As uncovered by media Kazakh billionaire Kenes Rakishev — a “close friend” of Ramzan Kadyrov and the son-in-law of CSTO Secretary General Imangali Tasmagambetov — was involved in a dubious multi-billion-dollar scheme involving shares traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. These findings are contained in letters written by SEC whistleblower Chris DiIorio, published in the Epstein archives. The documents also mention Kazakhstan’s honorary consul to the United States Emmanuel Grinshpun, Vladimir Antonov (a figure in the criminal cases of Snoras and Latvijas Krājbanka), alleged “Russian mafia boss” Semion Mogilevich, and Jeffrey Epstein himself.
Christopher DiIorio is a professional analyst, institutional trader, and Wall Street veteran. In 2006, he lost nearly $1 million investing in E Mobile shares. He launched his own investigation and uncovered what he described as a systemic manipulation scheme. DiIorio became a whistleblower for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), while publicly accusing the regulator of protecting a large-scale money-laundering network involving financial institutions, business figures, politicians, and international criminals.
Among the participants in the fraudulent schemes, DiIorio named Russia’s Yandex, QIWI, PayOnline, as well as NetElement (NetE), a company linked to Kazakh billionaire Kenes Rakishev. PayOnline was part of NetElement. According to DiIorio, this structure was used to funnel and launder funds connected to Rakishev and related companies.
In a letter dated July 2020, DiIorio stated that he had submitted two formal whistleblower reports to the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower regarding money laundering and transactional laundering tied to “fraud known as Net Element.” He described shell companies with no real assets, operating largely on paper, whose shares were artificially inflated.
Putin accused of surrounding himself with same 'actors' at series of events
Participants in the scheme first sold shares they did not actually own, and then resolved the problem by issuing massive quantities of nearly free new shares in the same shell companies. These shares were used retroactively to “cover” the illegal sales. As a result, enormous trading volumes were generated not by business growth, but through stock manipulation. The over-the-counter (OTC) market — with minimal oversight — was also used for shadow transactions, money laundering, and the creation of off-book funds.
Rakishev’s NetElement claimed to be a payment processor handling billions of dollars in transactions annually. The company was portrayed in the media as a national success story — the first Kazakh firm to conduct an IPO on NASDAQ. In the US, NetElement provided payment services for small and medium-sized businesses using blockchain technology. NetE also offered its own cloud-based solution, Aptito, used in retail and food service venues. In 2017, the company was repeatedly named among the fastest-growing firms in North America.
Despite its apparent success, in 2020 Rakishev unexpectedly sold the business to electric vehicle developer Mullen Technologies, Inc. Through a reverse merger, Mullen shareholders received the majority of NetE’s outstanding shares, while Rakishev obtained a stake in Mullen. DiIorio explained that the reverse split and merger were necessary to consolidate shares and prevent the stock price from falling below $1 — a threshold that would have led to delisting. As a result, NetE was absorbed into Mullen, which became a public company and gained access to the stock exchange. “Such fraudulent deals are common in the world of shell companies used for money laundering,” DiIorio emphasized.
DiIorio also linked NetElement subsidiary PayOnline to the massive Wirecard fraud. Wirecard collapsed in 2020 after KPMG auditors confirmed media reports of suspicious activities and accounting manipulation. The company admitted that €1.9 billion was missing and announced plans for bankruptcy, while founder Markus Braun was arrested. KPMG was unable to determine whether Wirecard had been a legitimate business or largely fictitious. Many of its subsidiaries were registered in “digital offshore” jurisdictions such as the UAE, Ireland, and Singapore, where companies can be set up via intermediaries and financial reporting is difficult to verify.
DiIorio’s suspicions about NetElement’s fictitious nature were ultimately confirmed. Last summer, Mullen was renamed Bollinger Innovations, Inc. In October, the company received a notice of trading suspension after its share price fell below $1. By late 2025, its subsidiary — electric truck “manufacturer” Bollinger Motors — had shut down. Today, the company’s shares are considered distressed and trade for pennies on the OTC market. As DiIorio had warned, Rakishev’s Mullen never actually manufactured electric vehicles in the US; the vehicles were produced by China’s Qiantu, while Mullen merely resold them. The company served primarily as a shell to access public stock trading.
Notably, SeeThroughEquity — an analytics firm that published “independent reports” on small-cap stocks including NetElement — was charged with stock analysis fraud in 2022. The firm had accepted payments for positive coverage while its owners traded the same stocks and used the reports to manipulate prices. A court fined the owners more than $500,000 and barred them from the securities market for five years.
From 2013 to 2021, NetElement’s CEO and chairman was Oleg Firer — the son of Soviet emigrants, raised in the US, and a former ambassador of Grenada to Russia. Since 2024, Firer has worked at Dubai-based ADG Legal, founded by Peter Gray, a partner of Roscongress. Firer previously ran Acies Corporation, but in 2013 the SEC delisted its shares for violations, and the company was liquidated. DiIorio explicitly described Acies as a shell company.
Rakishev is known for constantly reshuffling his assets — buying and selling companies and altering ownership stakes. Last year, he registered a new firm, Fincraft Energy Holding Limited. Before that, he sold shares in Shubarkul Premium coal company (acquired in 2024), Ukraine’s BTA Bank, oil company ARK Petroleum (acquired in 2023), Nomad West Oil (also acquired in 2023), and others.
Catholics across the world pray for Pope Benedict XVI as his body lies in state
Such shell-company stock schemes would be impossible without the involvement of brokers. DiIorio identified Knight Capital (KCG, ticker NITE) as a key intermediary. In 2017, Knight Capital was acquired by Virtu Financial and continued operating. In 2020, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) filed a complaint against NITE, stating that the firm had misreported account type codes in 1.5 billion transactions, submitted false broker data, and concealed ultimate beneficiaries. The violations resulted in a $120,000 fine — negligible for a firm of that size. DiIorio directly described NITE as a criminal money-laundering structure. Another critical node in the scheme, he said, was UBS Securities — the investment banking and brokerage arm of UBS Group AG.
As for Russian companies whose shares were not traded directly on US exchanges, “mirror trades” were carried out using depositary receipts — simultaneous buying and selling of the same asset across multiple markets or shell companies to conceal transaction origins and volumes.
DiIorio identified Michael Milken — founder of the junk bond market and a convicted financial criminal — as one of the architects of the scheme. Milken served a prison sentence but was pardoned by Donald Trump in 2020. The entire system served major clients, including Jeffrey Epstein.
It is known that Epstein received at least $158 million for alleged tax consulting services from Apollo co-founder Leon Black. In 2011, Black met Vladimir Putin privately in Sochi. Officially, the meeting was said to concern Apollo’s participation in projects of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
