International Business : Bank Thieves Exploit Kazakhstan’s Eagerness for Foreign Capital : Crime: Authorities say gang has tried to steal more than $4 billion from American and European banks since December.

The chairman of Kazakhstan National Bank knew someone was using the bank’s name in a colossal swindle. But only when a telex from London rolled up in late January on his private line did Daulet K. Sembayev realize an international criminal gang had access to his office.

The telex from Lloyds Bank said that “under no circumstances” would it consider his financial proposal. Sembayev had no idea what Lloyds was talking about. The telex referred to earlier correspondence that Sembayev hadn’t seen.

Even as he hurriedly contacted Lloyds, Sembayev knew what had happened: IIBI Ltd., a London-registered front company for a group of bank thieves, had struck again--this time, apparently, by sending and intercepting messages from Sembayev’s personal telex.

Using forged guarantees from Kazakhstan National Bank, IIBI thieves have tried to steal more than $4 billion from European and American banks since December, Kazakhstan bank and law enforcement officials said.

It is one of the more ambitious examples of criminals trying to exploit the eagerness of this former Soviet republic to attract investment.

Until last year, Kazakhstan National Bank was fairly free with loan guarantees, which were offered to foreign companies as investment incentives. That policy has paid off. While Hungary and Poland have received more short-term investment, a United Nations survey issued last month found Kazakhstan had attracted more long-term foreign investment than any other former Soviet republic or Warsaw Pact country.

Over the past five years, Western companies have invested or pledged to invest more than $46 billion--most of it in developing Kazakhstan’s oil, the survey found. Russia was a runner-up, with $35.5 billion in long-term investment.

But Sat B. Tokpakbayev, head of Kazakhstan’s KGB-successor agency, the KNB, said IIBI and other criminals played upon that desire for Western capital.

In September, 1993, the national bank was stung for $8.5 million by a French-Russian joint venture. The company borrowed money from Germany’s Deutsche Bank on the strength of a genuine Kazakhstan National Bank guarantee and then disappeared. When Deutsche Bank called in the loan, Kazakhstan had to pay.

In the latest scheme, the thieves--who include Russians and Kazakhs and perhaps some Europeans and Americans--could have wrecked the reputation of the young national bank, which has gold and currency reserves of just $1.239 billion, as well as damaged banks in Europe and America.

So far they have been thwarted by luck and vigilant Western banks. But most of them are still at large. Three arrests--two in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, and one in Moscow--have been made in an affair that law enforcement officers say involves groups of well-dressed, smooth-talking criminals in England, the United States, Austria, Germany, Russia and Kazakhstan.

“We don’t know how many people are involved, because the number keeps growing,” said Kozi-Korpyesh Z. Karbuzov, a 36-year-old special prosecutor fighting organized crime in Kazakhstan.

Karbuzov said police who searched one suspect’s Almaty apartment found stationery not only from Kazakhstan National Bank and the Ministry of Finance, but from the national banks of neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan--suggesting that forged guarantees from those countries may also be circulating.

One of those arrested was a clerk at Kazakhstan National Bank who had access to Sembayev’s telex and codes. The clerk, a former police officer who had worked two years at the bank, sent and intercepted telexes in return for a promised $1-million bribe, police said.

The scam itself was simple. The thieves applied for loans of $100 million or more from about 20 Western banks and lending companies. The forged guarantees were presented as collateral: If IIBI failed to pay off its loans--usually taken out over a 10- or 20-year period--the lending bank would be reimbursed from Kazakhstan’s gold reserves.

Had the scam succeeded, banks in Europe or America would have been stuck with the tab, since Kazakhstan would not honor the forgeries. Despite that, Karbuzov complained that U.S. and European authorities had ignored requests for information and cooperation.

The guarantees are easy to forge. The national bank’s stationery is a holdover from Soviet days, when all institutions--from banks to bakeries--used the same low-quality mimeograph paper for official correspondence. The bank chairman makes a document official by signing at the bottom right and sealing the signature with a rubber stamp.

The IIBI swindle first came to light in December. Within days of each other, an Austrian company and then an American firm--neither of which authorities would name--called Sembayev to inquire about the validity of loan guarantees that together totaled $2.5 billion. They sent copies of the guarantees--executed on bank stationery, with Sembayev’s signature and the bank’s official stamp--to Kazakhstan for inspection.

“They looked completely convincing,” admitted Sembayev.