Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said Friday that he might be willing to pardon former officials and businessmen wanted by law enforcement agencies if they showed remorse.

 “Over the years, I’ve raised a lot of people, and I regret the time I spent on them,” Nazarbayev said during a televised call-in show. “Many worked with me, then went into business and are doing their jobs well.”

Nazarbayev said former officials could come to him and ask for forgiveness if they hadn’t broken the law.

Nazarbayev’s former son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev, once Kazakhstan’s envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, was sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison for kidnapping and other crimes last year. He currently lives outside Kazakhstan.

(Bloomberg)