Kazakhstan: the trial of the former minister began
The Sary-Arka District Court No. 2 of the city of Nur-Sultan began preliminary hearings on a criminal case against former minister of Health Yelzhan Birtanov and his deputy Olzhas Abishev. They are both suspected of embezzlement of budgetary funds.
As ACCA has already reported, Yelzhan Birtanov was arrested in November last year. As noted then in the press service of the Financial Monitoring Committee of the Ministry of Finance, the ex-minister and his deputy were suspected of embezzling budget funds allocated for the industry digitalization program in the amount of more than $1.2 million.
According to the lawyers of the ex-minister, their client is charged with the fact that in December 2018 the Ministry of Health, headed by Birtanov, adopted the non-working “Platform for Informatization and Interoperability of Health Information Systems”, which was developed by the Croatian company Ericsson Nikola Tesla. Despite the fact that the platform was allegedly non-working, the Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan paid the Croatian company more than $3.9 million.
However, Ericsson Nikola Tesla stated that the platform was working, but the Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan didn’t provide all the necessary conditions for the implementation of all its capabilities within the agreed period of time. And after Birtanov was arrested, the Croats were completely deprived of access to the platform due to investigative actions.
However, after the completion of the investigative measures, the employees of Ericsson Nikola Tesla, who arrived in Nur-Sultan, after conducting an analysis, confirmed that the platform was fully operational, but its implementation was impossible due to the fact that the information systems in Kazakhstan were not ready for integration with it.
It should also be noted that the accusations against both Birtanov, his deputy and Ericsson Nikola Tesla prompted the latter to file a lawsuit with the International Commercial Arbitration Court at the European Arbitration Chamber in Belgium against the Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, at the beginning of the trial of Birtanov and Abishev, the defendants challenged the representative of the Ministry of Health, Roza Zhakanova, who was a retired judge and represented the interests of the injured party on a reimbursable basis by proxy.
As the defendants’ lawyers explained, according to the laws of Kazakhstan, a judge doesn’t have the right to engage in other paid activities, except for judicial work. According to lawyer Serik Sagaliev, the fact, that Zhakanova is a retired judge, doesn’t change the gist of the matter.
Judge Ibragim Alkenov, presiding over the trial, partially satisfied Zhakanova’s challenge, removing her from participation in the proceedings at the preliminary hearing stage.
