The Jusan Bank takeover scheme was mentioned in a public statement by Anatoly Balushkin, the disgraced owner of the BIPEK Auto-Asia Auto group of companies, addressed to the head of state with a demand to bring to justice the Masimovs, Mamins and Ergozhins, who were behind the aggressive actions to take this production holding.
How the bank pumped up its top management with Massimov’s chekists, who were squeezing out illiquid assets through the country, how they, in collaboration with the leadership of Kazakhtelecom, caused damage to the state for 26 billion tenge, and how they prepared for a coup d’état in January 2022, including trying to take under control objectionable media.
The assumption of Vedomosti Kazakhstan about the imminent appointment of the ex-head of the National Bank Daniyar Akishev as the chairman of the board of Jusan Bank was recently confirmed by information on this topic, distributed by Telegram channels close to the National Bank of Kazakhstan.
WE DO NOT NEED SUCH BANKING
According to them, this appointment will take place in the near future. But already now, according to unofficial data, permutations have begun in the board of Jusan Bank.
Surely, not only its current head Aibek Kaiyp, who is the nephew of the disgraced ex-deputy chairman of the KNB Daulet Yergozhin, will leave his post, but also one of his deputies along with managing directors.
The bank itself has not yet officially confirmed this information. Also its audited financial statements for 2020 has not been published.
How and with whom Mr. Akishev will rake the Augean stables of Jusan Bank, and whether the new team of top managers will be able to submit the same financial statements for 2020, it’s hard to say for sure right now.
But exactly that the first thing they will have to undertake is a radical restructuring of the raider banking business model used by the current management team of Mr. Kaiyp.
Because otherwise, Jusan Bank will face mass arrests of its managers like during the nationalization of BTA Bank. And the financial regulator will have to revoke the license and liquidate the business of the Jusan group, based not on the classic loyal attitude of bankers to their clients, bringing them money and profits, but on aggressive expansion to takeover the property of borrowers with their subsequent complete bankruptcy.
In the market after such a ‘cleansing’, usually, nobody needs illiquid assets in the form of old buildings of shopping centers, outdated agricultural machinery and rights to use land somewhere in our endless steppes. Bankrupt borrowers, with the assistance of the prosecution authorities acting on behalf of Jusan Bank, are also obliged by court decision to pay state duty for legal expenses, although it is clear to everyone that nothing will actually go to the treasury, and the state in fact suffers significant financial damage.
This scheme of senseless from the point of view of normal banking was described in most detail in court decisions, where prosecutors acted as plaintiffs in the interests of Jusan Bank. It was also mentioned in a public statement by Anatoly Balushkin, the disgraced owner of the BIPEK Auto-Asia Auto group of companies, addressed to the head of state with a demand to bring to justice the Masimovs, Mamins and Ergozhins, who were behind the aggressive actions to take this production holding.
In the reality of civilized banking, one of the key pillars of this business is careful work with each problem borrower in order to he does not leave the market, but continues to pay real money on his debts. Even if he is able to pay at least half of the loan, then this is also beneficial for the bank, because he needs to create fewer provisions for the rest.
The same is true with collateral, which has different liquidity. It is one thing to have a popular pub in Almaty with a stable flow of customers and cash receipts, a trendy shopping and entertainment center in the same place. And quite different is the rights to land plots somewhere in the Akmola region, worn-out agricultural machinery that needs to be looked after and protected, old cheap buildings of the capital’s malls “Jafar” and “Azhar”.
All this illiquid armada is of little interest to anyone, and just hanging ballast on a bank. That bank simply has no future, and even more so there is no backbone status.
VERIFIED ON YOURSELF
Even if its previously influential owner, together with other high-ranking patrons, managed to take the whole of our country as a pledge and completely capture its financial resources, Jusan Bank would still not become a backbone.
Because, who will go to a creditor who ruins his borrowers and clients? The money of national companies and the budgetary funds allocated for the salaries of chekists and other security officials will not help here. After all, it is nothing for a large bank, while it earns the main income in the real banking field, attracting deposits and cherishing its borrowers along with depositors.
If, however, the Jusan group seriously hoped to make money on the sale of illiquid land to the same foreign giants Tyson Foods and Valmont Industries, who were emphatically courted by ex-premier Askar Mamin at the suggestion of Yerkin Tatishev, the owner of Kusto Group, then such business style is not consistent with the status of a backbone bank.
Does this style of banking match to the status of a bankbone bank in the country?
Of course not! It’s just that Jusan Bank, after acquiring Tsesnabank as a result of a very suspicious transaction with massive support from the government and the National Bank, immediately began to hide behind such a status, having inherited it from its purchase. But in reality, the country’s leading bank, which has such a status, simply cannot behave like an ordinary temporary grabber, recruiting KNB employees to its staff to ‘solving’ issues with borrowers in a forceful style, taking everything they have and letting them go around the world of ruined entrepreneurs.
