Swiss federal prosecutors are carrying out a criminal investigation into alleged money laundering by the son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev, a lawyer says.

Oil magnate Timur Kulibayeva is suspected of laundering around SFr600 million ($597 million) through bank accounts in Zurich, Geneva and Lugano.

The money is believed to have come from illegal commissions and other fraudulent means between 2000 and 2005, when he presided over the KazTransOil state company, according to Bruno de Preux, the Geneva lawyer who is representing a group of Kazakh citizens “opposed to state corruption”.

De Preux said the Federal Prosecutor’s Office opened the case in September and it had been “progressing” ever since.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office would not confirm or deny the information.

KazTransOil controls all of the Kazakh infrastructure for transporting oil products and gas.

At the beginning of 2010 Kulibayeva's wife Dinara, the daughter of the Kazakh president, bought a huge property in Anières worth SFr74.7 million.

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