An Astana resident issued interest-bearing cash loans without the required license and generated income on an especially large scale — nearly 83 million tenge. As reported by infohub.kz, on October 16 the Interdistrict Criminal Court of Astana heard a criminal case against defendant K. on charges of illegal entrepreneurship.
According to the Astana courts' press service, in June 2021 K. registered and opened a cash loan outlet in the capital secured by movable property. He conducted microfinance activity without the mandatory license and never applied for one.
To give the operation an appearance of legality, commission agreements were signed with clients, although in reality they were granted property-backed loans with interest of 0.2% to 0.8% per day. In case of overdue payments, the rates doubled. The Smart Lombard system was used to track transactions.
Total incoming funds across the entrepreneur's bank accounts exceeded 339 million tenge, while illegally obtained income amounted to 82.9 million tenge. The defendant's guilt was confirmed by bank statements, contracts, information system records, expert findings and his own confession.
K. fully admitted guilt, expressed remorse and did not dispute the circumstances of the case or the amount of illegal income. His defense attorney asked the court to take these circumstances into account when imposing sentence.
The court sentenced K. to 2 years in prison with confiscation of property, but under the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan of July 1, 2026, "On Amnesty in Connection with the Adoption of the New Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan," the term was halved. The final sentence was 1 year in prison. In addition, funds in the convicted man's bank accounts totaling 3,293,117 tenge were confiscated.