Deputy Chairman of the Agency for Financial Monitoring (AFM) Zhenis Yelemesov spoke about the scale of investigations related to money laundering of criminal proceeds.
According to Zakon.kz, he reported that since the beginning of 2024, the agency has completed over 100 such criminal cases, half of which were registered this year.
As Yelemesov emphasised, a significant portion of these cases were solved under the 'Parallel Financial Investigations' project, which made it possible to recover more than 420 billion tenge for the state budget.
As an example, he cited the case of a female citizen who ran a body massage service disguised as a SPA centre. The woman was convicted of procuring and sentenced to 4 years in prison, with the confiscation of 114 million tenge for the state.
However, according to Yelemesov, the agency conducted an additional financial investigation.
"If she had 15 girls working, providing services, they served 3-4 clients per day, with the average cost of each service ranging from 30,000 to 150,000 tenge. Taking this into account, it was concluded that over the years of operation, her criminal income should have exceeded 2 billion tenge," said Zhenis Yelemesov.
After this, law enforcement officers identified the convicted woman's assets worth more than 1.5 billion tenge in the form of apartments, commercial premises, and luxury cars. At the same time, the woman had managed to invest some of the funds in a business project for buying and selling agricultural products and even managed to make a profit.
It is noted that all identified assets were seized, and the property was confiscated for the state.