BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 15. Kazakhstan and Binance cryptocurrency exchange signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT), Trend reports via Akorda (Press Office of the President of Kazakhstan).
This became known during the meeting of Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev with Chairman of the Financial Monitoring Agency Zhanat Elimanov.
Tokayev was briefed on the eradication of public prosecution and minimization of bona fide business involvement in the orbit of criminal procedure. Thus, pretrial detention cases significantly reduced compared to 2021, and the number of registered cases decreased by 30 percent.
According to Zhanat Elimanov, the measures taken allowed to compensate for the damage and ensure the return of assets worth more than 300 billion tenge ($652.05 million). A total of 25 organized criminal groups have been neutralized, the activities of 119 groups engaged in money laundering were suppressed.
The head of state was also informed on the liquidation of 25 financial pyramid schemes with compensating the victims for damages of 8.3 billion tenge ($18.03 million). As part of the fight against financial pyramids, nearly 8,800 websites and accounts with illegal content were blocked. Following the Presidential Order, financial intelligence revealed 15 online drug retail stores with a turnover of 4.4 billion tenge ($9.56 billion) and involving 27,000 citizens. Their case documents were sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Security Committee (NSC) of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In order to combat money laundering and terror financing through virtual assets, the country signed MoU with the world's biggest crypto exchange.
The president was told about Kazakhstan's progress in passing the Mutual Assessment for compliance of the national "anti-money laundering" system with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations.
Following the meeting, the head of state gave instructions on suppressing the activities of financial pyramids, fraudulent schemes, as well as to reinforce measures to combat corruption within the Agency.