 19 law enforcement officers -- dead. Osipov was arrested in February 2022.
The protests began in the southwestern town of Zhanaozen over a sudden fuel-price hike. But the demonstrations quickly grew into broader unrest against corruption, political stagnation, and widespread injustice.
Much of the protesters' anger appeared directed at Nazarbaev, who ruled Kazakhstan from 1989 until March 2019, when he handed power to Toqaev. However, Nazarbaev was widely believed to remain in control behind the scenes.
The protests were violently dispersed by police and military personnel, including troops of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization that Toqaev invited into the country claiming that "20,000 extremists who were trained in terrorist camps abroad" attacked Almaty.
The authorities have provided no evidence proving Toqaev's claim about foreign terrorists.