Sacha Baron Cohen offers to pay fines for fans who wore Borat swimsuits in Kazakhstan

Recently, six Czechoslovakian tourists were reportedly arrested in Kazakhstan for wearing lime green Borat-style “mankini” bathing suits. They were detained on charges of “minor hooliganism” and fined about $67 (22,500 tenge in Kazakhstan), with the BBC adding that Kazakh social media users were divided on the topic—some said the police are too “sensitive” and others that the resurrecting the Borat gag was an insult to “the honor of the nation.”

Now, possibly because he is very nice, Sacha Baron Cohen himself has offered to pay the tourists’ fines. As noted by Israeili news site Haaretz, Baron Cohen shared the BBC story on Facebook and told his “Czech mates” to send him proof of their identities so he could pay their fines. Assuming all six guys come forward, that’ll be just over $400 or 135,000 tenge. Once that’s all worked out, surely everyone involved will consider it a great success, with the only downside being that the details of this story didn’t provide an easy opportunity to complete the Borat trifecta with a reference to my wife.