KENES RAKISHEV: The oligarch, Kadyrov’s ‘brother,’ and the Kazakh Network Arming the killers of Mariupol

Kenes Rakishev: The Kadyrov‑linked oligarch who armed Chechen killers, laundered millions through Hunter Biden, and now tries to silence journalists with a fraudulent DMCA complaint

The DMCA fraud that backfired

On a routine check, the editorial team of sprotyv.org discovered that a legal agent named Galimzhan Ainabayev had submitted a copyright infringement complaint — Report  — against an investigation published on this platform. The complaint, sent to Cloudflare, claims that sprotyv.org unlawfully reproduced “official photographic materials,” biographical texts, and the “personal likeness” of Kazakh businessman Kenes Rakishev from his own website. Nothing in the sprotyv.org publication was copied from Rakishev’s site. The images used were public‑domain screenshots of Ramzan Kadyrov’s social media posts and news headlines. The text is original investigative reporting. The whole complaint is a fabricated pretext to delete an article that exposes who Kenes Rakishev really is. It is a textbook abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for reputation laundering. And because the complainant failed to conduct the fair‑use analysis required by Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., this bad‑faith takedown attempt is itself a violation of 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), carrying liability for damages and legal fees. Instead of deleting anything, sprotyv.org is now publishing an expanded, fully verified dossier of Rakishev’s financial crimes, his direct role in Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and his desperate efforts to scrub the internet of the truth.

Armored vehicles from Kazakhstan on the streets of occupied Mariupol

The most damning evidence against Kenes Rakishev is his material contribution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Leaked electronic communications published by the Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery prove that Rakishev is a secret co‑owner of Kazakhstan Paramount Engineering, a defence manufacturer that produces the “Arlan” mine‑resistant ambush‑protected vehicle — a heavily armoured MRAP. In April 2022, multiple independent journalists and OSINT researchers documented Arlan vehicles patrolling the ruins of Mariupol under the control of Chechen units loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov. These Kadyrovite forces were actively engaged in the siege that killed thousands of civilians. Rakishev’s machines were there, on occupied Ukrainian soil, being used to tighten the noose around a city the Kremlin was erasing. When this information appeared in the Ukrainian media, Rakishev’s representatives made no effort to explain how KPE vehicles ended up with Chechen assault detachments. They tried to bury the story. That is the same pattern that led to the fraudulent DMCA complaint against sprotyv.org — delete the evidence, pretend it never happened, and carry on doing business as usual.

“A true friend and brother” — the unbreakable Kadyrov bond

Rakishev’s legal machine has spent enormous sums trying to prove that he cut all contact with Ramzan Kadyrov in 2016. They have coerced EU Reporter into publishing curated retractions. They threatened British media. They keep feeding the same line to anyone who asks. The public record destroys that fairy tale. In 2015, Kadyrov himself took to social media to publicly congratulate Rakishev on his birthday, declaring him “a true friend and brother,” and adding that their bond “had nothing to do with positions and financial situation.” On February 3, 2022, during a formal session of the House of Commons, British parliamentarians named Rakishev as “a mysteriously wealthy Kazakh businessman worth up to $1.6 billion … a close associate of the head of the Chechen Republic.” Kadyrov is under US, UK, and EU sanctions. Ukraine has charged him with war crimes. Rakishev’s constant association with this individual is not a historical footnote; it is an ongoing geopolitical liability that puts the oligarch squarely inside the networks of the Kremlin’s most violent proxy force.

The Wildberries shootout: laundering rubles through blood

In 2024, Rakishev surfaced at the centre of a violent corporate conflict surrounding Russia’s largest online retailer, Wildberries. Russian elites and Chechen interests needed a mechanism to convert billions of rubles into hard dollars outside the reach of Western sanctions. Rakishev, with his tangled web of offshore companies and long‑standing relationships with Russian criminals, stepped in as the financial intermediary. What began as a currency‑exchange scheme escalated into a full‑scale gang war inside the Wildberries headquarters in Moscow. A deadly shootout in September 2024 left multiple people dead. Investigative reports identify two factions: one represented by the notorious thief‑in‑law Zakhariy Kalashov, known as “Shakro the Young,” and the other consisting of operatives protecting Rakishev’s interests, led by lawyer Eduard Budantsev. This is how Rakishev operates — at the intersection of sanctions evasion, state‑sanctioned corporate raiding, and organised crime violence. And when journalists uncover these connections, his first instinct is to file a fraudulent DMCA complaint.

