The ‘Sergek’ system, once touted as a cutting-edge solution in the field of road safety, has in recent years increasingly become a feature of court reports rather than technology reviews. The editors at FBRK, who have previously covered the activities of Sergek Group and its subsidiary Korkem Telecom LLP in detail, have now turned to court archives to find out what legal battles the company has been fighting lately.
Let’s start in April 2024, when the Specialised Inter-District Economic Court of Almaty considered a case brought by Korkem Telecom LLP against the State Institution ‘Department of Education of Almaty’. The dispute concerned a contract dated 22 November 2023 for the provision of security and monitoring services using warning devices, alarms and similar security systems, for the astronomical sum of 3.53 billion tenge. The structure of the contract itself is notable; it was divided into three stages with annual payments of 1.2 billion tenge until the end of 2025. This might seem standard practice, but there is a catch: the deadlines for completing the first stage, as per the technical specification, were calculated from September 2023, even though the contract itself was only available for signing on 22 November 2023 due to an appeal lodged with the Department of Internal State Audit. It is likely for this reason that the Department only made a partial payment for the work carried out by the company. Korkem Telecom LLP demanded the recovery of a debt amounting to 107.65 million tenge and a penalty of 11.63 million tenge from the Department. The court partially granted Korkem Telecom’s claims, ordering the payment of the principal debt and a reduced penalty of 5.81 million tenge.
Just one month later, in May 2024, the Civil Chamber of the Ulytau Regional Court heard a case brought by the State Institution ‘Department of Passenger Transport and Highways of the East Kazakhstan Region’ against Korkem Telecom LLP. The subject of this dispute was far more serious. The claimant sought to recover from the defendant, for the benefit of the local budget, unjustifiably paid expenses related to a public-private partnership (PPP) project – a photo and video recording and video analytics system in the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk – to the tune of 238.39 million tenge. According to the claimant, these funds represented the difference arising from bank fees and value-added tax on loan interest payments, as well as premises rental costs. In other words, it concerned additional expenses linked to the loan and rent. An audit confirmed instances of project cost inflation and the unjustified payment of budget funds. On 12 February 2024, the Specialised Inter-District Economic Court of the Ulytau region upheld the claim, ordering Korkem Telecom LLP to pay this sum, plus court costs of 7.15 million tenge. Despite the defendant’s appeal, the first-instance court decision was upheld in May.
July 2024 brought two court cases for the company. On 1 July, the Specialised Inter-District Economic Court of the Kostanay region initiated civil proceedings following an application by Korkem Telecom LLP against Kapital Group Soyuz LLP. This time, the company acted as the claimant, seeking compensation for material damage amounting to 965,704 tenge. The essence of the claim was that the defendant’s snowplough had allegedly damaged three cameras of the Sergek system in February 2024. However, the court dismissed the claim, finding insufficient evidence of a causal link between the vehicle’s passage and the camera failure.
On 3 July 2024, another legal drama unfolded, but with much higher stakes. The Shymkent City Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit against the State Institution ‘Police Department of Shymkent City, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan’ and Korkem Telecom LLP. The reason was a contract worth 1 billion tenge, concluded between the defendants in April 2024 for the maintenance of the Sergek software and information system. According to the prosecutor’s office, services began to be provided before the contract was registered with the treasury, and budget funds were transferred without legal grounds. The prosecutor’s office and the Audit Department sought to have the contract declared invalid and to return 178.3 million tenge to the budget. However, the court dismissed the claims, recognising that the company indeed holds exclusive rights to the system, that no alternative suppliers exist, and that the work had been performed and accepted by the customer without complaint.
The final note was an administrative violation recorded in December 2024. The Specialised Inter-District Administrative Offences Court of Almaty issued a decision fining Korkem Telecom LLP 738,400 tenge for obstructing state inspection officials in the performance of their duties. Following a state audit of the efficient use of budget funds, the company failed to comply with an order requiring it to provide the Almaty city audit commission with the original calibration certificates for the Sergek 2.1 hardware and software systems. An attempt to appeal the decision in the Almaty City Court in January 2025 was unsuccessful – the appeal was dismissed.
Analysing this court chronicle, one cannot help but ask: what is happening to this once-advanced company in the field of intelligent security systems? Billion-tenge contracts, unjustified payments, a lack of certificates, refusal to provide documents to inspection bodies – all of this paints a worrying picture.
It should be recalled that the company’s problems began even earlier. Last December, in the Kostanay region, numerous violations were uncovered during the installation of cameras. It emerged that Korkem Telecom LLP, the company responsible for implementing the Sergek system, did not meet the legal and technical requirements, and lacked exclusive rights to the software and the necessary certificates. Furthermore, serious financial irregularities were discovered in the project, including unjustified cost compensation amounting to 1.76 billion tenge.
And this is a system upon which not only the preservation of budget funds depends, but also road safety, the legality of issued fines, and ultimately, public trust in state institutions. Can Korkem Telecom LLP sort out its operations and regain public trust? Or will we witness a further proliferation of legal disputes, with the Sergek system gradually transforming from a symbol of innovation into a byword for scandal? These questions have yet to be answered.
In a situation where the Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Technical Regulation and Metrology, Bauyrzhan Kassymov, declares serious violations in the calibration procedure for hardware and software systems, and the committee has no information about which cameras are operating without proper certificates, the entire traffic violation recording system is called into question. The situation demands an immediate and systematic solution, because what is at stake is not only the reputation of a single company, but the effectiveness of the entire road safety control system in Kazakhstan.
The FBRK editorial team will continue to monitor developments. Ultimately, public opinion and the transparency of the judicial system should be the factors that compel all participants in the intelligent security systems market to act in strict accordance with the law and in the interests of citizens.
It is worth recalling that in February of this year, the Akimat of Astana announced a change in the operator of the city’s video surveillance system. Following the completion of the contract with the developer of Sergek, a new public-private partnership (PPP) agreement is planned with the Emirati company Presignt, which intends to invest 53 billion tenge in the project.