Smuggling, tax officials, and fake imports: how Gadzhi Gadzhiev, the self-styled "boss of Khorgos," built a shadow empire between Kazakhstan and Russia
20:21, 16 августа 2026 г.
Journalists continue to report on Kazakh sports official Gadzhi Gadzhiyev, who has long been called the "overseer of Khorgos" and is linked to the smuggling of Chinese goods through Kazakhstan to Russia, not only household goods, but also components for the Russian military-industrial complex.
Gadzhiev is the husband of Raushan Kazhibayeva, the head of the Kazakh Presidential Television and Radio Broadcasting Complex. Our project has discovered that he holds a Russian passport and has a large family and business partners living in Dagestan who do business in Russia. His brother works for the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation.
According to leaked documents, Gadzhi Gadzhiev’s phone number was used to purchase airline tickets for 34-year-old Rashid Shapievich Gadzhiev, the brother of the Kazakh businessman (he also used the white Audi Q7 driven by the head of the Shapi Gadzhiev family). Rashid Gadzhiev has worked for many years in the Federal Tax Service of Dagestan, where he is a state tax inspector and conducts audits of local businessmen. In 2015, he even ran for the Buinaksk City Council.
Gadzhi Gadzhiev’s sister, Saida Gadzhieva, currently works as a sole proprietor in her native Buynaksk (selling by mail and online). Until May of this year, she owned Green Implant LLC in Moscow, a wholesale pharmaceutical company. The company’s website claimed to sell dental implants from the German company Green Implant System Technology and to conduct seminars and training for doctors. The company’s social media accounts have not been updated since 2023, and the Federal Tax Service discovered false information in its Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRLE). The liquidation of the Russian legal entity may be related to the fact that the German company, which claimed to be the implant manufacturer, has been in bankruptcy since 2022.
Its CEO is Ilya Urevich Musheev, a dental surgeon and implantologist who has been working in Kazakhstan for over 15 years. His website states that he lectures on implantology at the Institute for Advanced Medical Studies in Almaty and at the Pirogov Institute of Surgery in Moscow. The German company is owned by the Israeli company Interprestige Ltd., whose president is the same Ilya Musheev, who has close ties to Kazakhstan. Interestingly, Green Implant products are listed on Russian websites as being made in Germany, while the production address is listed as Petershäger Weg 162, 32425 Minden.
This small building is surrounded by office and private residential development. Other local companies, including one involved in logistics and freight transportation, were previously registered there. No traces of European certifications for Green Implant’s products were found. All this suggests that the actual production may have been located in another country (for example, China, where the entire range offered by the German company is manufactured), and the products were not intended for European markets.
Gadzhi Gadzhiev’s Kazakh business partners also have close ties to Russia—for example, the brothers Shamil and Givergis Aliyev, whose father, Supiyan Aliyev, was previously the founder of the local firm SA Construction Group, which Gadzhi Gadzhiev has owned since 2017.
According to leaked data, the Aliyev brothers and Gadzhi Gadzhiev were once registered at the same address in Almaty. Givergis Aliyev has many Russian friends, including Vyacheslav Moskovsky, a professor at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) and a lecturer at the Znanie (Knowledge) Society, created by Putin’s decree. Shamil Aliyev also has extensive businesses in Kazakhstan, including Tekhtranservis LLC, ASIA AUTO GROUP, and others. He has accounts at Russia’s Sberbank and regularly flies between Moscow and Makhachkala.