Kazakh billionaire buys back the home his father built

Aidyn Rakhimbayev, a prominent Kazakh businessman and major shareholder of BI Group, Kazakhstan’s largest construction company, has bought the house where he spent his childhood. According to Forbes, Rakhimbayev is Kazakhstan’s ninth-richest person, with a fortune estimated at $1.1 billion.

According to the 2009 census, Kulynzhon (formerly known as Kaznakovka), the village in the Samara district of the East Kazakhstan region where Rakhimbayev grew up, had a population of 823.

«We recently bought a house in my home village of Kulynzhon, where I was born and raised. My father built this house with his own hands. Thirty years ago, when I moved my parents to the city, my father sold it for two canisters of oil. He practically gave it away,» the businessman wrote on Facebook.

Public records show that Rakhimbayev was born on Sept. 20, 1972, and later lived in the village of Kaznakovka, which was subsequently renamed Kulynzhon. The entrepreneur recalled that as a child, the house seemed enormous to him and the trees in the yard looked gigantic.

«My whole world — my mother, father, grandmother, two sisters, brother and me — fit into four small rooms,» he said.

To share those memories with the next generation, Rakhimbayev recently brought his son to the house.

«We walked through the rooms, and he was amazed that all of us had managed to fit in there. In winter, my parents would bring calves and lambs into the house so they wouldn’t freeze in the barn. We tied them to the legs of our beds. Of course, they kept us awake. But that was how many people lived in those days,» he recalled.

As soon as Rakhimbayev learned that the house was for sale, he decided to buy and renovate it.

«Teachers from the new school in Kulynzhon will live there. The new campus opened last week. We need more teachers, so the house will come in handy. It served our family, and now let it serve the school, the village and those who will teach our children,» he said.

In a warm closing remark, Rakhimbayev said he remembers the house as a place full of life and hoped it would remain that way for decades to come.