The story of weight control on Kazakhstan's roads has taken an unexpected turn. While in Astana they are trying to establish who and why burned down the station that monitors overloaded trucks, in the Zhetysu region, drivers are openly driving around such posts, and doing so, by their own admission, with the knowledge of their superiors. Both storylines, it turns out, are linked to the same people, who at different times were directly responsible for the positioning of stations in Zhetysu.
WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE SITUATION IN ZHETYSU
The Telegram channel "Letters to the President" has published a video from the Kerbulak district of the Zhetysu region, showing cement truck drivers openly bypassing weight control points. According to local residents, the drivers explain this by saying that their superiors are "sorting it out".
Among the vehicles spotted are cement trucks bearing the logo of NC JSC "KazAvtoZhol", that is, the company responsible simultaneously for the condition of the roads and for the operation of the weight control stations.
WHO DECIDED WHERE TO PLACE THE STATIONS
Sources at the FBRK have said that the placement of automated measuring stations (AMS) was determined by a protocol instruction from the Vice-Minister of Transport, Damir Kozhakhmetov. The specific installation points were supposed to be proposed by the territorial transport control inspectorates (TTCI).
According to sources, at the time the installation points were being determined specifically for Zhetysu, the local TTCI was headed by Dastan Zhumakulov, who today serves as the acting chairman of the Committee for Road Transport and Transport Control (CRTTC), where data from all stations monitoring overload across the country is consolidated. And when the stations were physically being installed, the Zhetysu regional branch of NC JSC "KazAvtoZhol" was headed by Nurkhat Akyltaev, who now holds the post of deputy chairman of the company.
In other words, the decisions about exactly where control posts would appear in Zhetysu could well have been made at the time by the same people who today oversee the entire national system of overload control.
WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE ARSON IN ASTANA
The FBRK previously reported that on the night of 28 August, unknown individuals set fire to an AMS station on the Astana – Karaganda highway. This occurred against the backdrop of searches involving Gani Salmaev, who is accused of abuse of official powers and accepting bribes.
The police department for the "Saraishyk" district of the Astana police department told the FBRK that the CCTV camera on this stretch of the highway is not operational.
The fact that a specific camera on a specific stretch of road is not working is not public information. An ordinary driver or member of the public could not know about it. This means that the camera's fault was most likely known only to a narrow circle of people with access to the technical condition of the stations, and it is precisely this that makes the theory of a random arson unlikely.
Indeed, the events themselves unfolded with suspicious consistency. First, it became known that fines for overloading totalling more than 40 million tenge had been overturned, and then, the very next night, the station was set alight.
As the FBRK previously reported, sources link the possible arson to one of the companies operating in the extraction of common minerals.
The company in question is run by Amanbai Beisembaev. The company has three founders – an individual and two limited liability partnerships, both of which list the same person as their director: Alexei Nefedov, who owns a number of other companies with diverse activities across Kazakhstan. The company itself has racked up around 50 administrative fines, including for breaching transport regulations.
The arson of the station objectively deprives the owners of such a business of their evidence base and could be seen as a way of covering tracks amid an investigation that has already begun.
WHY THE STATIONS ARE NOT LINKED INTO A SINGLE SYSTEM
The AMS stations, according to sources, are not integrated with the transport ministry's central information database, and the ministry's digitalisation department cannot solve this task on its own. As a result, many stations remain disconnected from the central system – not because of local issues, but because of an unresolved problem at the ministry level itself.
The FBRK will continue to monitor developments.
