Prosecutor General Berik Asylov stated that this year the prosecutorial authorities, together with Kazakhtelecom JSC, launched the Anti-Call Centre in Astana — a project that intercepts calls from telephone fraudsters and prevents crimes before they are committed.
In his account on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Asylov reported that thanks to the Call Centre, over 70,000 foreign calls intended for potential victims were intercepted in three months. The centre operates around the clock, is staffed with qualified operators, and functions under the coordination of prosecutors.
"As a result, in Astana, over the first 10 months of this year, there has been a steady decrease in online fraud by 22%. In other words, thousands of citizens were protected from financial loss and deception," the statement said.
The centre also helps to locate foreign Call Centres and digital devices through which criminal activity is carried out. It is noted that, together with law enforcement agencies in Russia, Ukraine and Armenia, ten such offices have already been disrupted.
In the aforementioned countries, 63 offenders were detained, and hundreds of pieces of specialist equipment were seized, on which programmes for image and voice spoofing (deepfake technology) were found, as well as databases of personal data of citizens of Kazakhstan.
Asylov emphasised that such crimes have no borders, so international cooperation plays a key role in combating them. In particular, cooperation has been established with law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Belarus, and a joint investigative task force has been created.
Currently, 55 people who operated in Belarus against citizens of various countries, including Kazakhstan, are being held accountable. The amount of damage they caused to Kazakhstanis is more than 67 million tenge.
On the instructions of the Prosecutor General, the project is being scaled up across the country: similar Anti-Call Centres are being created jointly with Kazakhtelecom JSC in regional centres and cities of national significance.