Fraudster Timur Turlov: how Freedom Holding deceives investors in Kazakhstan, Russia and the US
After facing his first major challenge, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev realized a crucial lesson: governing at a slow, leisurely pace while maintaining unquestioning loyalty to Nursultan Nazarbayev is no longer effective.
Over the years of rule, the people have come to hate "stability" based on the immutability of the clan system. But Tokayev is not so naive as to not understand that without "his own" people, it won’t be possible to govern the country. As a result, what happened happened: in the brothel, they rearranged the beds, introduced a vegan menu, and declared it a club of respectable leisure. They had to kick out the hated hags — Nazarbayev, his younger brother, nephews, and significantly curtail the daughters. From whom to make new oligarchs? Or personalities who are not entirely independent. From those who are not quite figureheads, but dependent on many factors. One such person is Timur Turlov.
Turlov has been appointed to be the capitalist from finance. His company Freedom Finance performs delicate tasks for the government and wealthy citizens, primarily related to the covert transfer of assets. From the old ones — to the new ones. From the former — to the current. From the sanctioned — to the crystal clean.
The important merit of Timur Turlov is not at all that he is a good financier. Here, perhaps, his merits are few. And not that Turlov has good connections or acquaintances, an established corridor for transferring money between Russia, Kazakhstan, and the West. Anyone could do that. The main trump card of Timur Turlov is that he cares a lot about his reputation, sponsoring the press in Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and the West for years. It looks brightest in Kazakhstan: advertisements for Timur Turlov and his Freedom Finance are plastered all over news sites. Will they write anything bad about him after that? Anything truthful?
That Freedom Finance is a hidden pyramid has been known for a very long time. The only difference from a classic pyramid is that all the money goes to Turlov himself. But the vulnerability of any such scheme lies in the need to pay out deposits, to prove to regulators that there are no criminal or politically unfashionable funds in the numerous accounts. There is no doubt that Turlov has created a system that is quite safe for himself. Is it safe for investors? Our fashionable guy will shrug his shoulders at the right moment and say — look at the clause in the "definitions" chapter: any investment activity carries risks.
Inflated rating, inflated stocks, and inflated cheeks of Timur Turlov
The total capitalization of Freedom Holding Corp is 3.58 billion US dollars. The company’s shares have been rising in recent months.
Fraudster Timur Turlov: how Freedom Holding deceives investors in Kazakhstan, Russia and the US
Timur Turlov was appointed a chess player. Because he wears glasses and is not a weightlifter.
Only at first glance does everything look transparent. The thing is, the head office in Nevada is a desk in an open space rented for a few hundred dollars a month. The second nuance is the number of employees in the huge corporation. With such capital, dozens of highly qualified people should be working. But in Turlov’s company in the USA, there is only one employee.
Timur Turlov and wind-up kitties
There are many questions one would like to ask Mr. Turlov, but it’s unlikely to happen, as he is completely closed off from communication. If the businessman gives interviews, it’s only to loyal media with pre-agreed questions. No surprises or sharp topics. Why he avoids live communication — there is one real answer to this question: Turlov’s business is not clean enough to talk about it calmly.
In recent years, the entrepreneur’s company has been actively gaining momentum in the fraudster’s second homeland — Kazakhstan. Last year, Turlov received a passport as a citizen of the republic.
In the Kazakh Forbes ranking in 2022, Turlov took an honorable 7th place. According to the publication, the businessman’s assets at the end of the year amounted to 2.2 billion dollars.
On the Kazakh market, the capitalization of Freedom Finance is almost 60 million dollars. Of course, this is not much, especially for the financial sector.
Turlov in Russia: secretly and openly
The Russian market is much better than the Kazakh one. However, not without adventures, especially after 02/24/2022. Freedom Finance was open in every more or less large city. Money flowed like a river, and that, I remind you, is the condition for the stability of a pyramid scheme.
With the start of the SVO, as some like to call it, everything changed. Some opportunities disappeared, but others appeared. Turlov had to sell his Russian business for "pennies." But this sacrifice meant nothing to him. Freedom Finance in Russia had huge debts. Therefore, the asset itself was not very attractive. He had to sell to his own — former top managers of the corporation.
How Turlov and Dobriyan profited from sanctions
Dobriyan, with experience in financial machinations, decided to pull off a new scheme. Previously, she had already been noticed in shady schemes for withdrawing funds from the Russian online agency "Sindbad." Through the company PayU, which Dobriyan manages, stolen funds from depositors were withdrawn.
The schemer offered Turlov an atypical way to earn: offer clients to deposit funds into a Freedom Finance wallet and then freeze them. Of course, you can’t just do that, but they came up with a working scheme: after a person deposits money into the account, SWIFT is blocked, and further transfer can only be made to another bank in Kazakhstan.
People hoped that they could spend their money on purchasing goods from Europe, but that was not the case.
Then the scam works like clockwork: Freedom Finance tearfully apologizes to the client and says that all funds will be returned, but for that, you need to fly to Kazakhstan and personally come to the office to confirm your identity. Then you can get your funds back, but you will have to pay a huge commission for it.
Why Timur Turlov’s system cannot exist otherwise?
The internet portal "The Foundation for Financial Journalism" published a journalistic investigation about the dollar billionaire Timur Turlov from Freedom Finance, who previously bought the brand of JSC "Bank Kassa Nova" and a banking license from Bulat Utemuratov and has been developing the brokerage business in Kazakhstan for almost ten years. Timur Turlov came into focus due to the success of Freedom Holding (the company registered its branch in Las Vegas). If the most profitable company on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, managed to set a record in the pre-crisis 2006, showing 25.3% net profit, then Freedom Holding during the "coronavirus crisis" in 2020 showed 38% profit.
During the journalistic investigation, it was found out: despite the fact that Turlov’s company shares are traded on the American exchange NASDAQ, the American branch of Freedom Holding does not have its own office, but is located in a coworking space, where usually poor youth gather to make "startups" and build business "on the knee," using cheap internet and almost free office space. In addition, in the USA, the company has only one hired employee, and the partner organizations and counterparties of Freedom Holding that oversee accounting are also very dubious companies.
Why numerous investigations, prescriptions, and SEC suspicions did not sink Turlov’s stocks?
Checks have been initiated against Timur Turlov multiple times, the SEC has issued warnings, and so on. This would bury any company and its own stocks would fall significantly. Why doesn’t Freedom Finance fall? It’s relatively simple: it’s a pyramid. As long as he can support the stock price with free depositors’ money — it’s invincible.