New Details Emerge in Kablukov Psychiatric Hospital Trial

New details have emerged in the high-profile case of an Almaty organized crime group that kidnapped and killed pensioners and people with mental disorders to take their property.

Influential "guardians" from law enforcement agencies may have covered up the group's activities. Orda.kz investigation department journalists have spoken with victims; they claim that not all group leaders and members are in the dock.

Our editorial team was the first to report on the case involving the hospital's doctors, notaries, a local police officer, realtors, a forensic expert, etc.

The suspects received information from social workers and doctors at mental health centers about people with mental illnesses and no one to look after them. Some were simply kidnapped; their apartments were re-registered and sold at prices below market values. And others were killed. 

The group operated for more than 10 years, and the investigation was conducted in strict secrecy.

Our new sources reported that not all the homicides were included in the case considered in Almaty's specialized inter-district criminal court. Several counts have been assigned to separate proceedings.

Also under investigation are state archive employees who issued fake certificates to establish property ownership rights.

So far, the court has examined 10 counts out of 37. The questioning suggests that the group's active members have lost their vigilance over the years of its activity and gained confidence in their impunity. 

At the last hearing, forensic expert Vitaly Kolesnikov admitted that he issued certificates on natural causes of death via WhatsApp without even examining a body. He issued at least two such certificates regarding two people who were killed.

Before his arrest, Kolesnikov worked as the director and forensic expert of Kazakhstan's Scientific and Practical Center for Expert Research. There are also many questions about the burial service: it is in several counts, but its employees have the status of witnesses. 

Our journalist discovered that all the crimes considered in the case were committed in the Auezov, Almaly, and Turksib districts of Almaty. If the group members received information about the apartments directly from clinics, then information about pensioners and other socially vulnerable members of society who do not have relatives was presumably obtained from law enforcement agencies. 

There is currently only one police officer in the dock -  Manap Tynybaev, a former district inspector of the Turksib district police department. He came to open the apartments to ensure the legality of the procedure. 

However, the victims, as well as some of the defendants, claim that other police officers were involved.

People claim the investigation into their counts did not begin for years, even with evidence. And defendant Ashirali Boltaboyev, whom the investigation identified as a group leader, claims that he paid several million tenge to investigators to evade arrest. 

Not Just Kidnapped

Recently, an Instagram page posted an excerpt from the indictment. 

The group's members allegedly learned about a patient who owned an apartment from the head of the department of the Mental Health Center on Kablukova in the spring of 2021. She said that she was treating a man diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and a group II disability; he had an apartment and no close relatives. 

The department head allegedly helped to remove the patient from the mental health center and supplied sedatives. However, the apartment could not be immediately re-registered, as the guardianship council had seized it. And the man was placed in the Republican Scientific and Practical Center for Mental Health. 

After the notary issued a power of attorney to sell the apartment on behalf of the man, the hold on the apartment was lifted. 

The indictment states that one group leader abused the owner of the apartment. And not just once: he sexually abused him for four months. The former patient managed to escape. 

Another man was killed.

The group's members also allegedly received information from the center department head about him. The doctor's husband helped take the man out of the hospital. They did not keep him for long with other kidnapped mentally ill people and allegedly sent him to the Talgar Regional Center for Medical and Social Rehabilitation and Psychotherapy.

But he was "discharged" a month later. The patient was drugged and strangled. From the same forensic expert, they received a death certificate about natural causes and buried him under a false name. 

The Wrong Body?

The group's focus was not only on people with mental disorders but also on healthy people with no one to look after them.

Orda.kz journalist spoke with Aleksandr Savelyev, who believes that his cousin, pensioner Olga Veniaminovna Chigarkina, was also killed. This situation will be considered in court later, but only on document forgery and "attempted fraud."

Our interlocutor said that his relative died under strange circumstances. He does not live in Almaty but regularly called his sister.

Despite being 70, she led a very active and healthy lifestyle, communicated with friends, went to theaters, cinema, ballet, and exhibitions, and loved to dress fashionably.

A month before her death, he wished her a happy birthday on the phone; she was, as usual, cheerful and spoke about another trip to the theater. 

She lived modestly, but kept in shape, led a healthy lifestyle. She was slim, attractive, with gorgeous waist-length hair. And the neighbors who lived in her building, her 70-year-old peers, always whispered after her. They would sit on a bench in galoshes, and our Olya would come out in a chic white coat, in high heels, with her hair down. They whispered: look, the old lady is all dressed up. Where is she going? And she was just going to the theater, to a museum, to a concert with her friends. Her friends were also fans of cultural events,
 Alexander says. 

A month later, he wanted to wish his sister a happy Victory Day but couldn't. He thought she was busy but eventually asked a friend to check on her.

And he told me such morbid news. He said the apartment was sealed. Knocked on the neighbors' door, they said that on the 17th the apartment was opened, and there was a body there.

Upon arrival in Almaty, Alexander went to the police department and found the investigator handling his sister's case.

The officer reported that Olga Veniaminovna's body had been taken by Alexei Melnikov, who introduced himself as her second cousin. He presented a certificate from the state archive confirming his relationship and documents establishing his inheritance rights. Alexander says Olga Veniaminovna had no nephew.

When the pensioner's brother asked whether the officer had checked the person's ID, the investigator said there was no need: he had given him the keys to the pensioner's apartment under an acknowledgment. 

