BISHKEK -- Raimbek Matraimov, the former deputy chief of Kyrgyzstan’s Customs Service, was placed in pretrial detention for at least one month on March 27, a day after being extradited from Azerbaijan.
The Birinchi Mai district court in Bishkek ruled that Matraimov must stay in the detention center of the State Committee for National Security (UKMK) at least until April 26.
The UKMK said earlier in the day that Matraimov, along with his brothers -- Tilek, Ruslan, and Islambek -- had been brought to Bishkek from Azerbaijan at Kyrgyzstan's request a day earlier.
According to the UKMK, Matraimov -- once known as "the kingmaker" -- is suspected of money laundering and the abduction and illegal incarceration of unnamed individuals.
Matraimov in 2020-2021 was at the center of a high-profile corruption scandal involving the funneling of close to $1 billion out of Kyrgyzstan.
A Bishkek court in February 2021 ordered pretrial custody for Matraimov in connection with the corruption charges. He received a mitigated sentence that involved fines amounting to just a few thousand dollars but no jail time.
The court justified the move saying that Matraimov had paid back around $24 million that disappeared through corruption schemes that he oversaw.
In November, the chairman of the state security service, Kamchybek Tashiev, accused Matraimov and crime boss Kamchy Kolbaev (aka Kamchybek Asanbek), who was added by Washington to a list of major global drug-trafficking suspects in 2011, of "forming a mafia in Kyrgyzstan."
Matraimov left Kyrgyzstan in October after Kolbaev was killed in a special security operation in Bishkek. In January, the Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said Matraimov was added to the wanted list of the State Committee for National Security.
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In 2019, an investigation by RFE/RL, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and Kloop implicated Matraimov in a corruption scheme involving the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan.
Last week, a court in neighboring Uzbekistan sentenced Kolbaev's close associate, influential Uzbek crime boss Salim Abduvaliev to six years in prison on charges of illegal possession and transporting arms and explosives.
Abduvaliev is believed to have ties with top Uzbek officials and leaders of the so-called Brothers' Circle, a Eurasian drug-trafficking network that included Kolbaev.