In addition, it is obvious that Jusan Bank acquired the status of backbone only after the purchase of ATF Bank last year, which also had many questions from analysts.
But does the Jusan Bank raider style of ‘communication’ with the media correspond to the backbone status and norms of civilized banking, as the editors of Vedomosti Kazakhstan have seen from their own experience?
Initially, the representative of the bank, a former diplomat who, according to unofficial information, owns real estate in Belgium, where his family lives, began openly extorting 15 million tenge from the editorial office. Then it was about 20 free compliment to Jusan Bank publications per year, or directed against competitors in the market.
Then a certain employee from the cell company Kcell appeared on the scene, in which the Jusan group acquired a significant stake (we will talk about this below). Without particularly introducing herself and not making personal contact, she bombarded the editorial office with PR messages about the cooperative activities of this tandem and persistently lured the editor of Vedomosti Kazakhstan to the Turkestan region under the pretext of holding events there dedicated to the installation of equipment for mobile communications of the 5G standard in that region.
Something similar was held there in December last year, but whether the 5G connection was actually launched there and whether it works today remains unknown. In any case, as far as the editors know, there was no particularly representative press tour to Turkestan, and coverage was limited to the publication of a Ksell press release in some media.
Thus, the representatives of the editorial office were simply going to be fraudulently lured to Turkestan, where they could facing ‘solving issues’ with them in a purely Masimov style: though provocation, through pressure and a knee, intimidating and bending over. Because Masimov’s people were preparing for a coup d’état in January 2022 and, as we will tell in the following materials, they desperately needed their own pocket media, especially among those who, like Vedomosti Kazakhstan, had long stood in the position of supporting the current President Tokayev and his team.
What is noteworthy, when asked about the affiliation of the mobile operator with Jusan Bank, the representative of Kcell hard emphasized that there was no connection between them.
Meanwhile, there are more and more facts confirming not only the direct connection between Kcell and Jusan Bank, but also their belonging to a single conglomerate controlled in fact by the ex-Chairman of the KNB Karim Masimov and his assistants with the formal owner represented by the Elbasy.
KEEP IT UP, MINORITIES!
Thanks to the activity of private investors, information has now become available that quite clearly confirms the participation of Kazakhtelecom, Kcell and Jusan Bank in an essentially fictitious deal to seize a large block of shares in a mobile operator by the Jusan group.
According to the Kazakh Association of Minority Shareholders (QAMS) and activist investor Bakht Niyazov, the latter turned to then Prosecutor General Gaziz Nurdauletov in late February. He sent a copy of his appeal to Almasadam Satkaliyev, chairman of the board of the NWF Samruk-Kazyna (the state holding owns 52.03% in the Kazakhtelecom national company) and Yerlan Koshanov, a member of its Board of Directors, who then led the presidential administration.
Mr. Niyazov turned to them in connection with what he believed was a egregious case of damage to the state, investors and citizens of Kazakhstan in the amount of at least 26 billion tenge as a result of a deal to sell a 24% stake in the mobile operator Kcell owned by Kazakhtelecom on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) on September 30 last year.
Then, according to him, at 9.22 am on the site of the stock exchange there was a message about the decision of the Board of Directors of Kazakhtelecom to selling this block of shares to a wide range of investors on KASE.
At 10:42 a.m., a similar message appeared, after which, within a few minutes after the announcement, all shares were sold. Two affiliated companies – Jusan Bank and Pioneer Technologies S.A. R. L., bought them for a couple.
Regarding the latter, we recall that a company with a similar name – Pioneer Capital Invest LLP, which is head of the Jusan group and based in Almaty, bought 100% of the shares of the Russian Asia-Pacific Bank in September last year. Two Russian banks, Promsvyazbank and Sovcombank, participated in those auctions as nominal participants, now faced to the most tough US sanctions with a complete freeze of American assets.
The first of them is led by Pyotr Fradkov, the son of the ex-director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, who served as head of the Russian government. Both of them are under personal US sanctions.
According to Mr. Niyazov, if Kazakhtelecom was really going to get the maximum profit from the sale of Kcell shares, then it is not clear why the public announcement of their sale was made a few minutes before trading with their volume of 55 billion tenge.
According to Mr. Niyazov, the circle of participants in the deal was specially limited so that only persons who knew about it in can took part in it. But for that, they had to accumulate the indicated significant amount in brokerage accounts in advance, which is impossible to do in a short time.
Further, after the sale of Kcell shares at an average selling price of 1,151 tenge, since October last year to the present day, their market value on KASE has risen to a level of 1,700 tenge. This means that the deal to sell a 24% stake in the mobile operator deprived Kazakhtelecom of profit of 26 billion tenge, or 549 tenge per share.
