In Almaty, the department of the Agency for Financial Monitoring (AFM) is investigating a fraud case involving fictitious pension contributions and the obtaining of non-repayable loans. The suspects are the management of Comfort Time LLP and a number of affiliated companies.
According to the agency's press service, the scheme's organisers registered businesses through which they arranged fake pension contributions for citizens who were not employed anywhere. This information was used to create a fictitious income and credit history, which allowed them to deceive banks and obtain loan approval.
Participants in the scheme took a commission of up to 10% of the loan amount. In most cases, the borrowers had no intention of fulfilling their obligations from the outset.
As investigators established, the criminals thus obtained 140 non-repayable loans totalling 399 million tenge. The main recipients were unemployed people and those with a negative credit history.
Similar cases were identified in Astana, Shymkent, the Zhetysu and Abay regions, as well as in the Mangystau, Zhambyl and Aktobe regions.
"It should be noted that the problem of over-indebtedness poses a serious threat. Such schemes only exacerbate the situation: borrowers receive approvals from several banks at once, as a result of which their debt burden increases many times over," the statement said.
The AFM stated that the investigation is ongoing. Other details of the case are not disclosed in the interests of the investigation.
It will be recalled that in February, the prosecutor's office of the Abay region identified that local microfinance organisations were issuing loans without conducting biometric identification of borrowers. This allowed fraudsters to arrange loans for citizens without their knowledge.