No Kazakhstanis among those apprehended in the US - Abibullayev

    Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry is checking information related to a Kazakhstan-based company allegedly being blacklisted by the US Trade Department, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Altai Abibullayev told a briefing on October 8.
    “Respective efforts are underway at the diplomatic level with the US State Department. As soon as we have learned all the details we will announce them”, he said.
    The spokesman also emphasized there are no Kazakh citizens among the 11 defendants named in a federal indictment filed in Brooklyn charging them with conspiring to purposely evade strict export controls for advanced microelectronics. His remarks follow media reports that the same court charges a Kazakhstan-born Alexander Fishenko with operating inside the United States as an unregistered agent of the Russian government.
    “There are no Kazakh citizens among those apprehended in the USA. The US hasn’t confirmed that any of them hold Kazakh citizenship. And no notifications on the possible involvement of any Kazakh citizens in the case have been received (…) No defendants or their relatives have turned to Kazakhstan’s representation offices based in the US. No Kazakh citizens bearing such names have been registered with Kazakhstan’s representation offices in the USA”, Mr. Abibullayev said.
    He stressed that Mr. Fishenko is no longer a citizen of Kazakhstan. “Kazakhstan-born Fishenko had lost his Kazakhstan’s citizenship upon obtaining Russia’s citizenship before he obtained his US citizenship”, he said.
    Tengrinews.kz journalists tried to locate the premises of Apex Kazakhstan Company allegedly involved in the espionage case.
    However, Zharokov Street 126 accommodates only an apartment block with no adjacent offices. The company has not been spotted in local Internet-based directories, either.
    According to Huffingtonpost, the indictment alleges that since October 2008, the 46-year-old Fishenko and his co-defendants "engaged in a surreptitious and systematic conspiracy" to obtain the highly regulated technology from U.S. makers and export them to Russia, www.tengrinews.kz said.