When not one but several criminal cases are opened against the same person under the same article, this is rarely a coincidence. When those affected include not only Kazakhstani entrepreneurs but also fifteen hundred citizens of another state, and the situation is mentioned in a public speech by that country's president, it ceases to be a private dispute between business entities and begins to resemble an organised cross-border scheme. The thread of this story leads to the Kazakhstani woman Asia Askarova, until recently known by the surname Iskakova.
WHAT HAPPENED
The FBK editorial team has obtained materials from several criminal proceedings related to the activities of Asia Askarova, along with complaints from lawyers representing the victims.
The first is a criminal case registered following a collective application by 15 citizens of the Republic of Belarus, recognised as victims under an international investigative request. According to their account, in 2021–2022 Askarova, through the online platform Finstore.by, attracted investors' funds (totalling, by the applicants' estimates, up to 1,600 people and around $3 million) for a project to build an eco-wellness dairy-processing complex "Village Well-being" on 68 hectares of land in the Akmola Region, implemented through LLP "Production Company BAYAN" and LLP "GLOBAL&AKTIV". However, the promised project was never implemented, and the invested funds were not returned to investors — the obligations to return them were never fulfilled. The damage claimed in this case amounts to $238,000.
The second is a criminal case following an application by the director of LLP "Vostok Engineering", who alleges that Askarova, at that time heading LLP "CAPITAL INDUSTRY", received funds amounting to 300 million tenge. According to an appeal by the lawyer, after enforcement proceedings were initiated and land plots belonging to the company in the village of Koyandy were seized, these plots passed to third parties through the repayment of wage arrears to an employee — and were ultimately resold at several times the price. This case was discontinued by the investigation for lack of corpus delicti, but the injured party is appealing that decision.
What draws attention here is the discrepancy between the investigation's conclusion and certain details in the case materials. One of the plots, sold by a bailiff for 4.5 million tenge, was resold just a few days later for 200 million tenge. And the second, which went for 8.6 million tenge, was ultimately sold for 100 million tenge. Moreover, during a separate arbitration proceeding, Askarova's own representative confirmed the sham nature of some of these transactions, and the final buyer of one of the plots stated that he had in fact not paid any money for it. How these circumstances square with qualifying the entire situation as an ordinary civil-law dispute is a question that the discontinued case does not yet answer.
The third is a criminal case following an application by LLP "MELIOR PRIME", which transferred 120 million tenge to Askarova and a company connected to her under construction contracts subsequently declared invalid — including because the developer had no rights to the claimed land plot. Askarova has been recognised as a suspect in this case, and the investigation is ongoing.
Furthermore, in 2025 Askarova was already convicted of fraud — receiving a suspended sentence of 4 years and 2 months' imprisonment. This verdict, unlike the three cases listed above, has entered into legal force, and is therefore the only episode in the whole story where a court-established guilt can be discussed.
All these cases have different applicants, different sums, different circumstances and different procedural fates. One thing unites them: in all three stories, Askarova is not an incidental character but the central figure of what is happening.
THE LAND THAT KEEPS REAPPEARING
If these cases are considered separately, each can be put down to an ordinary business dispute in which a party is dissatisfied with the outcome of a transaction. But what draws attention is a recurring set of elements: the same land mass in the Tselinograd district of the Akmola Region, the same circle of relatives and affiliated persons surfacing in different transactions, and the same sequence: attracting funds for a large-scale project — its failure to be implemented — a legal dispute that ends not in favour of those who handed over the money.
The international dimension of the story adds weight to it. On 5 September 2025, the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, publicly raised the issue of unreturned funds of Belarusian investors invested in tokens of foreign companies. At the meeting, a company organised by citizens of Kazakhstan was also mentioned, which carried out 16 token issues but fulfilled obligations on only four of them. The total amount of unreturned funds, according to Belarusian authorities, was around $14 million.
In materials related to the activities of the Belarusian platform Finstore, among the Kazakhstani issuers whose obligations to Belarusian investors were not fulfilled, the companies BAYAN and GLOBAL&AKTIV appear directly.
WHY THE CASES DO NOT FORM A SINGLE PICTURE
What is also interesting in this story is that instead of combining interconnected episodes into a single proceeding, the cases are investigated separately and by different departments. Moreover, the case concerning the Belarusian investors was transferred from the Astana Police Department (PD), where Askarova herself lives and where the bulk of the evidence is located, to the Ulytau Region PD — to be joined to a previously suspended proceeding in which, as the victims' side claims, no investigative actions were carried out for a long time.
Formally, each of the agencies acts within its powers: determining jurisdiction, discontinuing a case for insufficient corpus delicti, suspending it pending the execution of international requests — all of these are standard procedural tools. But it is precisely the combination of these decisions (discontinuing one case, geographically relocating another, the sluggish development of a third) that turns disparate business conflicts into a story with elusive accountability, where investigation timelines literally stretch over years.
Perhaps at this stage it is precisely the "Vostok Engineering" case that appears most important for understanding this whole story. Not only because of the amount claimed, but above all because of the direct contradictions between the circumstances reflected in the case materials and the investigation's conclusion that there is no corpus delicti.
It is these that prompt reflection not only on what happened to the land and the money, but also on the reasons for the omissions that may have been made at the investigation stage. And, more broadly, on why, given all the circumstances that arose around Askarova year after year, procedural outcomes so often emerged for her that did not put a final full stop in these cases.
For now, this story has no single ending. There is a verdict that has entered into legal force, there are cases that were discontinued or suspended, and there is an investigation in which Askarova remains a suspect. But if all the procedural formulations are removed from this story, a detail remains that is hard to dismiss: at the centre of several completely different stories involving money and land, the same person keeps appearing again and again. And it is precisely the "Vostok Engineering" case that leaves behind the main question: why did what looks so significant at the level of facts prove insufficient at the level of the investigation?
To be continued...
