Nazarbaev's Former Deputy Chief Of Staff Arrested After Abrupt Dismissal

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev (file photo)

A former deputy chief of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev's administration has been arrested, two days after his dismissal.

The Central Asian nation's National Security Committee (KNB) said on January 16 that Baghlan Mailybaev was arrested on January 14 and charged with disclosing classified information.

It said a former deputy chief of the presidential administration's domestic policy department, Nikolai Galikhin, was arrested on the same charges.

Both were sent to pretrial detention for two months, according to the KNB, which did not reveal details about the suspicions against them.

Nazarbaev fired Mailybaev on January 12.

The arrests were the latest in a series of detentions of high-level officials in Kazhakhstan, which Nazarbaev has ruled since before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Economy Minister Quandyq Bishimbaev was detained on suspicion of bribe-taking last week.

On January 11, the head of Kazakhstan's main pension fund, Ruslan Erdenaev, and the director of the fund's financial department, Musa Bakhtov, were arrested on embezzlement charges.

Based on reporting by KazTAG and Kazinform