The public foundation "Elge Qaitaru" Open letter considers the return of illegally acquired property

Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Chairman of the Commission for the Recovery of Assets Bektenov O.A. А.
Copies: Deputies of the Majilis of the Parliament Bapi E.S., Imasheva S.V., Sairov E.B., Sarym A.A.

                                       Dear Olzhas Abayevich!

The pub­lic foun­da­tion “Elge Qaitaru” con­sid­ers the return of ille­gal­ly acquired prop­er­ty to the state as an impor­tant direc­tion of state pol­i­cy and the adop­tion of the rel­e­vant law last year as a step towards restor­ing social jus­tice in soci­ety.
However, we believe that the imple­men­ta­tion of the law has encoun­tered cer­tain dif­fi­cul­ties.
The cas­es report­ed by the gov­ern­ment and oth­er pub­lic author­i­ties con­cern­ing the con­vic­tion of cer­tain per­sons are the result of the appli­ca­tion of the pro­vi­sions of the Criminal Code, not of the law.
The “return to Kazakhstan juris­dic­tion” of Jusan Bank and Karmetkombinat can hard­ly be con­sid­ered as com­pli­ance with the Law “On the Return of Illegally Acquired Assets to the State”.
To ful­ly exploit the poten­tial of this law, the Public Foundation “Elge Qaitaru” asks you to con­sid­er the fol­low­ing proposals:

1. As is well known, in the 90s of the last cen­tu­ry almost all the coun­try’s largest com­pa­nies end­ed up in the hands of non-trans­par­ent struc­tures as a result of var­i­ous manip­u­la­tions. None of the cur­rent own­ers of these com­pa­nies has paid even half of their mar­ket val­ue to the state bud­get.
We believe that one of the main obsta­cles is the method­olog­i­cal nar­row­ness of the tools for imple­ment­ing the law, which pro­vides for its appli­ca­tion by defin­ing only a cir­cle of sub­jects. In order to acti­vate the process of recov­ery of ille­gal assets, it would also be advis­able to leg­is­late that the sub­ject of the activ­i­ties of the Commission and the Asset Recovery Committee should be all objects whose val­ue exceeds thir­teen mil­lion times the month­ly cal­cu­la­tion index (100 mil­lion USD), as it is already pro­vid­ed for nat­ur­al per­sons — sub­jects. In this regard, we pro­pose the fol­low­ing amend­ment to the Law:
P.1 Art.9 of the Law (Functions of the Commission) to add para. 5 with the fol­low­ing word­ing:
“5) To draw up a list of objects to be returned to the State, the legal­i­ty of whose trans­fer to pri­vate own­er­ship rais­es rea­son­able doubts”.
These objects should be list­ed sep­a­rate­ly in the register.

2. Article 4(1)(3)(1) of the Law establishes publicity, transparency and accountability as the main principles of asset recovery. However, nine months after the adoption of the Law on the Return of Illegally Acquired Assets to the State,

which pro­vides for the estab­lish­ment of a reg­is­ter con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion on
enti­ties owned, con­trolled or pos­sessed by the fol­low­ing per­sons
assets, sub­ject to con­fir­ma­tion of the legit­i­ma­cy of the sources of their acqui­si­tion.
(of ori­gin), nei­ther Parliament nor the pub­lic will be informed as to who exact­ly is
who exact­ly is includ­ed in this reg­is­ter. In accor­dance with the above para­graph
We pro­pose that the Register be opened, with the nec­es­sary amend­ments to this
amend­ments to this law.

3. Article 8 of the Law provides for the inclusion of public figures in the Commission for the Recovery of Assets. Today, these are the employees of quasi-state structures, Mr A.M. Baimenov and Mr Y.A. Kulekeev. 

We ask you to define by law the mech­a­nism of del­e­gat­ing pub­lic rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the Commission and to sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase their num­ber, tak­ing into account the fact that many pub­lic fig­ures are ready to par­tic­i­pate in the work of the Commission with­out remuneration.