Kazakhstan is denying any connections to Dubai-based SMB Computers that could implicate it in an international black market in nuclear materials

The interest in SMB Computers and its subsidiaries surfaced after U.S. President George W. Bush said the firm was a front for black-market deals in nuclear technology and that its principal owner was the "chief financial officer and money launderer" in a nuclear-trafficking ring. That man, Sri Lankan businessman Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir, has been linked to top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan has confessed to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Mukhtar Anarbekov, a spokesperson for Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, told RFE/RL that SMB Computers is not officially registered in the country’s commercial capital, Almaty, as suggested by press reports. "As a result of specially conducted investigations, it became clear that neither the company, nor its branches, have ever been registered in the Republic of Kazakhstan," Anarbekov said. "That company is also not on the list of companies licensed for activities in the sector of nuclear power. The persons mentioned in the newspapers have not entered Kazakhstan in 2000 to 2004." The Kazakh State Atomic Energy Committee also said it has never done business with SMB Computers and never granted it a license for the export of nuclear materials. According to SMB Computers’ website, the company has a number of subsidiaries. One of them is Peripherals Gulf Limited, a Dubai-based distributor for computer giants such as Hewlett Packard. The website lists the firm as having business interests in the former Soviet republics and offices in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. That triggered speculation in the press that the company may have been seeking to smuggle nuclear materials from Kazakhstan, the world’s fourth-largest producer of uranium ore.