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Kyrgyzstan detains Syrgak Kenzhebaev abroad as a suspect in preparing mass disorder

The interior ministry said on Tuesday that Syrgak Kenzhebaev, the businessman who accused president Sadyr Japarov’s circle in August, was detained in a foreign state and brought to Bishkek. He is suspected of taking $150,000 from a woman under the pretext of a joint business, and the ministry opened a case under article 36 and part 1 of article 278 of the Criminal Code, preparation to organise mass disorder.

By CAW Staff13 October 2026
The rotating base of an airport boarding bridge at night, with one amber beacon lit above the joint.

The ministry’s press service gave the sequence, 24.kg reported at 10:33 Bishkek time. Kenzhebaev allegedly took $150,000 belonging to a citizen it names as M.N. under the pretext of joint business, was put on the wanted list, and while abroad and evading prosecution published provocative material online, calling, in the investigation’s version, for rallies, mass disorder and a subsequent seizure of power. He was detained abroad in an operational-search operation, delivered to Kyrgyzstan and placed in the temporary detention facility of the Bishkek police under article 96 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Part 1 of article 278 is the organisation of mass disorder accompanied by violence, pogroms, arson, the destruction of property, the use of firearms or explosives or armed resistance to a representative of authority, and carries seven to ten years in prison, by the code’s current edition. Article 36 is preparation: the search for means, accomplices or a conspiracy, or other deliberate creation of conditions for a crime not completed for reasons beyond the person’s will, punishable under the same article as the completed act. The ministry’s statement, as 24.kg printed it, names no article for the fraud.

He was detained abroad in an operational-search operation, delivered to Kyrgyzstan and placed in the temporary detention facility of the Bishkek police under article 96 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Kenzhebaev is the former husband of ex-deputy Shirin Aitmatova, 24.kg wrote. In August he made public accusations against the president’s entourage, and Japarov told the journalist Ali Toktakunov on 13 August that the businessman had come to him promising to turn Kyrgyz agriculture into a fairy tale with European investors, and that the then agriculture minister, Bakyt Torobaev, had reported after trips to Italy and Germany that the man looked like a fraudster. In September Kenzhebaev said Kyrgyz security officers had tried to detain him in Cambodia, by 24.kg’s account.

He was detained once before, in December 2019, on suspicion of a $350,000 fraud, 24.kg recalled. The ministry did not say in which country he was held this time. Neither he nor a lawyer for him had spoken on 24.kg or Open.kg by late Tuesday morning, and Open.kg’s account of the same statement cites no article of the code.

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