Anti-corruption authorities have identified systemic corruption risks in the road sector. Despite spending over 6 trillion tenge on the road industry in the last 5 years, citizens remain dissatisfied with the state of the road network.
According to the agency's press service, between 2023 and 2024, state bodies received more than 20,000 complaints from citizens about poor road quality. The public links this to corruption.
Since the beginning of 2024, the Anti-Corruption Agency has registered 24 criminal cases in this sector. Agency employees have found that corruption risks are present at all stages of road construction and repair.
For example, at the initial stage, problematic sections are incorrectly identified, and roads that have already undergone work are repaired. During design, the estimate is artificially inflated through excessive volumes of work and materials.
Contracts are awarded to inexperienced contractors, on a single-source basis, or under conditions of cartel collusion.
"The multi-stage control system has also proven inadequate. The conclusions of the National Centre for Road Asset Quality regarding identified defects are not binding, and technical supervision performs its functions formally," the statement reads.
Furthermore, the agency believes the problem is exacerbated by insufficient digitalisation. It has emerged that over the last 10 years, 16 billion tenge has been spent from the budget on developing information systems, yet a Digital Road Map has still not been developed.
In response, the Anti-Corruption Agency has prepared more than 90 recommendations for eliminating corruption risks in the road sector.
For context, in 2022, the former Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development, Kairbek Uskenbayev, announced plans to make 2,500 km of second-category roads toll-based after bringing them into proper condition.
At that time, the following sections were planned to become toll roads: Kyzylorda — Aralsk, Aktobe — Uralsk, Aktobe — Orenburg, Kainar — Bishkek, Zhenetibay — Shetpe — Beineu — Akzhigit, Pavlodar — Semey, Astana Northern Bypass, Uralsk — Saratov, Kokshetau — Petropavlovsk, Astana — Atbasar, Pavlodar — Omsk, Semey — Kalbatau.
In 2023, between 8 October and 1 December, some of these, namely the Beineu-Akzhigit, Pavlodar-Omsk, Kokshetau-Petropavlovsk and Uralsk-Saratov motorways, began operating on a toll basis.
Meanwhile, as early as May 2022, the FBPC editorial team published material about who could profit from Kazakhstan's toll roads. In 2019, JSC NC KazAvtoZhol signed an 11-year contract with a consortium of companies — Computer Vision Technologies LLP, Temirzhol Zhandeu LLP and Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co., Ltd. — for the installation and maintenance of a toll collection system on national roads.
In April 2020, Timur Kulibayev's company, Computer Vision Technologies LLP, held a tender for the manufacture and installation of control gantries worth over 3.4 billion tenge. The winner was JSC NGSK KazStroyServis. According to our calculations, the cost of one gantry was approximately 32.5 million tenge.
Under the contract, the state undertakes to reimburse the investor's outlay over 11 years using funds collected from toll charges.
At the time, we found that the LLP invests less than 2 billion tenge of its own money, sells the gantries at an incredible price, and in return receives 138 billion tenge over 11 years for maintaining the system that collects money from ordinary citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Incidentally, following our publications, the Ministry of Transport informed journalists that JSC NC KazAvtoZhol would review the contract with Computer Vision Technologies LLP for the installation and maintenance of the toll collection system on national roads. The ministry stated its intention to reduce payments for operational costs.