Kazakhstan: compensation to victims since the beginning of the year amounted to over $ 234 thousand
Over the nine months of this year, the fund has paid compensation for treatment, rehabilitation, burial and other urgent purposes to victims of criminal offenses, including minors who have been sexually abused, victims of human trafficking, and torture. Sanzhar Adilov, head of the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, announced this at a briefing.
According to Adilov, the amount of compensation from the fund to victims of these types of crimes is $ 211. Victims in the second category (persons who have suffered serious health harm; persons infected with HIV) are entitled to compensation in the amount of $ 281. For the third category (persons vested with the right of the victim in case of death) the compensation amounts to $ 352.
“The register of payments is kept by the bodies of pre-trial investigation. Payments are made directly from the Treasury. If we turn to the figures, then in 2020 the total number of victims who received compensation from the fund was 262 people. They were paid compensation in the total amount of over $ 52 thousand. This indicator is raising. In nine months, compensation was paid to more than 800 victims of criminal offenses, of more than $ 234 thousand. That is, the growth of compensation payments is more than four times. In addition, in September of this year, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev instructed to increase the minimum wage from January 1, 2022. In this regard, a proposal was sent to the Ministry of Finance to increase payments of compensation to victims from the above fund, ”Adilov said.
As a reminder, the law “On the Victims Compensation Fund” was adopted in Kazakhstan in January 2018. Compensation payments to victims from the Fund began on July 1, 2020. According to the law, compensation payments are provided for 124 offenses of 46 articles of the Criminal Code committed after July 1, 2020. As for the sources of funds for the Fund, then, first of all, it is a forced payment, collected by the court from all, without exception, the guilty persons in respect of whom the conviction of the court took place. The amount of enforcement is from 5 to 30 monthly calculation indexes (MCI in 2021 is $ 6.8), depending on the severity of the crime. In addition, the fund is also formed at the expense of penalties imposed by the court for procedural violations, as well as at the expense of the amounts withheld from convicts who are serving sentences in the form of correctional labor. As of April 1, 2021, as ACCA already reported, the fund had accumulated $ 2,970,797.
Reporting on the activities of the fund, Sanzhar Adilov also spoke about the situation in Kazakhstan in the field of combating human trafficking.
According to him, for 9 months of this year, more than 200 criminal cases of this category were in the proceedings of the law enforcement agencies.
“136 criminal cases have been registered, of which 78 criminal cases have already been sent to court, the rest of the criminal cases related to human trafficking are under investigation. Its progress is under the control of the Minister of the Interior. Guilty verdicts have been passed against 26 persons, ”Adilov said.
In turn, the head of the organizational and methodological department of the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ermek Shulden, recalled that the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan provides for liability under such articles as forcing the removal of human organs and tissues, or their illegal removal, kidnapping, human trafficking, illegal imprisonment, involvement minors into prostitution, as well as the organization of dens for prostitution, or its maintenance and procuring.
“In the prevention of human trafficking, monitoring of social networks is carried out on an ongoing basis. Thanks to this, 10,420 foreign Internet resources have been identified since the beginning of the year. The content published there contained not only materials about human trafficking, but also pornographic, along the lines of extremism, online casinos, drug crimes and others. Today 3427 of them are blocked, ”explained Schulden.
