The Anti-Corruption Agency, together with the Ministry of Tourism and Sport, conducted an external analysis of corruption risks in the area of sports financing, which revealed corruption risks.
"At the central level, the external analysis was carried out on the activities of the Ministry of Tourism and Sport, and at the regional level, in the regional departments of sport and physical culture," the agency's press service said in a statement.
It was reported that since 2018, the budget for the sports sector has doubled, reaching 1.4 trillion tenge. A further 1.3 trillion tenge is planned to be allocated over the next three years.
At the same time, it is noted that, despite significant funding, Kazakhstan continues to hold low positions in Olympic standings and the World Sports Ranking. Furthermore, our country is recognised as one of the most corrupt in terms of the number of suspicious matches, occupying 4th place in the negative ranking of the international organisation Sportradar.
It has been established that this is facilitated by a number of factors leading to ineffective spending of public funds:
- a clear imbalance between funding for "elite" sport and "mass participation" sport (the budget for elite sport is 9 times larger (340 billion tenge) than that for mass participation sport (35 billion tenge). The naturalisation of foreign players has become the norm in elite sport. During the years of independence, Kazakhstan acquired 126 foreign nationals for Olympic sports, of whom half (79) later returned to their home country;
- uncontrolled and non-transparent use of financial resources by sports organisations and authorised bodies (funds are diverted to conduct fictitious training camps and rent sports facilities, sports equipment and supplies are purchased from a single source at inflated prices, payments are made to "phantom employees", wages are inflated, and double funding occurs);
- ineffective spending by sports federations and professional clubs of funds from Samruk-Kazyna JSC (systemic risks have been identified regarding the siphoning of funds through payments to non-productive players of professional clubs, inflated salaries for management of professional clubs, holidays in 5-star hotels under the guise of training camps, and dubious agency agreements. Over 6 years, 138 billion tenge in sponsorship funds from Samruk-Kazyna JSC was directed towards financing 4 professional clubs (FC Astana - 50.1 billion, HC Barys - 48.8 billion, Astana Qazaqstan Team cycling team - 31.5 billion, BC Astana - 8 billion);
- ineffective management of sports facilities (over the past 10 years, 55 state sports organisations have been transferred into private hands. Subsequently, trustees and new owners received 83.8 billion tenge from the budget alone for preparing athletes for competitions and leasing sports facilities);
- sham implementation of public-private partnerships (under the pretext of implementing PPPs and operating sports facilities, sports services for children are being procured on paper, circumventing public procurement procedures and per-capita funding for children's sport. Since 2016, 77 PPP projects worth 89.3 billion tenge have been implemented in the sports sector, of which 62 billion tenge in budgetary investments have been paid out);
- lack of digitalisation of sports processes (development of the National Digital Platform E-sport, planned for implementation back in 2020, has not been carried out. The relevant ministry does not have complete data on the state of Kazakh sport and does not maintain a unified register of sports facilities, sports sections, and coaches).
Following the analysis, the Anti-Corruption Agency proposed a set of legal and organisational measures to the Ministry of Tourism and Sport aimed at improving the sphere of sports financing.