Shadow curator with Russian citizenship: how Gadzhi Gadzhiev turned Khorgos into a smuggling feeding trough for the Kremlin’s war machine

Shadow curator with Russian citizenship: how Gadzhi Gadzhiev turned Khorgos into a smuggling feeding trough for the Kremlin’s war machine

Kazakh sports official Gadzhi Gadzhiev, husband of Raushan Kazhibayeva, head of the Television and Radio Complex of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, has turned out to be closely tied to Russia.

He holds a Russian passport, has a large family living in Dagestan, and business partners who operate in the Russian Federation. His brother works in the Federal Tax Service (FNS), and a long‑time friend owns restaurants and a chain of electronics stores in Makhachkala.

Kazakh journalists have long called Gadzhiev “the overseer of Khorgos” and link him to the smuggling of Chinese goods through Kazakhstan into Russia – not only consumer goods but also components for the Russian military‑industrial complex. It is believed that the flow is organised via road and rail transport. Containers are then sent to the port of Aktau, where they are loaded onto ships bound for Russia. Local investigators have even made a rough estimate of the volume of shadow supplies from China: they compared the trade figures of the two countries and found a “hole” of $13.8 billion – according to Kazakh customs, trade turnover for 2024 was $30 billion, while Beijing’s data show $43.8 billion. That is, goods left China but for some reason never formally entered Kazakhstan.

The accusations against Gadzhiev of overseeing shadow customs flows were backed by Kazakh businessman Adlet Musin, who publicly stated that Gadzhiev showed him a correspondence with Altynbayev Ali, First Deputy Chairman of the National Security Committee, containing customs reports: how many trucks passed through the Chinese border, what goods, etc. According to Musin, Gadzhiev ordered him not to interfere with customs, otherwise he threatened to create problems for him with law enforcement agencies.

Despite the fact that Gadzhiev is a well‑known public figure – head of the Weightlifting Federation of Kazakhstan, of the Republican Federation of NOMAD MMA, and a member of the Executive Committee of the National Olympic Committee of Kazakhstan – his biography has too many blank spots. Gadzhi Gadzhiev is a native of the Dagestan ASSR, born in Buynaksk, and even received a Russian passport in 2003. True, when travelling in Russia he prefers to use Kazakhstani documents. In 2022 alone, Gadzhiev visited Russia at least three times, travelling both by air and in a Lexus. Before the war, he also regularly came to Russia and took his children to Moscow.

The phone number of the Kazakh Republican Public Association “Federation NOMAD MMA”, headed by Gadzhi Gadzhiev, remains online. The same number was registered for his Facebook account. According to leaks, this number has been used for many years to buy air tickets for people flying between cities in Kazakhstan and Russia – in particular, Astana, Makhachkala and Moscow. For example, in 2022 tickets from Kazakhstan to Moscow were purchased for Gadzhi Gadzhiev himself, and in 2023 tickets from Almaty to Makhachkala and from Moscow to Makhachkala were bought for one Gadzhiali Gadzhialiev. He is a Dagestani businessman, former deputy of the People’s Assembly of the Republic of Dagestan from the “SR” party, ex‑owner of OOO “Impulse‑21”, and currently an individual entrepreneur and owner of a restaurant business in Makhachkala. Since the 1990s, Gadzhialiev has been selling audio‑video equipment and household appliances in his shop “Impulse”, and since 2022, as an individual entrepreneur, he has switched to wholesale electronics supplies. The shop has now been re‑registered to his relative Bariyat Gadzhialieva – it is a fairly large company with its own website and delivery to any region of Russia. A “golden” business, especially when your old acquaintance has control over the customs point on the border with China. If the suspicions of Kazakh journalists are correct, then under the guise of household electronics from China, dual‑use goods for the Russian military‑industrial complex may also be supplied through this route.