The Interdistrict Economic Court of Astana upheld the claim of the National Security Committee (NSC) against Nazarbayev University. According to the Kazinform International News Agency, the university may file an appeal against the court's decision.
"The claim of the Republican State Enterprise 'National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan' is to be upheld. To recover from the Autonomous Educational Organisation 'Nazarbayev University' a penalty in the amount of 12,038,750 tenge and a state duty of 361,162 tenge in favour of the state", ruled Judge Asan Bakishev.
According to the case materials, in July 2021 the NSC entered into a contract with the university for "targeted programme financing of research work".
"Its topic is intelligent cryptographic systems: the development of a hardware and software complex (HSC). The deadline for completion is the end of 2023", the report states.
According to information from the court office, the university was supposed to develop an HSC for machine decryption of encrypted SSL/TLS traffic, but the university missed the deadlines. The penalty demanded by the NSC amounted to 10% of the total contract sum (120,383,750 tenge).