Kazakhstan seems to be less corrupt than Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan.

Growth rates, FDI, human prosperity index are all relatively high. Kazakhstan is an energy state, but Nazarbayev has used the money to develop the state, etc.

According to Kazakh Statistics Agency, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are leading Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). One element that these countries commonly have is their authoritarian regime. However, they show differences in many developmental rankings, including corruption index. This map exhibits last years result of the Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International. A country/territorys score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption there on a scale of 100. 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means that a country is perceived as very clean. The data sources used to compile the index are from various institutions such as world bank and IMF. It includes questions relating to the abuse public power, bribery of public officials, kickbacks in public procurement, embezzlement of public funds, and effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts in the public sector. So it covers both the administrative and political aspects of corruption. This is result of CPI of 2012. Countries with consolidated democracy such as Denmark and Finland are ranked on the first place with score of 90 out of 100. Kazakhstan has score of 28 and ranked on the 133th place along with Iran and Russia. Since countries with score less than 50 are considered to be not transparent enough and need improvements, score of 28 already seems bad. But Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan scored worse than that, 17 and ranked on 170th place, just above North Korea and Afghanistan. So, according to this index, Kazakhstan seems to be less corrupt than Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan and I tried to find if there is any explanation for this. My assumptions are first, democratisation level and effort for that. Even though Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have strong authoritarian regime but they are not as much eager as Kazakhstan to liberalise their market or society. On the contrary, Kazakhstan has liberalised more actively, especially their economy and it led more prosperity. It is not only because of their natural resources. For example, when it comes to natural gas, Turkmenistan actually has a lot more reserves than kazakhstan. But the important thing is how they do business with it. Of course Kazakhstan also has tendency of family or clan politics as well as their significant role in both public n private sector. However according to nazarbayevs interviews, their ultimate destination or aim is democracy. It is just to get Kazakhstan on the level of economy in which they can consolidate democracy, a centralises power n controll is a efficient way of stable, constant development policies. I personally, agree that this kind of authoritarian regime can actually achieve efficient development.

So i guess nazarbayevs have less interests in his personal benefits than the other two leaders. In addition to this, I found a the paper attempts to extract some comparative points about the energy elites of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As these countries economy rely highly on energy resource exports, energy elites are important figures in economy and business. Especially, it First of all, it is clear that they share some important features. They are largely technocratic, in the sense that a majority in all three countries have higher technical education that is directly relevant for the petroleum sector. There are however also important differences among the countries. For instance, Kazakhstans energy elite is younger than that of the other two, and more of them have studied in Western Europe or the USA. Business and politics are closely linked in all three countries, but this is expressed in different ways. In Turkmenistan, it is difficult to identify a domestic business elite distinct from politics, because of the rigid state control over business development. The Turkmen energy elite is also closely associated with the ruling party, the Democratic Party. Similarly close links between the ruling party and the energy elite are evident in Kazakhstan, where most members of the energy elite are affiliated with the Nur Otan party. The energy elite in Kazakhstan was previously more independent, but this has changed with the establishment of a dominant political party. The Kazakh business elite, however, is not affiliated with the ruling party to the same degree as in Turkmenistan. This can be explained by the dominant role of the energy sector in the national economy, which provides impetus for political control over energy resources. In both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the state still controls the energy resources and related companies, directly and in detail.