A letter of guarantee signed by the deputy minister of ecology turned out to be insufficient for the department to pay for the work carried out. In 2022, entrepreneur Salamat Kabidayev urgently organised an international conference with the participation of foreign delegations for the Ministry of Ecology, received an official letter of thanks for its execution, but instead of payment faced nearly four years of legal proceedings and multi-million debts.
HOW THE EVENTS UNFOLDED
In 2022, the Department of Transboundary Rivers (now the Department of International Cooperation of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation) of the Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources (currently the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources) was tasked with organising, in a very short timeframe, the anniversary 82nd meeting of the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination (ICWC) in Turkistan, as well as an associated international conference "30 Years of Water Cooperation of Central Asian States".
Salamat Kabidayev was brought in to organise the event – an entrepreneur who, back in 2018, while working with the same department (then part of the Ministry of Agriculture), had successfully carried out similar events and even received an official letter of thanks for it. Before this, the ministry had approached other suppliers, but their prices, according to Kabidayev, were "astronomical" – one of them submitted an invoice for 66.6 million tenge, whereas Kabidayev offered 25.5 million.
He had, by his own account, four to five days for preparation – despite the fact that he is based in Almaty, and the event needed to be held in Turkistan, with accommodation, technical equipment for the hall, simultaneous interpretation, and a venue up to the standard of the Rixos hotel, which the ministry itself insisted upon. Realising that it was physically impossible to conduct a full public procurement tender within such a timeframe, Kabidayev demanded at least some written guarantees. On 25 April 2022, Deputy Minister Serik Kozhaniyazov signed a guarantee letter for him, according to which the ministry undertook to pay 22.8 million tenge by 27 May 2022 for equipment rental, banner production, stationery, and the full organisation of the event.
On 26–27 April, the event took place in two plenary sessions and four parallel meetings, with the participation of delegations from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and representatives from around five foreign media outlets and scientific organisations. During the preparation, the initial estimate steadily grew: the hall rental was extended from one day to two, the number of participants at the gala dinner increased from 100 to 150, a separate dinner for another 40 guests was added, and a closed dinner with the participation of Vice-Minister Kozhaniyazov and the heads of delegations from neighbouring countries had to be paid for twice. On 4 May 2022, the same Kozhaniyazov signed an official letter of thanks to Kabidayev for the "professional organisation" of the event.
Kabidayev's final expenses, according to his own report, amounted to 33.9 million tenge. However, the actual public procurement contract with the ministry, concluded later and under a completely different item – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' "hospitality expenses" – provided for a payment of only 2.6 million tenge. Kabidayev tried to recover the difference, over 31 million tenge, through the courts as unjust enrichment of the ministry. According to him, he is still covering part of this amount from his own funds and from loans taken out in 2022; the total debt at that time was around 25–27 million tenge.
THE TENDER HELD EIGHT TIMES
While Kabidayev was waiting for payment, the ministry tried to cover this same expenditure item (for the event that had already taken place) through a formal public procurement tender, and failed eight times in a row: sometimes there were no bids, sometimes only one participant remained. On the ministry's own recommendation, in early May 2022 Kabidayev purchased the financially stable company AKG Trans LLP for 1.2 million tenge to be able to participate in the tenders, but this company soon ended up on the register of dishonest suppliers due to the actions of its previous owner. In the end, the tender for organising the associated programme (funding for experts accompanying the delegations) was won by Kerneu-K LLP, but its contract was subsequently cut twice: first from 42.9 million to 6.3 million tenge, and then to 3.5 million – with a direct statement in the document that this company had been providing services for less than two months, and that all the actual work had been done by Kabidayev.
WHY EXPENSES COULD NOT BE REIMBURSED
All three judicial instances (the court of first instance, the appeal court, and the court of cassation) ruled the same way: a letter of guarantee cannot substitute a public procurement contract, which by law can only be concluded through a special web portal. Kabidayev himself admits in conversation that he should have waited for the formal tender, and calls this partly "his own fault", because he trusted the deputy minister's signature.
But there is another side to this story. According to Kabidayev, the staff of the relevant department he worked with directly were invariably friendly towards him and acknowledged that the decision on payment was beyond their authority. The problem, from his description, was exacerbated by the natural change in leadership. The minister under whom the event took place, Serikkali Brekeshev, left his post about a month after the conference; he was replaced by Zulfiya Suleimenova, and then the current minister, Yerlan Nysanbayev, took charge. In Kabidayev's observation, each new team preferred not to deal with past obligations.
An episode Kabidayev recounts is particularly telling. The current minister, Nysanbayev, attended the conference in Turkistan as one of the honoured guests and, during the event, personally asked Kabidayev to find a national shapan (a traditional robe) as a gift for a colleague – which, according to Kabidayev, he did without question and at his own expense. Later, after becoming minister, Nysanbayev, according to Kabidayev, refused to confirm the validity of the payment when the entrepreneur directly appealed to him for assistance. This claim is based solely on Kabidayev's own account and is not supported by any independent document (and is unlikely ever to be), but it clearly illustrates that a person who personally saw the quality of the work carried out, and who later held the authority to act, chose not to intervene in a dispute with his own department.
For Salamat Kabidayev, this story ended quite tangibly: nearly four years of legal proceedings, lost cases at all instances, and a multi-million debt which, he says, he is still repaying. The court put an end to his claims against the ministry, confirming that a letter of guarantee does not replace a public procurement contract. From a legal standpoint, the dispute can be considered closed.
However, the court decisions left another question unanswered – not a legal one, but a managerial one. Who should be held accountable for a situation in which a high-ranking official officially guarantees payment, the department receives the result, and then, a few months later, declares that it incurred no obligations? The court only established that a letter of guarantee does not replace a public procurement contract. But the question of who should bear responsibility for such promises made on behalf of the state remains open.
