BISHKEK -- Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security (UKMK) said on April 8 that it extradited to Azerbaijan five alleged members of "an organized criminal group" linked to the former deputy chief of the Central Asian nation's customs service, Raimbek Matraimov, at Baku's request.
The five were removed from the country on April 7, the UKMK said.
Last month, the committee said that its officers had detained five Azerbaijani citizens suspected of being members of a transnational criminal group who planned "attacks on Kyrgyzstan's top officials."
On March 23, the UKMK said that the five had links with Matraimov, who at the time was wanted in Kyrgyzstan on charges of money laundering, abduction, and illegal incarceration. Matraimov was hiding in Azerbaijan at the time.
On March 25, Azerbaijani authorities arrested Matraimov and his three brothers in Baku. A day later, they were extradited to Bishkek.
WATCH: Raimbek Matraimov has been described as a living symbol of corruption by Kyrgyz media. A former customs official allegedly at the heart of a smuggling ring worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he has now appeared in court in Bishkek after being detained in Azerbaijan the previous day.
On March 27, the Birinchi Mai district court in Bishkek ruled that Matraimov and his brothers -- Tilek, Islambek, and Ruslan -- must stay in a UKMK detention center until at least April 26.
Matraimov in 2020-21 was at the center of a high-profile corruption scandal involving the funneling of close to $1 billion out of Kyrgyzstan.
In February 2021, a Bishkek court ordered pretrial custody for Matraimov in connection with the corruption charges. He received a mitigated sentence that involved fines amounting to just a few thousand dollars but no jail time.
The court justified the move by saying that Matraimov had paid back around $24 million that had disappeared through corruption schemes that he oversaw.
In November, the chairman of the state security service, Kamchybek Tashiev, accused Matraimov and the late crime boss Kamchy Kolbaev (aka Kamchybek Asanbek), who in 2011 was added by Washington to a list of major global drug-trafficking suspects, of "forming a mafia in Kyrgyzstan."
Matraimov left Kyrgyzstan in October after Kolbaev was killed in a special security operation in Bishkek. In January, the Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said Matraimov was added to the UKMK's wanted list.
In 2019, an investigation by RFE/RL, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and Kloop implicated Matraimov in a corruption scheme involving the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan.
Last month, a court in neighboring Uzbekistan sentenced Kolbaev's close associate, influential Uzbek crime boss Salim Abduvaliev, to six years in prison on charges of illegal possession and transportation of arms and explosives.
Abduvaliev is believed to have ties with top Uzbek officials and leaders of the so-called Brothers' Circle, a Eurasian drug-trafficking network that included Kolbaev.
