Kazakhstan: a fund has been established for clearance of fines of civic activists
The well-known Kazakhstan businessman and human rights activist Barlyk Mendygaziev announced the establishment of the non-profit and non-governmental Foundation for the Fight for Civil Rights – Freedom Kazakhstan. The fund will be created in the USA. According to the businessman, Freedom Kazakhstan will have two main missions: financial and legal support for political prisoners and the creation of a blacklist of Kazakhstani officials who flagrantly violate civil rights.
“I have always believed and still believe that people of Kazakhstan are to some extent responsible for the economic, social, and political chaos that is happening in our country today, due to our passivity to the political life of Kazakhstan over the last 30 years of Nazarbayev’s rule. Our further inaction will definitely lead our entire country and all of us to complete impoverishment, not only economic but also cultural! The thirty-year anti-people policy of the Tokayev-Nazarbayev regime has shown us all its complete failure and incapacity. Total corruption, the suppression of dissent, autocracy, kleptocracy, the suppression of civil society, the destruction of the rule of law and law, the sale of natural monopolies, the suppression of independent media, a huge number of political prisoners – all this is the result of their mediocre government and our tacit consent, to tolerate this “power” not only impossible, but also criminally in front of our future generation! Now we will have to act and live on the principle of “the rescue of a drowning people is the drowning people’s own job!”, Mendygaziev explained the reasons that prompted him to create Freedom Kazakhstan.
He also noted that the announced financial and legal support to political prisoners and politically repressed citizens of Kazakhstan will be provided to everyone, regardless of their affiliation to various democratic parties and movements.
“The Civil Rights Fight Fund Freedom Kazakhstan will be maintained only on private donations from philanthropic entrepreneurs and on voluntary donations from fund participants. All information about the fund will be completely public and transparent. Freedom Kazakhstan is a temporary organization and will exist until a free civil and democratic society will be finally built in Kazakhstan. As the main initiator of the creation of the fund, I have already made a sum of $ 50,000 as the first but not last donation to help our citizens, who are already undergoing political repression and misadventures by the Tokayev-Nazarbayev totalitarian regime, ”Mendygaziev added.
Meanwhile, as human rights activist Bakhytzhan Toregozhina reported, Mendygaziev’s statements are not an empty promise. The businessman has already paid 43 fines of civil activists of Kazakhstan for the total amount of $ 9.6 thousand from the funds of the created fund. Barlyk Mendygaziev became widely known to the Kazakh public in July 2012. At that time, he headed the KSS-building oilfield services company that he created in the West Kazakhstan Region. Then the authorities of the region held public hearings on the construction of an oil waste landfill on the territory of the Kirsanovsky State Reserve. At these hearings, Mendygaziev opposed the project and publicly accused the then-mayor of the West Kazakhstan region Nurlan Nogaev of lobbying for the construction. “Literally after that, a tax audit for 2010-2011 was thrown at me. For 4 months, tax inspectors stayed with us and allegedly dug up violations there, which our lawyers and auditors unequivocally recognized as completely illegal, and began to appeal this in court. But then the financial police opened a criminal case for tax evasion and seized the property and accounts of the company, ”the businessman said at a press conference in July 2012.
On July 22 of the same year, a criminal case was opened in the Burlinsky district court on charges of Mendygaziev’s tax evasion. The process was completed only in October 2013. The businessman was fined $ 5.5 thousand. Also, the court forbade him to engage in entrepreneurial activity for a year. However, real fame came to Mendygaziev in December 2015. During the press conference, he announced that he is leaving the Kazakh business, and transferred his company “KSS-building” worth $ 40 million free of charge into the ownership of the work collective.
However, real fame came to Mendygaziev in December 2015. During the press conference, he announced that he is leaving the Kazakh business, and on a gratis basis transferred his company KSS-building worth $ 40 million into the ownership of the employees. In February 2016, the legal procedure for transferring the company into the ownership of the team was completed. 180 employees of KSS-building became full-fledged shareholders of the company.