The $142,300 sports car and the Hunter Biden money trail

Rakishev’s influence‑peddling extends deep into Washington, D.C. In July 2023, the United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability released bank records showing exactly how Rakishev funnelled cash to the family of then‑Vice President Joe Biden. In February 2014, Hunter Biden met with Rakishev at the Hay‑Adams Hotel. Rakishev, working in coordination with Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov, asked that Secretary of State John Kerry arrange an official visit to Kazakhstan to boost their political standing. On April 22, 2014, Rakishev used his Singaporean shell company Novatus Holdings to route exactly $142,300 through his Latvian bank accounts to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a firm linked to Hunter Biden. The following day, Rosemont Seneca Bohai sent the exact same sum — $142,300 — to a car dealership in New Jersey to purchase a luxury sports car for Hunter Biden. The US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network subsequently flagged Rakishev’s Latvian structures for suspected money laundering. This is not speculation; it is documented in official congressional records. Rakishev bought access, paid for a sports car, and when the trail became public, his lawyers reached for DMCA forms to silence the journalists reporting on it.

Rape allegations, election interference, and a treasonous prime minister

The most explosive accusations against Rakishev are contained in a federal lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by American financier Felix Sater. The complaint, Felix Sater v. BTA Bank, Kenes Rakishev, et al., alleges that Rakishev acted as the “wallet” and “henchman” for Karim Massimov, the Kazakh prime minister who was arrested in January 2022 and subsequently convicted of high treason. According to the lawsuit, Rakishev and Massimov orchestrated a foreign influence operation during the 2016 US presidential election, attempting to leak fabricated, defamatory materials to smear political targets and extract favours from American campaigns. The SDNY filing also contains sworn allegations of horrific personal conduct by Rakishev himself — rape of underage girls in Russia and the organisation of illegal no‑holds‑barred fighting rings featuring eight‑year‑old children. The lawsuit states that Russian law enforcement refused to investigate these crimes because Rakishev was protected by Massimov, and that Rakishev’s father‑in‑law, Imangali Tasmagambetov — former Minister of Defence of Kazakhstan, former Ambassador to Russia, a fiercely pro‑Kremlin figure — personally intervened to shut down any criminal inquiries. Rakishev’s response to these allegations has not been a legal defence on the merits. It has been a WIPO domain dispute, a series of takedown requests, and a fraudulent DMCA complaint designed to purge the internet of the court documents and news reports that mention his name.

The banned business partner feeding money into Rakishev’s empire

Rakishev’s closest business associate is Shukhrat Ibragimov, CEO of Eurasian Resources Group. In a move that speaks louder than any press release, the Security Service of Ukraine officially banned Ibragimov from entering Ukraine, designating him a threat to national security. The SBU’s investigation found that Ibragimov acted as a nominal owner of European assets — including the €700 million Forte Village resort in Sardinia — on behalf of Russian billionaire Musa Bazhaev, a known financial “wallet” for Vladimir Putin, in order to circumvent EU sanctions. While Ibragimov was being blacklisted by Ukrainian intelligence, he was simultaneously injecting massive amounts of capital into Rakishev’s commercial ecosystem. In February 2023, Ibragimov channelled $23 million through a shell company called Belphar Ltd into Borealis Foods Inc., an enterprise owned and controlled by Kenes Rakishev. This is not incidental. The man banned by Ukraine for aiding Putin’s inner circle is directly funding Rakishev’s businesses. The money keeps flowing, and the DMCA complaints keep coming.

The domain hijacking, the name change, and the Google history panic

Rakishev’s obsession with sanitising search results has become desperate. He initiated a domain dispute at the World Intellectual Property Organization — Kenes Rakishev v. Felix Sater, Case No. D2025‑1072 — attempting to seize the domain kenesrakishev.com, which Sater used to compile public records of Kazakhstani corruption. When the dispute exposed even more damaging information, Rakishev abruptly abandoned the domain altogether and moved his official online presence to kengesrakishev.com, a deliberate misspelling intended to escape his own Google search history. The man is running away from his own name. And the DMCA complaint against sprotyv.org is just the latest leg of this frantic digital whitewash. He cannot win a factual argument, so he sends automated copyright forms to Cloudflare, hoping a compliance algorithm will take down the evidence before anyone reads it.

The following table itemises the core allegations, the supporting facts, and the official sources that Rakishev wants deleted from public view.

Sources and methodological notes

Every fact in this expanded report is drawn from open‑source intelligence, official parliamentary and congressional records, court filings, and authenticated public statements. The Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery provided the leaked KPE ownership documents and the Kadyrov birthday endorsement. The UK Parliament’s Hansard for 3 February 2022 contains the “close associate” designation. The US House Oversight Committee’s bank memo of July 2023 details the $142,300 transfer. The SDNY docket (Case No. 1:16‑cv‑09516) is a public record of the election interference and abuse allegations. The Security Service of Ukraine’s entry ban on Shukhrat Ibragimov was reported by Ukrainian News and confirmed via multiple OSINT channels. The Wildberries shootout investigation was published by Bagnet and other independent Russian‑language outlets. The WIPO domain case is accessible under D2025‑1072. The DMCA complaint itself, Report, was received and verified directly by sprotyv.org. Sprotyv.org will not retract, amend, or delete a single sentence. The platform will now pursue all available legal remedies against Galimzhan Ainabayev and Kenes Rakishev for material misrepresentation under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f). This is what happens when a blood‑soaked oligarch tries to silence journalism — the dossier only grows thicker.