ASTANA, Kazakhstan, October 10. Kazakhstan ensured the return of assets worth 217 billion tenge (about $455.4 million) to the state and also achieved a reduction in the level of the shadow economy to 18.7 percent in the first nine months of 2023, Trend reports.
Chairman of the Financial Monitoring Agency, Zhanat Elimanov informed the President of the country Kassym-Jomart Tokayev about this.
In addition, Elimanov reported that 229 analytical materials were transferred to law enforcement agencies, and the practice of blocking the financial transactions of drug dealers was established.
"This protects citizens, especially young people, from online drug purchases. Access to 924 bank accounts that were used to launder drug proceeds has also been closed; a special unit has been created to combat economic crimes using crypto assets; a mechanism for arresting crypto wallets and confiscating digital currency has been developed; and the activities of nine illegal crypto exchangers, whose turnover exceeded 17 billion tenge (about $35.5 million), were liquidated," he said.
As he added, for the first time in Kazakhstan, criminal income in cryptocurrency worth 47 million tenge (about $98.3 million) was seized and placed on the agency’s special account on the Binance crypto exchange.
At the end of the meeting, Tokayev gave a number of specific instructions on key areas of the agency’s activities.