A former deputy of the Karasai district maslikhat in Almaty region organized a criminal scheme, the Financial Monitoring Agency reports. He is suspected of embezzling budget funds allocated for the support of the agro-industrial complex on an especially large scale. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Sputnik Kazakhstan.
The suspect had experience in agriculture and knew the mechanisms of state subsidies well. Using this, the ex-deputy created a stable scheme for illegally obtaining budget funds.
To implement the scheme, the organizer used controlled enterprises and 29 farms registered in Almaty, Zhambyl, and Turkistan regions. Forged documents were submitted to the authorized bodies regarding the purchase of elite raspberry seedlings for planting industrial raspberry plantations, the agency said.
The suspect drew up fictitious purchase and sale contracts, acceptance certificates, electronic invoices, and documents on certification of planting material producers. However, the seedlings were not actually delivered. And some of the farms indicated in the documents did not have the real capacity to grow raspberries. As a result, more than 2.6 billion tenge in subsidies were illegally obtained from the budget, the statement said.
Of the illegally obtained subsidies, 491 million tenge was directed to operations on the stock market. For this purpose, a brokerage account was opened in the name of the suspect's spouse, through which securities of Kazakh and foreign companies were purchased. In addition, another 400 million tenge was transferred to the microfinance organization "iSolutions Capital" under the pretext of providing temporary financial assistance. Subsequently, these funds were gradually cashed out by the suspect.
Also, the ex-deputy spent 170 million tenge of the stolen funds on gambling at a casino in the city of Konayev. By court order, 4 apartments, 3 cars, a private residential house, and securities of the suspects were seized. A preventive measure in the form of detention was applied to three suspects. The criminal case has been sent to court.