Former Chairman of the Board of JSC «SPC «Shymkent» Baurzhan Kankin has been appointed Chief Client Officer and Member of the Board of the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC).
The AIFC website states that Kankin holds a Master's degree in Business Administration and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Suleyman Demirel University. He began his career at the international audit and consulting firm «Deloitte», the Swiss private bank «Union Bancaire Privée», and Kazakhstan's «Temirbank».
Kankin has held a number of senior positions. As General Director of «ACF PIT Tech Garden», he coordinated the implementation of industrial projects worth over $100 million. He also headed JSC «SPC «Shymkent» and served as Deputy Chairman of the Board of JSC «SPC Astana».
Baurzhan Kankin's activities as Chairman of the Board of JSC «SPC «Shymkent» had previously attracted public attention. In 2021, the publication News Price published an investigation into the work of social-entrepreneurial corporations, which pointed to violations in financial reporting and involvement in shaping Kazakhstan's external debt.
Journalists also highlighted the parallel growth of the corporation head's family business. In particular, a construction company linked to Kankin's wife actively won government procurement contracts in the Akmola Region worth hundreds of millions of tenge precisely during Kankin's tenure in the region (2016-2019). At the same time, the company accumulated debts of over 150 million tenge, and several large contracts remained unfulfilled.
Furthermore, the investigation pointed to violations in the SPC's financial reporting amounting to billions of tenge and schemes involving land plots. Details of the investigation are available at this link.