Sitting in the investigator’s office, I said: OK, let’s meet with this relative, establish whether he really has all the documents. The investigator called Melnikov in my presence and invited him to meet after lunch at three o’clock. He promised to come. It was strange for me to see some stranger and learn about our relationship. So I suggested to the investigator that the meeting take place in his presence. We didn’t see him at the appointed time. He said he was busy at work. We rescheduled it for another day. The same story repeated itself the next day. The meeting never happened, Alexander said.

He later called his new nephew to find out where his sister was buried: 

He said that he did not bury her personally, allegedly he also could not get off work, and asked the funeral service to do this. I asked where the grave was. He said that he would learn the grave number and any features and let me know.

When Alexander saw the inheritance documents, including the will, the errors the investigator had not noticed were astounding. In one place in the text of the supposed will, they did not change the testator's name from Maria Lyashchenko to his sister's name.

The document also did not contain the signature of the director of the archive department from where the certificate was allegedly taken. The investigation later learned that they initially wanted an Azerbaijani national to be the nephew. 

Lawyer Yulia Kolpakova, representing Alexander's interests, said the investigation into the case had been long delayed.

We filed a complaint with the Auezov District Police Department. At first, they didn't want to open a criminal case. I came several times myself. We went to endless appointments with the Almaty City Police Department. They didn't want to just investigate the case, they said: this is no criminality in the death, there is a will and an heir, he will get everything. My client is just 'an upset relative who did not get an inheritance,' she said.

The case officers had to exhume the body when investigations into other counts led to Olga Veniaminovna's apartment. Alexander said he could not attend, but the conclusions based on its results also raised questions for him. 

I read the completed conclusion, which said that there were fractures of the facial bones, and also a fracture from a blow with a blunt object on the back of the head. Also, the expert suggested that first there was a blow to the face, where the jaw and facial bones were broken. And then the body fell, and she hit her head on the back of the head. I asked the investigator: it turns out that our Olga sustained injuries? He says: well, that's not a fact. Now it is impossible to establish the cause of death and when the blow occurred, due to the fact that time has passed, some tissues, traces, etc. have been lost. Well, my question is why there were no signs of injury in the death certificate, but there are in the exhumation examination. That is, either the wrong body, or in the first case the experts did not indicate this situation. For some reason...

Alexander said the conclusion specifies the body is 40 centimeters longer than his sister's. The examination was unable to establish whose body this was. 

As Kolpakova's lawyer said, the police do not deny but also do not confirm homicide.

They simply indicate that they cannot establish the cause of death. They neither deny that it could have been homicide, nor do they confirm it.

The lawyer claims people in law enforcement agencies may have aided the schemes.

When the body was found, it would have been possible to simply take her phone and look through the contacts, see who she had last called, contact a real relative, say: 'this is the kind of trouble that happened, come,' but no. It was probably for someone's benefit. I assume that the police were most likely involved because only they knew about her death, only they gave the keys to the apartment, documents to a complete stranger, said Yulia Kolpakova. 

Manap Tynybaev, the former district police inspector of the Turksib district, represented law enforcement agencies when opening apartments in the Almaly and Auezov districts. 

He was working as a district inspector in the Turksib district at the time, but he came to Olga Veniaminovna's apartment as an inspector from the Auezov district. The neighbors didn't suspect anything at all. He opened the door, invited witnesses, introduced himself as an employee, and showed his ID. In doing so, he facilitated the fraud because if these people hadn't gotten into the apartment, they wouldn't have had access to all the title documents, wouldn't have drawn up a will, and, accordingly, wouldn't have taken possession of this property,
 the lawyer said. 

She and her client repeatedly asked and petitioned that the investigative bodies carefully study the identity of the "second cousin" and his "legal documents." 

When I came to the investigator, to the case officers, I said: 'why don't you call this person who came to you? Why don't you question him? Well, do some case work.' They whispered to me: you know, we just detain him, they call us and say: release him quickly with all the documents. And us – we are subordinate.

Advocacy Investigations

Yulia Kolpakova said that she had to conduct her legal investigation to prove to the police that a crime had occurred.

Another lawyer, Aigerim Takhmutdinova, says she and her client were not simply investigating their situation: they played the role of buyers of an apartment that the scammers had already managed to re-register and put up for sale on krisha.kz. 

The case of Aigerim Takhmutdinova's client, Tatyana Firstova, who lives in Russia, was one of the first to be considered in court.

Her grandfather died, but before his death, he allegedly wrote a will in which he designated "Alexander Kalmykov" as his heir. He was not related to him. As the investigation found out, they were not even acquainted. 

The neighbors explained that some new owner had come and quickly sold all the furniture. We started browsing the classifieds website and saw a photo of our apartment, called the seller, the realtor, and immediately left as buyers. We understood that they were fraudsters, they were selling our apartment. We gave them a deposit and asked for copies of the title documents,Aigerim Takhmutdinova said. 

The lawyer added that the title documents were certified and registered by the state archive and the city's justice department:

We said that we would buy the apartment, that we supposedly really liked the price. We received copies of the title documents, went to the district police and wrote a statement. And, you know, the documents were registered by the Department of Justice. There was a deed of gift, certified by the state archive.

All defendants deny their involvement. Some, including one of the group's alleged leaders, Ashirali Boltaboyev, decided to cooperate with the investigation.

Original Authors: Orda.kz Investigation Department, Arkhat Rakhimzhanov

The original article was published on 05/11/24. This is a translated piece. For accuracy, please refer to the original article in Russian via link.