Kazakh IT Firm Alleges Former Employees Stole Intellectual Property Worth Two Billion Tenge
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Kazakh IT company Relog says it is seeking a criminal investigation and pursuing civil claims against several former employees. The company estimates the alleged damage at more than two billion tenge, Orda.kz reports, citing Relog’s press service.
Relog develops a transportation management system used to automate logistics. The company claims that former employees may have misappropriated its intellectual property and transferred part of its business to another company.
According to Relog, former CEO Mukhtar Leker and former analyst Almaz Kisapov allegedly established a separate legal entity while still employed at the company and began transferring existing client contracts to it.
Relog also alleges that after leaving the company, the former employees registered the copyright to a product called Census and later sued Relog.
An internal investigation reportedly found signs that the source code of Relog’s main logistics platform had been copied. The company alleges that former programmer Torezhan Botakanov copied and modified the code before transferring it to the other former employees.
Relog claims that one of them is now attempting to sell a product built using that code. These allegations had not been independently verified at the time of publication.
According to the company, a criminal case involving Leker is being investigated under Article 250 of Kazakhstan’s Criminal Code, which covers abuse of authority. Relog also said two civil cases involving copyright protection and alleged violations of legislation governing limited liability partnerships are before the courts.
I will not allow former employees who, in our view, betrayed the trust of the company, its staff, clients and shareholders to destroy what we have spent years building,Relog founder and CEO Bauyrzhan Rustemov said.
The company added that its internal audit of previous years is continuing. Relog does not rule out the possibility that other former employees may have been involved in the alleged misconduct.
Orda.kz was unable to obtain comments from Mukhtar Leker, Almaz Kisapov or Torezhan Botakanov before publication. The editorial team is prepared to publish their responses if received.
Original author: Alexander Smolin
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