An accountant from the Atyrau region, convicted of embezzling over 88.8 million tenge from the budget, will serve seven years in prison after the Prosecutor General's Office overturned an illegal amnesty, reports infohub.kz.
The crime was committed in 2023–2024. According to the investigation, the accountant acted together with the head of a state institution, embezzling tens of millions of tenge from the budget.
Initially, the court sentenced the woman to seven years in prison. However, the punishment was later reduced under an amnesty, cutting the term to four years and eight months.
During an audit, the Prosecutor General's Office found that the decision was made in violation of the law. Under current legislation, those convicted of embezzlement on a particularly large scale are eligible for amnesty only if they fully compensate for the damage caused.
In this case, the condition was not met. The convict did not return the entire stolen amount; moreover, the court ordered her to pay an additional over 36.8 million tenge in uncompensated damages.
Despite this, the court of first instance reduced the sentence by one-third, and the appellate court upheld the decision.
"The Prosecutor General's Office filed a cassation appeal. As a result, the cassation court overturned the amnesty and reinstated the original sentence of seven years in prison," the agency's press service explained.
The Prosecutor General's Office emphasized that amnesty cannot be applied if the convict has not fulfilled the mandatory legal condition of fully compensating for the damage caused.
Earlier, it was reported how a court mistakenly granted amnesty to a repeat fraudster in the Karaganda region.
The day before, Kazakhstan summed up the results of the first administrative amnesty in the country's independence history, initiated by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. According to Prosecutor General Berik Asylov, within one month, the state managed to fully release 681,700 citizens from administrative penalties across 1.3 million cases. The total amount of written-off fines reached 22.8 billion tenge.