The Department of the Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) in Almaty has completed an investigation into the fictitious registration of vehicles.
According to the agency's press service, over three years a group of individuals, with the assistance of Specialised Service Centre (SpetsTsON) employees, facilitated the illegal registration of cars, allowing owners to evade paying the required fees.
It is reported that the organisers recruited intermediaries who sought out car owners wishing to avoid costs.
For formal processing, they used front persons — documents and registration records were made in their names.
Then, having access to the information system, the SpetsTsON employees entered deliberately false information and illegally registered the vehicles.
As a result, 132 cars were illegally registered, causing the state damage of over 1.2 billion tenge. Part of this amount — 273 million tenge — was voluntarily reimbursed during the investigation.
In the end, the court found three participants in the scheme guilty. They were sentenced to prison terms of 3 to 4.5 years, and 7 cars purchased with criminal proceeds were confiscated. The verdict has entered into legal force.
It is worth recalling that cases involving SpetsTsONs and vehicle registration procedures have repeatedly been the subject of investigations and court proceedings.
Thus, in December last year, the Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) concluded a criminal case against the former head of the SpetsTsON in Ust-Kamenogorsk. The suspect received bribes for assisting in passing the theoretical driving test to obtain a driver's licence. The criminal income from these actions exceeded 32 million tenge.
In March of this year, in the Zhambyl region, a group of individuals who were illegally selling driver's licences at the SpetsTsON in Taraz were convicted.
In May, it was reported that over the last three years, territorial departments of the FMA had investigated 88 criminal cases related to the illegal registration of over 1,800 vehicles with evasion of the primary registration fee amounting to 11.8 billion tenge.