[1] US prosecutors accused Giffen of bribery paid to Nazarbayev and Nurlan Balgimbayev, former Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, to secure contracts over the Tengiz oil fields for Western companies in the 1990s.
[7] Mercator Corporation, which is owned by Giffen, pleaded guilty to one count of making an unlawful payment to a senior government official of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
[9] The case concluded in November 2010; U.S. District Judge William Pauley, who said he had been able to refer to classified documents that had not been made public in the trial, ordered neither prison time nor a fine for Giffen.
[8] According to the Financial Times, James Giffen is referenced by former CIA agent Robert Baer in his book See No Evil as "Mr. Kazakhstan" for his ability to influence oil policy in that country.
In the espionage novel Performance Anomalies[10] by Victor Robert Lee,[11] a fictional premier of Kazakhstan is tied to "an action before a U.S. federal court alleging violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a case dubbed 'Kazakhgate'[12] concerning the sale of rights to the country's abundant oil fields."