PARIS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th January, 2022) A coordination center used during the mass protests in Kazakhstan is located in Kiev, Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former Kazakh banker who has fled to France told Sputnik.
"Our organizational headquarters - more precisely, it was called 'the 'Democratic Elections of Kazakhstan' coordination headquarters'" - is located in Kiev," Ablyazov said, explaining that the coordination center received calls from protesters, who were then told to act according to a certain "algorithm" developed by the opposition.
The "algorithm" requires the protesters to act in a coordinated manner, "not to allow the authorities to engage in provocations," but it also involves the seizure of administrative buildings, the fugitive banker said.
Ablyazov insisted that the riots that occurred in Kazakhstan, leading to the death of over 200 people, were not a coup attempt.
"A coup d'etat is when one acts in a non-constitutional way, by military means ... Here, all these rallies are our constitutional right," Ablyazov told Sputnik.
Earlier this month, Director of the Kazakh Institute of World Economy and politics Yerzhan Saltybaev said that the influence on the protests of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former banker and government minister who has claimed to be the leader of the Kazakh opposition movement, is very limited despite his significant financial resources.
Ablyazov was sentenced in absentia in Kazakhstan for murder and embezzlement. He has been residing abroad for many years.
