A Lexus LX 570 SUV, confiscated in a high-profile criminal case involving embezzlement during the construction of the Almaty metro, has been put up for electronic auction to be assigned to the balance of state structures, reports infohub.kz.
The seller is the Department of State Property and Privatization of Almaty.
According to the state property registry, the 2012 SUV has been valued by independent experts at nearly 20.1 million tenge. Make and model: Lexus LX 570 (2012, black); estimated value: 20,086,667 tenge (report by Baqalau Group LLP); technical condition: conditionally usable, body and interior in satisfactory condition (no access to jack and spare tire key); auction date: September 1, 2026.
The lot is not being offered for general sale to civilians, as the vehicle will be handed over to law enforcement and special state bodies. This procedure is carried out due to transfer rules.
The former owner of the car was Nurzhan Arisov, who was convicted in the case of embezzling over 5 billion tenge during the construction of Almaty metro stations. The prosecution proved that the defendants, as heads of the state-owned enterprise "Metropolitan", JSC "Almatymetrokurylys", and LLP "Automation and Technology Service", during the construction of the stations "Saryarka" and "Dostyk" (from June 2018 to August 2020), inflated equipment costs by almost 10 times and siphoned off large sums of money through shell companies.
In January, the Almaty city administration told Kursiv that the long construction of the metro is due to its technical features - it is a first-category complexity facility (particularly dangerous, technically complex), requiring two-stage design for construction, including the "Project" stage and the "Working Documentation" stage.
Kursiv reported in 2022 that the budget spends at least 30 billion tenge on the construction of one metro station. For example, Almatymetrokurylys (general contractor for the construction of the stations "Sairan", "Moscow", "Saryarka", "B. Momyshuly") announced the cost of building two stations - "Saryarka" and "B. Momyshuly" - at 62 billion tenge.
The Almaty metro opened on December 1, 2011. It is the first and only metro in Kazakhstan. Today it has 11 stations: "Raiymbek batyr", "Zhibek Zholy", "Almaly", "Abay", "Baikonyr", "Theater named after Mukhtar Auezov", "Alatau", "Sairan", "Moscow", "Saryarka" and "B. Momyshuly".