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The Russians “destroyed the company — Kazatomprom — my father once built from nothing, destroyed our lives … and are taking what belongs to the Kazakh people,” his daughter, Aigerim Dzhakishev, told the National Post. “Unfortunately our (Kazakhstan) president is in on it with Putin, so there is nothing anyone can do about it.”

With the first charges laid Monday in the investigation of Russian interference in last year’s U.S. election — and possible collusion by President Donald Trump’s campaign — Trump and his supporters are trying to revive controversy over the Obama administration’s 2010 approval of the sale of Uranium One, which owns an American uranium mine.

Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

They allege that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, paved the way for the Toronto-based firm’s transfer to a Russian state corporation as pay-back for largely Canadian donations to the Clinton charitable foundation.

Two U.S. Senate committees have recently launched investigations into the affair, though evidence of such a quid-pro-quo — or that it would in any way compromise American security — is tenuous, at best.

But in a little-known series of 2009 videos that were smuggled out of prison, Dzhakishev suggested the purchase of Uranium One by Russia’s Rosatom had profound consequences for him personally.

His arrest is widely believed to have been a politically motivated act by the strong-arm Nursultan Nazarbayev government. Dzhakishev ties it to the Canadian firm’s sale and a Russian drive to control uranium production in his country, developments he says he opposed while heading Kazatomprom, Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium company.