BISHKEK. Feb 14 (Interfax) - A Kyrgyz Supreme Court spokesman has announced the start of a trial in absentia in the case of the country's former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his relatives, who have been accused of masterminding an assassination attempt on a major foreign investor.
"The court proceedings in the case of Sean Daley's contract killing allegedly organized by Kurmanbek Bakiyev, his brother Zhanybek (Zhanysh) and his sons Marat and Maxim will take place in the Pervomaysky District Court," the spokesman said.
"The criminal charges were redirected from the Oktyabrsky District Court of the city of Bishkek on February 12, 2014. The criminal case was assigned a number and was referred to a judge of the Pervomaysky District Court," he said.
"The criminal case files say that at the end of 2005 Maxim Bakiyev, acting together with his father, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, conspired with other persons in order to illegally accumulate wealth by illegally obtaining the exclusive rights to develop the Jerooy gold mine and subsequently sell it to third persons," the Supreme Court spokesman said.
"The license to develop this deposit belonged to company Oxus Gold Plc, whose representative Sean Daley carried out a large amount of work from March to July 2006 to explain to the media, the parliament and the government of Kyrgyzstan the company's new investment proposals that seriously differed from the previous offers, setting the share of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan at 50%," he said.
Maxim Bakiyev, "being aware that the public outcry sparked by Daley's initiative might affect the implementation of his criminal plot to seize the Jerooy gold mine, entered into criminal conspiracy with his brother Marat Bakiyev, who then held the post of an aide to the National Security Service chairman, and his uncle Zhanyshbek Bakiyev, first deputy chairman of the National Security Service, and gave them his father's [President Bakiyev] instructions to kill Daley," the spokesman said.
An unknown person, who was ordered to kill Daley, fired several shots presumably with a Margolin pistol at the foreigner on July 7, 2006, he said.
The Briton, however, survived the attack, he added.
Afterwards, Daley left Kyrgyzstan, and the right to develop the gold mine, located in Kyrgyzstan's northern Talas region, was transferred to organizations affiliated with Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky.