Kazakhstan to counter siphoning of money to offshore zones

Kazakhstan is to launch a wide-scaled campaign to counteract siphoning of money to offshore zones, Newskaz.ru reported March 19, citing Olzhas Bektenov, Head of Analysis Department of the country’s Financial Police Office. According to him, Kazakhstan has started developing a new strategy to counteract corruption. “When developing the strategy, we placed an emphasis on Kazakhstan-based enterprises relying on offshore zones. Apart from permanent siphoning of capital to foreign countries, there is a problem related to murky ownership of strategically important Kazakhstan-based companies. Identifying the true beneficiaries is sometimes unfeasible”, he said. He added that “offshore jurisdictions enable to legalize illicitly obtained money, including funds gained through corruption-related crimes”. “The “dirty” money tends to come back to Kazakhstan in the shape of respectably looking foreign investments”, he said. “Before the end of 2015 Kazakhstan will launch a system of inter-country real-time exchange of information”, he said.