Maira Nazarbayev with Bolat Nazarbayev
IVY LEAGUE PUZZLE: Daniyar Nazarbayev got into prestigious Columbia University (pictured), despite possibly not having a high-school diploma. (David McGlynn)
POWER PLAYERS: Maira Nazarbayev (left), the mother of Columbia student Daniyar, is involved in a nasty divorce battle with his stepfather, Bolat Nazarbayev (right), brother of Kazakhstan’s long-serving president. (
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Getting into Columbia University is so much easier when your uncle is the president of a Eurasian country.
Admission records obtained by The Post show that the stepson of the brother to Kazakhstan’s leader might have conned New York City’s most prestigious university into admitting him — even though it’s unclear if he even had a high-school diploma.
Among those who sent letters of recommendation for Daniyar Nazarbayev — whose mother was once wed to Bolat Nazarbayev, the brother of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev — was the Kazakhstan ambassador to the United States.
The question about whether Daniyar graduated from high school surfaced during a lawsuit filed by Bolat against the 24-year-old and his mother, with whom he’s been embroiled in a bitter divorce.
As The Post has reported, Bolat is accusing Daniyar and his mother, Maira, of swindling from him a $20 million apartment at The Plaza.
Daniyar was exposed in the story as having attended a high school in Switzerland at the same time he was purportedly going to high school in Kazakhstan.
According to recent internal e-mails, between university officials, obtained by The Post, Columbia has yet to verify that Daniyar graduated from any high school.
“The Office of Admissions is concerned about the authenticity of the official, certified translations of secondary-school documents presented with his application for admission,” Curtis Rodgers, Columbia’s dean of enrollment management, wrote in an e-mail to Columbia’s senior assistant dean, Jeri Henry.
Columbia has verified only that Daniyar went to high school in Switzerland at the Leysin American School from 2002 to 2005 — the same time frame during which he was supposed to be in Kazakhstan — but never graduated.
In an e-mail to other officials, Rodgers said he spoke with the registrar at the Swiss school, who told him, “Daniyar received a special diploma at the end of his studies with us, but did not fulfill our graduation requirements, no.”
Daniyar’s passport also was “obtained using false documentation” and “has been revoked,” Kazakh officials told Rodgers via e-mail.
Despite the suspicions about whether he obtained a high-school diploma, Daniyar actually did well at Columbia and was considered “a model student,” even making the dean’s list in 2009. He was so good that he was admitted into the master’s program in political science, documents show.
A spokesman for Columbia refused to comment on the case or say whether Daniyar is still a student.
Daniyar was unable to be reached.