The Ministry of Justice has again not responded about the amount Kazakhstan has spent on legal disputes with Moldovan businessmen Stati. Previously, journalists had already tried to find out how much the state’s most famous foreign lawsuits cost.
A correspondent for Ulysmedia.kz asked the official representative of the Ministry of Justice, Talgat Uali, how much money Kazakhstan had spent after the department terminated its cooperation with Bolashak Consulting Group, and the former head of the ministry, Marat Beketayev, was arrested.
Furthermore, the media questioned what stage the legal proceedings are at. However, Talgat Uali could not answer the journalists' questions, only noting that a total of 8 billion tenge has been allocated this year for Kazakhstan’s international legal disputes, which is significantly lower than previous expenditure under Beketayev.
"The Ministry is taking all possible measures to reduce budget expenditure allocated for representing and protecting the state's interests in foreign jurisdictions. For instance, if the allocated budget for 2021 amounted to 25.6 billion tenge, the budget for 2024 amounted to 8 billion tenge," Talgat Uali told journalists.
The department's representative specified that the Ministry of Justice currently has 20 such court cases in progress. It is noted that the ministry is reducing the number of disputes through the use of various alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, with lawsuits being a last resort.
Earlier, Majilis MP Azat Peruashev suggested that twice as much as the $544 million which Kazakhstan is obliged to pay to Stati by a decision of the Stockholm Arbitration Court had been spent on the Stati legal disputes.
For context, the editorial board of FBRK closely monitored the situation surrounding the case of Moldovan oligarchs Gabriel and Anatol Stati and announced the outcomes of past trials.
Kazakhstan's legal battles with the Stati family were coordinated by former Minister of Justice Marat Beketayev, who is currently under investigation, and the consulting group Bolashak Consulting Group.
The legal defence strategy required Kazakhstani taxpayers to fund accounts to the tune of tens of millions of dollars annually in order to delay the payment of compensation awarded to the Stati businessmen by the court.
Thus, in various years, the Ministry of Justice spent between 22% and 48% of its budget on litigation against Stati. For example, in 2014, the Ministry of Justice's total expenditure amounted to $173 million, which was the department's highest spending figure in the last 10 years. Expenditure on arbitrations from this sum was $38.9 million (22% of the ministry's total expenditure).
The most money spent on arbitration cases against Stati was in 2021 - $60.3 million, or 48% of the ministry's total expenditure ($125.2 million).
Later, the Ministry of Justice ceased its cooperation with the company Bolashak Consulting Group. It was also reported that the department intends to create a group of trusted lawyers and experts from among domestic specialists to protect the country's interests abroad.