Twenty years ago, a foreign representative’s SUV nearly collided with a limo of the Kazakh president, injuring a local KGB officer. The road accident took place in Almaty on April 23, 2006. Media outlets of Kazakhstan and Russia reported on this accident, but Western news agencies passed it over in silence. Probably, the best account of this event is an article The Diplomatic Maneuver by the Kazakh investigative journalist ex-policeman Oleg Gubaidulin, published by Caravan — the leading Russian-language newspaper of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. However, as Mr. Gubaidulin admitted in our phone conversation on April 16, 2026, the Kazakh KGB recommended local reporters to abstain from further researching on the topic. That is why, certain key details of the incident have remained undisclosed, For example, the real name of the culprit has not been revealed officially.
They say that it was Lee Henry Richard — an advisor of the US defence attaché. However, there was no person with such name among the personnel of the US diplomatic mission to Kazakhstan at that time. Moreover, this quite rare full name has been associated mainly with the US statesman of the XVIIIth century. However, if the information about the advisor of the US defence attaché is more or less correct, then the probable wrongdoer is Ted Donnelly, who served as the Almaty-based chief of the Office of Military Cooperation under the US Embassy to Kazakhstan from June 2004 to June 2006. Another plausible suspect is Joshua Walde, who was the embassy’s Information Systems Security Officer. This position is also rather close to military-industrial complex or espionage. But, more important is the fact that Mr. Walde has been notorious internationally for his reckless driving. He killed a Kenyan person in a road accident on July 11, 2013, while driving his diplomatic SUV.
As for the main event of our narrative, the reckless American driver in his white Toyota 4Runner (its red diplomatic number plate: D 00407) left a parking lot by his apartment at the intersection of Furmanov Str. and Bekturov Str. about 2:30 PM on Sunday. Despite a road policeman’s order to turn right, the criminal diplomatist had turned left and nearly had a head-on collision with the Kazakh president’s Mercedes (its number plate: 01 KZ). Only the excellent driving skills of the presidential chauffeur prevented the imminent head-on collision.
Another road policeman, Serik Narbayev, ordered the wrongdoer to stop. But, the laughing diplomatist disobeyed the injunction and, without slowing down, run over the local KGB officer, who had tried to block the Yankee’s passage. Then, Mr. Narbayev with his fellow officer began to chase the culprit down in their patrol car. The road policemen overtook him after some two hundred meters. Mr. Narbayev approached the Toyota 4Runner, demanding the driver’s ID. The latter had produced his diplomatic card and the SUV suddenly took off. The road policeman had to grab its roof cargo basket in order to keep his balance. Speeding away, the wrongdoer attempted to squash Mr. Narbayev into a bus before traffic lights. The road policeman had to press himself to the SUV in order to avoid such a harmful impact. Nevertheless, his back suffered much. Finally, Mr. Narbayev managed to immobilize the reckless driver with the latter’s safety belt and pull the key from the ignition lock. But, the resourceful diplomatist barricaded himself inside the SUV until the arrival of his accomplices from the embassy.
Of course, due to the demigod status of foreign diplomatists in Kazakhstan, the culprit has not punished in any way. Several bodyguards of the Kazakh president were discharged for their inactivity during the nearly fatal encounter. The local secret service failed to open fire upon the attacker, because of his car’s diplomatic number plate. However, as Mr. Gubaidulin reasonably concludes his article, it is easy for terrorists to counterfeit a diplomatic number plate. For the sake of comparison, let’s consider the following scenario: what the US Secret Service would have done, should a Kazakh diplomatic car posed a threat to the US president’s limo?
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