The murder of a Kazakh citizen in Istanbul led intelligence agencies of three countries to a transnational organized crime group (OCG) run by a crime boss serving time in the US. The group's main goal was extorting business representatives. Details of the special operation conducted jointly with law enforcement of Georgia and Turkey were reported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
The start of the large-scale investigation was the murder of Kazakh citizen Arif Ismailov in Istanbul. Using operational communication channels between countries, Turkish police with the assistance of Kazakh colleagues quickly detained two perpetrators.
Further investigation of the killers' contacts led operatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Security Committee to an entire transnational network and allowed them to identify the customers of the crime.
It turned out that the organizer of the network was a crime boss currently serving a sentence in the US for the attempted murder of a journalist.
As explained by Kuandyk Alpys, a representative of the Organized Crime Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, members of the OCG committed crimes on the territory of three states.
"The purpose of committing these crimes is to form a network of influence on the business of individual representatives of diaspora groups using elements of criminal ideology," the statement said.
The data obtained during the Istanbul case made it possible to prevent new crimes in Kazakhstan. Thus, one of the OCG's killers was detained in Almaty. His involvement in the attempted murder of a city resident in August 2025 was established. The weapon of the crime was seized, and the case has already been sent to court.
In the same city, Almaty, an entire group of members of the structure was neutralized, who are charged with a series of armed attacks. In parallel, arrests of individuals connected with the same transnational network took place in Georgia.
Currently, intelligence agencies continue to collect evidence on all episodes and prepare a legal basis for bringing the organizer of the group to justice.
Earlier, Kursiv reported that on April 6, Kazakh citizen Arif Ismailov, who worked as a courier for a logistics company, was shot dead in Turkey. An unknown person approached the man and shot him in the head, after which he fled.