A Piece of the Shoreline Pie: How Sarsenov Lost His Aqtau Land and Kulibayev’s Role

Why is Aqtau expanding into the steppe instead of along the Caspian Sea shore? It’s a question residents of the city often ask. Why are we seeing luxury hotels, high-end restaurants, and business-class apartments on the waterfront instead of affordable housing with sea views?

The coastline has long been carved up by those with power and deep pockets — or more precisely, those who once held power and controlled billions.

Orda.kz investigates how one of the most valuable stretches of land on the Caspian coast passed from the oil giant MangystauMunayGas, to billionaire Rashit Sarsenov, and — two decades later — returned to state ownership.

A "Presidential Residence" by the Sea

In Aqtau’s elite "Samal" microdistrict, luxury sprawls across the edge of the Caspian: one- and two-story villas, swimming pools, private chapels — even a horse track. Who lives here? Locals whisper names: high-ranking officials, oil executives, top law enforcement. No one can confirm it, but few doubt it.

What stands out most, though, is a massive empty stretch of land nearby: 226 hectares of untouched coastline, referred to — somewhat cryptically — as the president’s residence.

In the early 2000s, Aqtau’s city hall sold this land to the regional oil giant MangystauMunayGas for a symbolic price, allegedly for a residential complex called "Villa." The sale violated Kazakhstan’s Land Code and was carried out without a public auction.

Among the shareholders of the buyer was Timur Kulibayev, a powerful businessman and son-in-law of then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

But no villas were ever built. Instead, MangystauMunayGas later sold nearly half of the land to Oil Real Estate LLP, a company tied to billionaire Rashit Sarsenov, whose name has appeared on Forbes’ list.

The January 2022 events would later resurface the situation. That year, the Aqtau Prosecutor’s Office launched a review of the decades-old land deal and concluded that the sale had been illegal from the start.

How It All Went Down

Between 2002 and 2004, then-Akim of Aqtau Serik Ospanov (later a Majilis deputy) approved the sale of parcels of prime Caspian land to MangystauMunayGas. At the time, the company was still independent — not yet part of the state-owned KazMunayGas — and Timur Kulibayev was listed as its main shareholder.

The deal was executed in five stages:

• June 5, 2002 – a small plot was sold for 1.1 million tenge
• June 6, 2002 – another piece of land was sold for 9.6 million tenge
• September 3, 2002 – another plot of land in the same area went for 80.6 million tenge
• March 18, 2004 – the remaining two parts of the coastal zone were sold for 52.3 million and 20 million tenge

In total: 226 hectares of coastal land — the so-called “presidential residence.” For scale, that’s enough space to fit seven Burj Khalifas or 42 Great Pyramids of Giza.

By 2007, MangystauMunayGas offloaded nearly half of the land to Oil Real Estate, owned by Rashit Sarsenov, for 1.2 billion tenge. The part he acquired included the few buildings already constructed.

In an open letter to the President of Kazakhstan, Ablyazov outlined a scheme in which Nazarbayev’s son-in-law allegedly acquired MangystauMunayGas. According to his claim, in 2008, Kulibayev pressured Sarsenov to transfer shares of the oil and gas company to him free of charge, and subsequently concealed the transaction from government authorities.

Official records show that in 2009, MangystauMunayGas was integrated into KazMunayGas, Kazakhstan’s national oil company.

A Secret Coastline

Orda.kz visited the site in Aqtau. Despite its massive size, the entire area is fenced off and heavily guarded. Access was denied, but our crew captured aerial footage with a drone.

From above, we saw several small structures. The largest appears to be a sports complex — a three-story building in visible disrepair, suggesting it was built many years ago and then neglected.

Further along the shoreline lies a bay with a mooring pier for yachts. However, due to the ongoing shallowing of the Caspian Sea, the harbor no longer offers the scenic beauty it once promised.

Two sleek piers remain in place.

The area is crisscrossed by a network of roads, flanked by neat rows of spruce trees and well-trimmed bushes. It’s clear that only the section with buildings is maintained — the rest is neglected. Despite that, the landowners had no intention of giving it up.

By today’s real estate standards, the land is worth a fortune.

The Dispute

In 2023, the Mangystau Region Department of Land Management filed a lawsuit to return the so-called “residence” land to state ownership. The trial, involving MangystauMunayGas and Oil Real Estate, dragged on for months.

Lawyers for the companies argued that the statute of limitations had expired. But the Mangystau Interdistrict Economic Court disagreed.

When the land was transferred to MangystauMunayGas JSC, no approval was obtained from the land commission, no land management project was created, and no agreement with the relevant government authorities was signed, as required by the Land Code of Kazakhstan. Furthermore, the sale was conducted without public bidding, in violation of Article 48 of the Land Code. As a result, the transactions were carried out with serious legal violations and bypassed the required public procedures.

Under Kazakh law, the Akimat (city administration) is required to form a land commission, develop a land use plan, and seek formal approval before transferring any state land.

In this case, none of those steps were taken. The land was sold anyway.

In May 2023, the court ruled that the transactions were illegal and ordered the land returned to state ownership. The appeals board upheld the decision in July.

From Elite Villas to Public Projects

After the court victory, Mangystau region akim Nurdaulet Kilybay announced that the newly recovered land would be used for public infrastructure, including a central stadium, a mosque, playgrounds, retail areas, and a seaport.

In response to a request from Orda.kz, the Aqtau Akimat confirmed the land is now under the management of the city’s Land Relations Department.

The original planning project for the land is still intact and currently under review. To develop a master plan for the former residence site, a tender was announced via the state procurement portal. A detailed planning project for the specified land plot is currently underway,the Akimat’s press service said. 

Orda.kz found the tender on the public procurement portal. The contract — worth 59 million tenge — was awarded to GRADO Design Firm, whose co-founder is Arkinzhan Mametov, a prominent architect who contributed to Almaty’s 2002 master plan.

Despite inquiries, Aqtau officials have declined to comment further on the project’s progress. Orda.kz will continue to monitor how this high-value piece of coastline is redeveloped.

The Aqtau “residence” isn’t the first major land parcel that the state has reclaimed from billionaire Rashit Sarsenov. In 2024, his company, Oil Real Estate, also lost control of the Kosa-Ada site — a 3,400-hectare plot in the resort area of Kenderli, also originally acquired from MangystauMunayGas in 2007.

Meanwhile, in the Mangystau region, the oil terminal at the Aqtau port, previously owned by Kulibayev’s father, Askar Kulibayev, was transferred back to the state. The value of the terminal is estimated at $66 million.

 Original Author: Dinara Bekbolayeva