Legacies, bribes or culture? Prosecuting large-scale drug-trafficking in Kazakhstan
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Date
2016
Authors
Turlubekova, Zhaniya
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Nazarbayev University School of Sciences and Humanities
Abstract
Several recent criminal cases against high-ranking Kazakhstani Ministry of Internal Affairs
officials who had been charged with organizing drug dealing groups of 30 to 50 members
within their departments have exposed sophisticated criminal operations involving significant
flows of cash, narcotics, and corrupt influence. Some of these officers have been convicted
and sent to prison right away, others have been initially released only to find themselves
convicted and sentenced to imprisonment a few years later, yet others escaped the
punishment. How can we explain this mixed, successful yet protracted criminal prosecution
of corrupt police officers who have been protecting drug dealing groups in what many view
as corrupt political system?
Drawing on the evidence gained from the analysis of mass media reports on drugrelated
topics, Kazakhstani criminal legislation and court records, from interviews with the
law-enforcement officials dealing with drug-trafficking (detectives, investigators, judges,
lawyers, criminals, etc.), and from participant observation of criminal trials of police officers
in Kostanay, I argue that the structure of internal and external incentives accounts for both
police involvement in organized crime and the mixed success in combatting it. Strong
internal incentives arise from Soviet legacies such as formal statistical evaluation of police
officers’ performance and from informal subculture within these law-enforcement agencies.
Meanwhile, weaker external incentives arise from imperfect legislation, pressure from
politicians, an inter-agency competition and highly developed practices of corruption, all of
which weakens law enforcement’s the ability to prosecute both organized crime and corrupt
officials. I conclude that modern Central Asian states are too weak to prosecute a relatively
new type of transnational crime such a drug trafficking. More broadly, this helps advance our
theoretical understanding of how formal and informal political institutions interact in
different political orders.
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Keywords
drug-traffikcing