Kyrgyzstan’s national security chief has been rowing back on comments in which he said that he took a decision to eliminate the country’s most notorious organised crime boss.

Mobster Kamchybek Kolbayev was in October 2023 shot dead in Bishek’s Blonder Pub by a special Alfa unit of the country’s State Committee for National Security (GKNB). At the time, the GKNB said its officers opened fire after Kolbayev put up armed resistance.

However, speaking to representatives of Kyrgyzstan’s education establishment on January 16, Kamchybek Tashiyev, head of the GKNB, referred to Kyrgyzstan’s battle against organised crime and, in mentioning the slain Kolbayev specifically, said: “I had to take the decision to liquidate the thief in law for the sake of the state. And I made this decision, and we eliminated him.”

The US Drug Enforcement Agency in 2021 offered an award of up to $5mn for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Kolbayev.

On January 18, Tashiyev met with journalists and sought to clarify the remarks he made two days earlier.

“There was no personal order to liquidate Kolbayev,” Tashiyev said. He then repeated the original version of events given by the GKNB to explain the death of the criminal kingpin.

“Some journalists, especially Western journalists wanted to twist what I said,” Tashiyev claimed, further responding to media coverage of his apparent statement that the death was the result of an assassination.

However, several media outlets posted a video of Tashiyev speaking at the encounter with educators. In that video, he clearly says he decided to give the order to eliminate Kolbayev.

As noted by The Times of Central Asia (TOCA), Kyrgyz media outlets including Kaktus Media, AKIpress, 24.kg and Vecherny Bishkek, all put out reports on Tashiyev’s apparent order to terminate Kolbayev.

TOCA wrote on January 21: “Given the lenient treatment Kolbayev had so often received from Kyrgyz authorities, it seemed strange [as the GKNB’s version of events has it that] he chose to open fire on law enforcement officers rather than submit to being gently detained, as he had been before, and possibly incarcerated in luxury prison conditions.”

Across 2021 to 2024, Tashiyev fought a well publicised battle to stamp out organised crime in Kyrgyzstan. He eventually claimed that the campaign was an unparalleled success. Kyrgyzstan has become “the only country in Central Asia… and probably in the post-Soviet countries, that does not have organised crime”, he reiterated on January 17.