Believers will control finances of Kazakhstan's religious unions

Believers will control financial flows of mosques and churches in Kazakhstan. Revision commissions made of members of the parishes will take control over the money received by religious unions, Bnews.kz reports citing chairman of Kazakhstan Agency for Religious Affairs Kairat Lama Sharif. Charters of all Kazakhstan’s religious unions contain clauses about forming revision commissions. “The revision commissions shall include members of initiative groups involved with the religious group, i.e. common believers. The revision commissions are called to control that all the donations are aimed for religious purpose, not commercial or other purposes,” the chairman said. According to Lama Sharif, the law on non-commercial organizations states that all religious unions are pubic organizations, which means that their profits are not considered a commercial secret. “We have taken several steps based on this law to enhance transparency of financial activities of religious unions,” he said. Besides, all the religious unions have to report to the Statistics Agency and tax commissions on their financial activities. “This year, talking at different dialog platforms and with the media, we have been constantly reminding the religious unions of the necessity to fill the compulsory documents, as they are considered public unions. Transparency of their financial activities is very important. We will keep improving our work in this direction,” Lama Sharif said.