In Almaty, the activities of the organisers of the internet resource Kizdar․net have been stopped. According to preliminary data, the illegal income from the site's operation exceeded 2 billion tenge.
WHAT IS KNOWN
According to the Almaty City Prosecutor's Office, the activities of the organisers of the Kizdar․net internet resource were stopped under the coordination of the supervisory authority.
According to the investigation, since 2011, the site was used to place advertisements and organise the provision of paid intimate services.
As reported by the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), the resource was also used for advertising and promoting procuring via the internet.
WHAT MEASURES WERE TAKEN BY LAW ENFORCEMENT
The alleged organisers of the resource have been detained. Their actions have been classified under Part 2 of Article 309 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan ("Organising or maintaining dens for prostitution and procuring").
According to the investigation, the defendants are the founders of one of the IT companies.
By court decision, the suspects have been taken into custody.
WHAT DATA DID LAW ENFORCEMENT PROVIDE
As reported by the MIA, approximately 9,000 profiles offering intimate services were posted on the platform, of which more than 500 related to persons of non-traditional sexual orientation and transvestites.
According to the investigation, the site was one of the company's key projects and was used as a technological platform for developing and testing software solutions, which were then applied in creating other legal IT products in the services sector.
According to the department, the company's growth occurred through financial proceeds from the site's activities. The volume of such proceeds is preliminarily estimated at more than 500 million tenge per month.
WHAT WAS SEIZED DURING SEARCHES
During investigative actions, law enforcement officers seized 144 million tenge, over $1.3 million, including over $300,000 in cryptocurrency, weapons with ammunition, about 150 units of computer and other equipment, vehicles, documents, and other materials relevant to the criminal case.
An illegal income of over 2 billion tenge has been preliminarily established.
The pre-trial investigation is ongoing. The progress of the criminal case is under special control of the Almaty City Prosecutor's Office.
CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
Previously, the founder of the FBK, journalist Kirill Pavlov, stated that unknown persons had posted a profile with his phone number on the Kizdar․net resource. After that, according to him, he received numerous calls and messages with offers of an intimate nature for several weeks. Pavlov reported that he contacted law enforcement authorities and also began recording the calls and collecting information about the callers.
According to Kirill Pavlov, after he began recording the calls and conducting his own check, he was able to establish that among the callers and senders of messages were representatives of various state bodies, including police officers and an assistant to one of the deputies.
The journalist also stated that, regarding a separate episode involving insults, he filed a statement attaching audio recordings and data on the identified individual, but this application was subsequently lost.