The Department of Financial Monitoring in Kostanay region is conducting a pre-trial investigation into illegal microfinance activities.

Since 2020, the suspect has been giving out loans with interest and property as collateral through mobile apps like OLX and Instagram, without having the required license.

To make these loans look like regular agreements, the suspect would write much higher loan amounts in the contracts. This included pre-calculated interest rates of up to 100% per year.

In total, the suspect loaned out over 100 million tenge.

As a result of these illegal actions, the rights and interests of ordinary people were violated. Many of them, desperate for quick financial help, ended up trapped by extremely high interest rates and the risk of losing their property.

To hide the source of the illegal income, the suspect involved a friend who worked as an accountant.

Together, they created a money laundering scheme. They reported the illegal income in tax declarations as money earned from an auto repair business.

To do this, the suspect registered as an individual entrepreneur and regularly issued fake receipts showing income from services. In reality, the auto repair shop never operated.

Using this scheme, the suspect laundered over 60.6 million tenge.

To recover some of the illegal funds, the court has ordered a freeze on the suspect’s apartment and bank accounts totaling 28 million tenge.

The investigation is still ongoing.

Source : https://www.gov.kz/memleket/entities/afm/press/news/details/982538?lang=kk