Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport has consistently refused to comment on its own financial statements and the circumstances of a lost court case for 395.4 million tenge, citing an alleged gap in the FBRK request. Our editorial team appealed the refusal to several authorities, and the chain of referrals, passing through the General Prosecutor's Office, the transport prosecutor's office and the civil aviation committee, eventually returned to where it began: the airport itself. By this point, the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan had already explicitly clarified that the requirement the airport cited simply does not exist in the law.
WHAT HAPPENED
Earlier, the FBRK sent an official request to Astana Airport regarding the circumstances of the legal dispute with the Committee of Internal State Audit (CISA) of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan over 395.4 million tenge. At that time, the airport refused to respond to the request in full, claiming that a document confirming the authority of the chief editor who signed the request specifically as of the current date had not been attached. This is despite the fact that our editorial team attached the same package of documents it has been submitting for years to akimats, ministries and the General Prosecutor's Office without any questions from their side.
What is particularly telling is that the CISA responded to the same request without any artificially created obstacles — in detail and on the merits, disclosing precisely those details that the airport, it seems, would rather not mention.
WHAT THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND INFORMATION SAID
After the airport's refusal, the FBRK requested an assessment of the situation from the relevant authorities. The Ministry of Culture and Information (MCI) effectively confirmed the legitimacy of the editorial team's position, stating that the list of grounds for refusal established by Article 36 of the Law "On Mass Media" is exhaustive, and the requirement to confirm that the chief editor's authority remains valid specifically as of the date of the request does not fall within that list.
The MCI even sent a recommendatory letter to the airport pointing out the need to comply with the requirements of the law when considering media requests, which in this case the airport evidently had not done.
In parallel, the FBRK appealed to the General Prosecutor's Office. The appeal subsequently passed through several authorities — all the way to the Chief Transport Prosecutor's Office, the Civil Aviation Committee and the Regional Aviation Transport Prosecutor's Office of Astana, and ultimately all of them forwarded it directly to the airport — that is, precisely to where the problem had arisen.
The Regional Aviation Transport Prosecutor's Office forwarded to the airport the very document confirming the authority of the FBRK's chief editor. And only after receiving it did the airport finally respond to the original request.
In the end, a routine media request turned into a multi-stage correspondence with government bodies — merely so that the airport would do what it should have done from the very beginning.
WHAT THE AIRPORT DID NOT SAY ABOUT THE LOST COURT CASE
In its submitted response, the airport describes the legal battle with the CISA in considerably softer terms than the case materials themselves suggest. The airport reports that the prosecutor issued an opinion in favour of satisfying the claim and revoking the order in the part concerning reimbursement to the budget of 395.4 million tenge, and explains the move to instalment payments as being due to its "difficult financial situation" and concern for the "social stability of employees". The company has already transferred 263.6 million tenge of the 395.4 million to the budget.
At the same time, the airport continues to insist that the FBRK request "does not comply with the requirements of clause 1 of Article 36 of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan 'On Mass Media'". But it is precisely clause one of that article that contains no requirements regarding the format of a request; it merely establishes the right of the media to seek information.
Despite the fact that the Law "On Mass Media", in our subjective view, does not fall into the category of complex legislation, we understand that not everyone manages to grasp it on the first reading. We are prepared to approach the MCI with a request to once again clarify its provisions to the airport's legal department.
