The chief accountant of the Shymkent Medical and Physical Education Dispensary of the city department of physical culture and sports paid herself and other employees unjustifiably inflated salaries.
According to Ratel.kz, from January 2021 to November 2022, chief accountant Madina Abdukarimova spent a year and a half paying the institution's security guard a sum almost twice his actual salary.
At the same time, a nurse with a salary of 90,000 tenge received an additional 1.3 million tenge. The dispensary’s economist, accountant, HR specialist and medical registrar also received inflated salaries.
It emerged that all these payments were immediately transferred by the dispensary employees to Abdukarimova's card account. It is reported that she convinced them there were glitches in the computer accounting system and that some had supposedly been overpaid by mistake, and the money had to be returned to the chief accountant.
However, in November 2023, an inspection by the Committee of Internal State Audit of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan began at the dispensary, the results of which showed that employees had been overpaid 22,218,531 tenge over two years.
As a result, the Department of Economic Investigations opened a criminal case. The investigation also established that the director of the dispensary was unaware of these financial transactions and only learned of them after the audit. Despite her non-involvement, the dispensary director resigned in February 2024.
During the investigation, Abdukarimova returned 8 million tenge, fully admitted her guilt and actively cooperated with the investigation.
In the end, the Inter-District Criminal Court of Shymkent found her guilty under Article 189, part 4, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan (misappropriation or embezzlement of entrusted another's property using official position on an especially large scale) and sentenced her to 7 years in prison, with a lifelong ban from holding positions in the civil service.
In addition, the court upheld the civil claim of the State Municipal Enterprise 'Shymkent City Medical and Physical Education Dispensary' to recover from the convicted person the amount of uncompensated damage totalling 14,218,531 tenge and court costs of 430,000 tenge.