Viktor Vyacheslavovich Khrapunov (; born 24 November 1948) is a former Soviet and Kazakh politician who served as an Äkim of Almaty from 16 June 1997 to 9 December 2004, Äkim of East Kazakhstan Region from 9 December 2004 to 11 January 2007, and Minister of Emergency Situations from 11 January to 1 November 2007. Khrapunov has gained notoriety for multiple allegations of fraud, racketeering and laundering of money stolen from the Kazakhstan government. Interpol issued a red notice for the arrest of Khrapunov.
Early life and career
Khrapunov was born in 1948 in the village of Pryedgornoye, in the district of Glubokoye in the northeast of Kazakhstan. Both his parents were civil servants, his father having been severely injured and become an invalid in the Second World War, young Victor moved to Almaty after finishing the College of Industry and Technology in Oskemen. Once in the capital, he started to work first as a repair mechanic, then as a foreman, and later as senior engineer at the Almaty Thermal Power Station during the day, while studying at the Almaty Institute of Electric Technology in the evening.
Kharpunov secured his future career by joining political echelons through the powerful youth league Komsomol. Thereby he obtained the position of chairman of the Almaty Lenin district Communist Party Committee, and was promoted little later to the post of first deputy chair of the Almaty City Council. From there, he moved on to the position of chairman of the Executive Committee of the City Soviet of People's Deputies, which stood under the direct authority of the all-Union Supreme Soviet.
Following the break-up of the USSR and Kazakhstan's subsequent independence, Khrapunov continued his work at the Almaty municipality as first deputy äkim until 1995. After a term in office as minister of energy and coal, and later minister of energy and natural resources. Khrapunov fell victim, following the economic near-crash of 1995/'96, to the downfall of PM Akezhan Kazhegeldin and most of the latter's cabinet, and in 1997 received compensation with the post of mayor of Almaty.
In 2004, Viktor Khrapunov was given the job of Äkim of the East Kazakhstan Region, which he was to carry out till 2007 when he was appointed Minister of Emergency Situations in the country's cabinet. That year, he announced his retreat from all public functions and his retirement, for "health reasons".
Accusations, charges, prosecution
Khrapunov's name has been connected with a vast number of construction and real estate frauds in and around Almaty—in particular involving the now defunct KUAT Holding, which left dozens of residential and commercial space projects unfinished and in a virtual state of bankruptcy. Khrapunov's role, according to later statements on behalf of the judicial authorities, is supposed to have consisted of redrawing frontier lines between plots of land belonging to different property right holders. Together with a number of minor-size operators, KUAT has been held responsible for losses inflicted upon proprietors of apartments and commercial space in the order between 2 and 3 billion US dollars.
Apart from rendering favours to "befriended" project developers, Khrapunov had his own business network, controlled by proxy through nominal ownership by his relatives—still according to judicial investigators. It included a holding named VILED and various of its subsidiaries and affiliated enterprises, as well as a number of nominally independent firms including KazRealIncome LLP and General Realty LLP, both controlled by a certain A. A. Sadykbayeva, Karasha Plus LLP owned by Leyla Khrapunova's sister G. K. Ilyasova and finally Building Service LLP, controlled by Mrs. Khrapunova herself. Through fake privatisations in the form of swaps consisting of capital injections against property rights of public entities, holding assets such as nursery schools, homes for the elderly, orchards and even some parts of natural reserves on the outskirts of Almaty were appropriated by the firms controlled by the Khrapunovs, while other plots were taken through tender leaks.