The land was arrested to cover a debt of 300 million tenge, but instead of returning the money to the creditor, it was first sold for a symbolic sum to the debtor's relatives, and then resold at market price. The money, as one might easily guess, never reached the creditor. Continuing the story of Asiya Askarova, we examine the Vostok Engineering case and trace its connection to two other episodes - concerning the Belarusian investors and MELIOR PRIME LLP: the same people, the same land and a chain of transactions that links what appear to be different cases.
THE VOSTOK ENGINEERING CASE
Vostok Engineering LLP transferred more than 300 million tenge to CAPITAL INDUSTRY LLP, headed by Asiya Askarova (Iskakova), under a loan agreement. According to the director of Vostok Engineering, the obligations were never fulfilled. In May 2025, he contacted the police, and a case was registered under the article on fraud on an especially large scale.
Back in December 2023, within the framework of enforcement proceedings for this debt, bailiffs imposed an arrest on two land plots belonging to CAPITAL INDUSTRY in the village of Koyandy in the Tselinograd district of Akmola region. According to an independent valuation, their combined value today stands at around 1 billion tenge.
Then, according to the materials in the complaints filed by the victim's lawyer, Askarova's company turned out to have another debt - for wages amounting to 18.2 million tenge. Taking this debt into account, the bailiff lifted the previously imposed arrest and sold the plots to cover the new debt. The first plot was sold for 4.5 million tenge to a buyer who almost immediately resold it to Asiya Askarova's son, and for the same sum. A few days later, the plot was sold for 200 million tenge. The second plot similarly ended up with a close female relative of Askarova and was then resold for 100 million tenge.
In November 2025, the Vostok Engineering case was closed for lack of corpus delicti. Moreover, according to the defence, the company itself was not even notified of the decision taken. The first-instance court dismissed the complaint against the closure of the case, focusing, in the defence's view, on a single question - whether the loan money had been returned. But, as the defence sees it, the court did not address the main issue: how the arrest was lifted from the property securing that loan, and what happened to the land afterwards. This is precisely what the appeal is built on. The company emphasises that this was not a dispute over the loan itself, but over actions involving the property that secured it. The Astana city court is currently considering this matter.
WHAT UNITES THE THREE CASES, BESIDES ASKAROVA'S NAME
Our publication has previously reported on other suspicious episodes in which Askarova featured. But her name is far from the only point of intersection between these stories. Behind the different cases, the same people, property and transactions gradually emerge, linking the episodes far more closely than might appear at first glance.
All three stories are tied to one and the same territory - the Koyandy rural district of Tselinograd district in Akmola region. That is where the two CAPITAL INDUSTRY plots from the Vostok Engineering case are located. That is where, "within the administrative boundaries of the Koyandy rural district", the construction of power supply networks and warehouse premises for MELIOR PRIME LLP was supposed to be carried out. These contracts, incidentally, were subsequently declared invalid by the arbitration court, since the land, as it turned out, did not belong to either Askarova or the companies affiliated with her. And that is where, in the village of Koyandy, on a plot of 68 hectares, an eco-wellness dairy-processing complex called Village Well-being was planned to be built - a project for which funds were raised through the Finstore.by platform from BAYAN Production Company LLP and GLOBAL&AKTIV LLP.
Three different projects, three different groups of victims - and one and the same land in one and the same village, appearing variously as an arrested asset, as security under contract agreements, and as a site for an investment complex.
The second connecting element is the involvement of the same relatives in different cases. The owner of CAPITAL INDUSTRY is listed as Asiya Askarova's daughter - Bayan Iskakova, and Asiya herself is listed among the founders. Since 2023, the company has paid a total of just 8 thousand tenge in taxes to the budget. Today, both mother and daughter appear on the lists of debtors in enforcement proceedings - with a ban on leaving the country and numerous arrests, including the freezing of bank accounts. The backstory of the legal entity itself is also curious: until 2022, it existed under the name Engineering Turnkey and was engaged in engineering and technical design. Its management at the time included Nurbibi Mashanova - according to open sources, an employee of Seifullin University - and Sagat Beilibekova, who features in the Vostok Engineering case. She ultimately received one of the arrested land plots, which was soon resold for 100 million tenge.
Bayan Iskakova has other companies too. JV BAYAN HOLDING LTD, engaged in holding activities, paid a total of just 1 million tenge in taxes. It was previously headed by Asiya herself. Among its founders at one time were the already familiar Village Well Being and IT Agro Invest - these companies no longer appear in the registers today. And among former founders, the name Aleksandar Pavlovich appears - a spelling atypical of Kazakh or Russian tradition, which points to probable foreign connections.