And because the key shareholder of Kazakhtelecom is the state represented by the NWF Samruk-Kazyna, it also suffered such significant damage.
As a result, Mr. Niyazov states that the share price was 14% below the exchange price two days before the deal, and 36% below the estimated value according to independent brokers.
In addition, during trading on the Freedom Finance Trading electronic platform, which provides up to 80% of brokerage services in the country, there was a technical error due to which ‘a huge number of investors could not take part in the auction and influence the pricing of the transaction’.
“I believe that this circumstance,” – Mr. Niyazov states, – “given the importance and size of the deal, could not have been caused by a random event and should be investigated by technical specialists based on the records on the platform’s servers.”
Recall that Russian Timur Turlov, who is a member of the Board of Directors of Kcell, controls the Freedom Finance group. That is why Mr. Niyazov’s suggestion of a non-random system failure on the platform owned by Freedom Finance is had a basis and could be the subject of law enforcement investigations.
Mr. Niyazov also informed the addressees of his statement that, in response to QAMS’s request to the Financial Market Regulation and Development Agency (ARRFR) regarding the consideration of transactions with Kcell shares as being concluded for manipulating the market and price, letter of On February 18 this year, from the financial regulator confirmed the worst assumptions.
ARRFR has identified more than 200 transactions of 11 entities and 2 individuals, for which there are grounds for recognition as made for the purpose of manipulation in the securities market. BUT at the same time, the financial regulator limited itself to drawing up protocols on administrative violations and sending them to the Specialized Interdistrict Administrative Court of Almaty. In this regard, Mr. Niyazov asks the Prosecutor General to rate the proportionality of the actions/inactions of the RRRFR in terms of qualifying the violations as administrative.
It is worth recalling in this regard that in his posts on social networks, Mr. Niyazov noted – “one of the leaders of this agency called himself a friend of Zhusan and advised to surrender in the process of unofficial communication”!
And just after the appearance of this information, Oleg Smolyakov, the first deputy chairman of the ARRFR, who worked at the National Bank under the supervision of Daniyar Akishev, who is now tipped to be the head of Jusan Bank, was recently dismissed. He will replace Aibek Kaiyp, who is the nephew of the arrested Daulet Yergozhin, who served as Karim Massimov’s deputy in the KNB. Let us also remind that Akishev and Smolyakov actively participated in a large-scale operation to prepare Tsesnabank for sale to the Jusan group. So if this tandem now appears in the board of Jusan Bank, then, as they say, the secret will become clear.
EITHER A BOOK OR A MANIFESTO OF A FAILED RULER
In conclusion, let us recall that last autumn Karim Massimov quite unexpectedly released the book ‘The Next Ruler of the World. Artificial Intelligence’, despite the fact that he had not previously been seen as a specialist in this field due to the lack of technical education.
According to him, he was inspired to write this book by the Elbasy, who, during his message to the people of Kazakhstan in October 2018, devoted a significant part of his speech to the need to implement artificial intelligence in the country. It is noteworthy that just at that time a deal was being prepared for the acquisition of Tsesnabank by the Jusan group, which purpose, apparently, included the acquisition of telecommunications companies as the basis for the large-scale implementation of artificial intelligence.
Coincidentally, Sergek video recording system cameras have become commonplace on the streets of our cities, providing round-the-clock monitoring of the movement of citizens. It is quite understandable that the KNB, which, when it was led by Karim Massimov, could not miss the chance to lead the development of electronic surveillance technologies in Kazakhstan, including relying on the resources of Kazakhtelecom and Kcell.
Another thing is that the author noted the contribution to the writing of the book by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. And just this sheikh, the step-brother of the President of the UAE and the son of the founder of the country, is named in the investigation of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) as the head of the Group 42 artificial intelligence company. The latter owned a 3% stake in Jusan Technologies, which manages the Nazarbayev Fund conglomerate from London, and now from the United States through the efforts of Aslan Sarinzhipov, a member of Masimov’s team.
The problem is that the mentioned sheikh is one of the most powerful officials in the UAE, holding the influential position of the country’s national security adviser there, reporting directly to the chairman of the UAE’s Supreme National Security Council.
In addition to intelligence, the sheikh also oversees the most sensitive issues of the foreign policy of the Emirates, as well as the business operations of this state, which are not disclosed to the public.
What in reality, besides writing a book, Karim Massimov and his team, including the managers of the Jusan group, did in cooperation with such a high-ranking leader of the UAE, one can only guess how and why Jusan Bank was actually created, in whose top management were seen by the chekists. However, there can be no doubt that if necessary, such a partner could provide maximum support to Karim Massimov in seizing the highest power in Kazakhstan according to the scenario of the tragic January days.
To be continued
Zhanibek ABDRAKHMANOV, especially for Vedomosti Kazakhstan