Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan

History

2024: Deputy Head of the Ministry of Culture of Kazakhstan received 6.5 years in prison for embezzlement of 100 million tenge allocated for digitalization of archives

Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Archival Businesses and Documentation of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for embezzlement of more than 100 million tenge of budget funds intended for the digitalization of the country's archives. This information was published in early June 2024 by the press service of the Financial Monitoring Agency of Kazakhstan.

According to the investigation, the official, together with the director of the IT company (their names were not disclosed), illegally appropriated state money, which was allocated for the technical support of the Unified Electronic Document Archive information system. It is noteworthy that this system was previously developed and put into operation by the contractor himself, who assumed obligations for its warranty maintenance.

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Kapital.kz

Despite this, the management of the Committee re-transferred funds to the developer of the information system on fictitious acts of work performed. The attackers spent the stolen money on the purchase of expensive movable and immovable assets registered as dummies to conceal their criminal origin.

The court found the defendants in the case guilty and sentenced the deputy head of the Committee and the head of the IT company to 6.5 years in prison. In addition, they will have to compensate for the damage caused, deprived of state awards and suspended for life from holding state and senior positions in commercial organizations for a period of seven years. The verdict has not yet entered into legal force.

According to the press service of the Financial Monitoring Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the crime was identified by special units of the AFM, created in March 2024 to combat offenses in the fields of digitalization, illegal mining and trafficking. Since cryptocurrencies the beginning of 2024, the department has already solved 17 such crimes.^[1]

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