Another of Bayan's companies is AGRO HOLDING BAYAN Innovative Research and Production Enterprise LLP, which is just over a year and a half old. Among its founders are Bayan's brother Abai, as well as Koyandy Private Industrial Zone Management Company LLP, which appears to be headed by another brother - Adilet. There is also a rather unexpected participant here - ANTAS International Transport L.L.C., either a company of the same name, or indeed a major transport and logistics company founded in 2006 in Dubai. In the past, among the founders of this same LLP were the same Nurbibi Mashanova, Asiya Iskakova, as well as, for the second time, Sagat Beilibekova and Ruslan Maziev.
The third of Bayan's companies is the one already familiar to us from the Belarusian investors' case - BAYAN Production Company LLP. Unlike the others, it is registered not in Astana but in Zhezkazgan, in the Ulytau region - the very region to which the case based on the Belarusian investors' complaint was transferred. Among its management, Asiya again appears, and again Sagat Beilibekova, as well as Dana Nurgali - the very person to whom, in the Vostok Engineering case, a land plot was transferred to cover wage arrears. A company of the same name is registered at the same address, which was also at one time headed by Asiya, and whose management now includes major regional entrepreneurs.
Practically all of the companies listed are in one way or another connected to legal entities effectively managed by Asiya: these include the Association of Legal Entities "Kazakhstan Association of Industrial Zone Participants and Investors" (headed by Bayan's brother, Abai Iskakov), the Association of Legal Entities "Association of Functional Food Producers and Export Producers of the Republic of Kazakhstan", and the Association of Individual Entrepreneurs and Legal Entities in the form of an association "Women's Association for Sustainable Development of Small Communities".
The family's father is also a business owner - Serik Iskakov, also in Zhezkazgan: he owns KAZASTANATRADE LLP. In the Russian register, he is also found as a founder of the Moscow-based Vilazh Well-Being LLC, registered in 2019 with the stated activity of "scientific research and development in the fields of natural and technical sciences". Asiya Iskakova is listed as the second founder and simultaneously general director. Serik Iskakov, incidentally, has accumulated debt on enforcement proceedings amounting to over 16 million tenge.
Finally, there is another young company involving Asiya - CAPITAL INVEST NEW LLP, among whose founders is a certain Xiangin Zhang.
If all of this is pieced together, a picture emerges of an extensive family business structure spanning construction, engineering design, agricultural processing and holding activities - with hubs in Astana and Zhezkazgan and individual threads leading to Dubai, Moscow and, judging by the surname of one of the partners, to China. And the surname Beilibekova, which has passed three times through different companies of the family and once through a land plot removed from arrest, shows that the circle of participants in this story is tighter than one might assume from the materials of the criminal cases alone.
THE BELARUSIAN INVESTORS AND PARALLEL PROCEEDINGS
The story with the Belarusian investors is perhaps the largest in scale. Let us recall that, according to a collective complaint by 1,600 investors from the Republic of Belarus, around $3 million was raised for the Village Well-being project in 2021-2022. Investors were provided with a "White Paper", financial reports and data on production capacities and contracts - documents which, according to the victims, ultimately turned out to be unreliable.
In the Vostok Engineering case, 300 million tenge has not been returned, and the land that could have covered the debt is already in the hands of buyers who paid market price for it and are, in all likelihood, protected by their status as bona fide purchasers. In the MELIOR PRIME case, 120 million tenge has likewise not been returned, and the contracts under which it was raised were declared invalid after the fact, that is, after the money had been received.
The common feature of all three storylines is that on paper, neither the land nor the siphoned-off funds are registered to Askarova personally. The plots in the Vostok Engineering case ended up with third parties through a chain of transactions, the guarantee contracts in the MELIOR PRIME case were concluded through the daughter's company, and the investment project for the Belarusian depositors was formalised through separate LLPs. Moreover, a previously issued conviction against her in another fraud episode turned out to be suspended - 4 years 2 months without actual imprisonment. Taken together, this means that with three parallel investigations and one conviction that has entered into force, not a single one of the victims - neither the Kazakhstani company nor the Belarusian investors - has yet received compensation, while the disputed assets formally belong to people who are not defendants in the criminal cases.
Given Askarova's family ties and other potentially influential connections, including in Zhezkazgan, the question arises as to how serious the consequences of all these stories actually are for her. At the very least, the impression is that she currently has little reason for particular concern.
