Stealing Budget Money: Turkestan Region Education Employees Stole Billions of Tenge, Agrarian University Employee Convicted

The Turkestan Region Prosecutor's Office has completed seven pre-trial investigations into budget embezzlement. 123 education sector employees are implicated in these cases, Orda.kz reports.

The department reports that the suspects in five criminal cases are reviewing the materials. Two more cases against employees of the Sauran and Suzak districts' education departments have been sent to court.

One and a half billion tenge was collected from the suspects for the benefit of the state, and property obtained by criminal means in the amount of 2.9 billion tenge was seized, the Turkestan Region Prosecutor’s Office reported. 

Meanwhile, in Almaty, the investigation into the fraud case with public procurement at the Kazakh National Agrarian Research University has been completed, according to the press service of the Almaty City Prosecutor's Office.

The department found that in 2020, the university entered into three public procurement contracts worth 43.8 million tenge for the supply of sweet corn seeds and fertilizers. However, the goods were never received, and the funds were cashed.

Earlier, the prosecutor's office reported that KazNAIU fictitiously canceled seed sowing, which led to multimillion losses. Fraudulent leases of commercial premises owned by the university were also revealed.

Following the inspection, the director of the educational and experimental farm, "Saimasai," was found guilty of fraud. The Medeu District Court handed down a seven-year suspended sentence. All damages have been compensated, and the sentence has already entered legal force.

Earlier, a college director in Pavlodar was convicted of embezzling budget funds, and in Almaty, a gymnasium chief accountant was sent to prison for a similar violation.

Original Authors: Alina Pak, Nikita Drobny