UK to revoke Ablyazov’s asylum status

    By Guy Dinmore
    Lawyers for Ablyazov, who is in prison in France where he is fighting a protracted legal battle against extradition, accuse the UK of violating international laws protecting refugees by engaging in communications over his refugee status with his country of origin, and refusing to release information to him about those contacts.
    The lawyers say documents they have obtained suggest that David Cameron, UK prime minister, saw the issue as an obstacle to better relations with Kazakhstan.
    “After properly granting refugee status to Ablyazov in 2011, the United Kingdom now seems to have fallen victim to an insidious misinformation campaign. The decision taken is not only unlawful and ungrounded, but the Home Office is not revealing the truth about it,” Peter Sahlas, lawyer for the Ablyazov family, told the Financial Times.
    Documents obtained by Sahlas and provided to the Financial Times show that two London-based law firms, Reed Smith and Ronald Fletcher Baker, are acting on behalf of the Kazakhstan government in lobbying the UK government as well as the Serious Fraud Office, which was pressed to open a criminal investigation into Ablyazov.
    A recent memo by Reed Smith cites a private UK investigator hired by Kazakhstan as saying the UK decision to revoke Ablyazov’s refugee status was “being driven by the home secretary, Theresa May, as part of a wider ‘clean-up’ of asylum decisions that have been taken in recent years in respect of individuals who have abused the system and rules”.
    Ablyazov’s status “is considered to be a problem for UK-Kazakh relations and there is a pro-Kazakhstan push by David Cameron, who is keen to drive the relationship forward,” the memo says.
    Joined by business leaders, Cameron became the first UK prime minister to visit Kazakhstan last year, praising it as a “dynamic” country. Cameron signed contracts worth