The Department of the Agency for Financial Monitoring (AFM) of the Akmola Region has completed an investigation into a criminal case concerning the illegal registration of 55 cars.
According to the press service of the department, between December 2020 and January 2022, a group of individuals organised a scheme for the mass initial registration of vehicles imported from abroad.
"These actions were accompanied by non-payment of mandatory fees and charges, as well as the use of forged documents, resulting in losses to the state amounting to over 400 million tenge", the report states.
The court found two defendants guilty and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 2.5 to 5 years.
Additionally, the court confiscated the convicts' property — apartments in Astana and Kokshetau with a total value of over 90.5 million tenge, as well as a house in Kokshetau worth 35 million tenge.
It is worth recalling that in March 2021, a transnational group involved in smuggling cars from Russia and illegally registering them in Kazakhstan was detained in the North Kazakhstan Region. The Department of Economic Investigations discovered and seized 54 passenger cars, 6 trucks, a large number of documents and state registration plates.
At the time, it was reported that the cars were brought into Kazakhstan under the guise of spare parts; however, according to our information, these cars were registered in Russia on credit using straw buyers at private car dealerships, or were imported from Armenia without being customs cleared. At that time, when purchasing a car, we recommended checking the numbers, verifying against Russian databases and weighing all the risks when buying a vehicle registered in Russia.
In March 2023, a meeting was held in Kostanay attended by all heads of structural divisions of the Anti-Corruption Service, the NJSC 'Government for Citizens' and the Administrative Police Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan. At the meeting, the founder of the Anti-Corruption Fund Kirill Pavlov stated that in Kostanay alone there were about 700 cars with tampered VIN numbers, and in Petropavlovsk their number amounted to 400-500 units.
The police prohibit registering such cars; what the state intends to do with them is unknown. In this regard, Pavlov proposed distributing them among rural teachers, doctors and community police officers. The proposal was included in the minutes, but no implementation of such a practice was reported.
In July of this year, Kirill Pavlov released a video on his YouTube channel, in which he spoke about the 'grey market' for cars in Kazakhstan and the schemes for illegally registering vehicles imported across the Kazakh border.