The market for the supply of anti-locust pesticides in Kazakhstan has proved somewhat more consolidated than it appears from official public procurement documents. Hundreds of millions of tenge are distributed among familiar companies, whose directors seem to move from one firm to another, like participants in a prolonged corporate dance. Crucially, all these different suppliers have business ties with one and the same intermediary company.
Officially, everything looks impeccable: three different suppliers, three separate contracts signed in August 2024 for a total of over 440 million tenge. Last year, Satti Tulik LLP received 223.8 million tenge for 8,750 litres of thiamethoxam, Agro-Sector LLP received 85 million tenge for 12,500 litres of Zeppelin Advance, and Shchelkovo Agrokhim-KZ LLP received 132.3 million tenge for 6,439 litres of Espero. Notably, all these contracts were awarded directly.
But dig a little deeper, and the picture becomes far more interesting. It turns out that two out of three suppliers have direct links to the same company — Pestitsidy LLP, which, unsurprisingly given the name, is involved in the trade of pesticides. The directors of these theoretically competing firms seemingly move from one structure to another, creating a certain illusion of competition.
For example, Toregeldy Kalmuratov, a former director of Satti Tulik LLP, was also listed among the founders of Pestitsidy LLP. His colleague at Pestitsidy LLP, Rakymzhan Zhamal, was also listed among the management of Satti Tulik. And the director of Agro-Sector LLP, Saken Ospanov, who incidentally has debts of 145.7 million tenge and a freeze on his bank accounts, was also part of the management of Pestitsidy LLP. So, formally independent suppliers are, in reality, part of one business group.
The situation with Satti Tulik LLP — the most frequently appearing supplier of insecticides to the State Inspection Committee in the Agro-Industrial Complex of the Ministry of Agriculture — is particularly interesting. According to data from the kompra.kz service, the company changed its business profile only in March 2025. Before that, it had been engaged in mixed farming and veterinary services for 16 years, only to suddenly switch to pest control.
The geography of political connections is no less interesting. The current director of Satti Tulik LLP, Kairat Ermen, ran as a candidate for the maslikhat from the Auyl party in 2021. And among the suppliers, names with serious backgrounds crop up. For instance, Yrysbek Isayev from Astana-Nan LLP — yet another company with which the committee had a contract for the supply of insecticides in 2024 — was once listed as an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, holding the position of head of the representative office in Baikonur. The founder of the same company, Ivan Sauer, is the general director of the large agricultural firm Rodina, which the FBKK editorial board has already covered in a series of articles about Kazakhstan's latifundists.
But let's return to Pestitsidy LLP — the central node of this whole story. Today, the company is headed by Baurzhan Akkozov, and the founder is, apparently, his sister Gaukhar Akkozova. Among the former founders is Beishe Namashamov, who simultaneously runs a similar Kyrgyz company, PESTICIDI KG LLC. The same Namashamov also appears among the founders of Agr-Khim-Lider LLP — another company that suppliers cooperate with on government contracts.
The result is an interesting picture: formally different companies are managed by overlapping groups of people. Meanwhile, the actual volumes of supply are impressive: in 2024 alone, over half a billion tenge passed through these interconnected structures.
Additional context is provided by the case of Astana-Nan LLP, where in 2023 a former director was convicted for the embezzlement of over 800 million tenge. The trial was accompanied by allegations of procedural violations and questionable adjustments in the 1C software (the company's accounting and document management system).
Particularly concerning are the potential problems with the actual control (or lack thereof?) over the quality of the supplied pesticides. According to the technical specifications of the public procurement of insecticides, suppliers must provide registration certificates and guarantee a shelf life of at least two years. But who checks the concentration of the active ingredients? Who monitors what exactly ends up in the field after a multi-tiered chain of middlemen? These are the questions our editorial board raised in a previous article about possible overlaps between public procurement of insecticides and the illegal trade in narcotic substances. More on this can be read on the FBKK website.
The system, it seems, is structured so that the state receives only the final certificate of completed work, while the entire supply chain remains in the shadows. GPS monitoring is not mandatory, the balance of pesticides is not tracked, and the concentration is not tested. In such conditions, any manipulation with dilution or resale becomes virtually untraceable.
A reasonable question arises: why create such a complex system of interconnected companies when you could compete honestly in the market? The answer may lie in the economic expediency of monopolising government orders. When one group controls several formally independent suppliers, it can dictate prices and minimise the risks of real competition. But the paradox is that, despite all the complexity of this scheme, the activity of locusts in the fields of Kazakhstan remains a topic of discussion.