For almost four years, entrepreneur Salamat Kabidayev has been trying to get the state to pay for the international conference he organised in Turkestan in 2022 based on a guarantee letter from the Vice-Minister of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources. All three court instances ruled against him. The editorial board of FBRK sent an official request to the Office of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, from where it was forwarded to the relevant departments. The responses, of course, did not change the outcome of the case, but they did reveal one important detail: the tender, which the ministry tried to hold eight times, was initially not intended to pay for this specific event.
FACTUAL BASIS
In 2022, entrepreneur Salamat Kabidayev, following a verbal agreement with the Department of Transboundary Rivers of the Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan, organised the anniversary 82nd meeting of the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination (ICWC) in Turkestan, along with a related conference. On 25 April 2022, the then Vice-Minister Serik Kozhaniyazov signed a guarantee letter for 22.8 million tenge, and on 4 May 2022, a letter of thanks for the high-quality organisation. However, despite the Vice-Minister's promises, confirmed by his own signature, the entrepreneur never received full payment.
According to his own report, Kabidayev's final expenses amounted to 33.9 million tenge. However, the actual procurement contract with the ministry, concluded later and under a completely different budget line - 'hospitality expenses' of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - 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 loans taken out in 2022; his total debt at that time was around 25–27 million tenge.
The court of first instance and the court of appeal rejected Kabidayev's claim to recover 31.25 million tenge (taking into account the overspend on the event itself), noting that a guarantee letter does not replace a government procurement contract.
The organisation of the event was accompanied by a series of tender procedures, which the ministry announced a total of eight times. However, none of the initial attempts resulted in a contract: either no bids were submitted, or only a single supplier was allowed to participate. According to the entrepreneur, on the ministry's own recommendation, in early May 2022 he bought the financially stable AKG Trans LLP for 1.2 million tenge to be able to participate in the procurement, but this company soon ended up on the register of dishonest suppliers due to the actions of its former owner. In the end, the tender for organising the accompanying programme (financing experts accompanying 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 the document explicitly stating that this company had provided services for less than two months, and that Kabidayev himself had done all the actual work.
WHAT THE RELEVANT BODIES SAY
The responses from the relevant departments add several important details to this story.
First of all, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan officially confirmed for the first time that the action plan for holding meetings of the Joint Commissions and Working Groups on the Use and Protection of Transboundary Rivers with Neighbouring States for 2022, which was an annex to the technical specification of the tender, did not include the holding of the anniversary 82nd ICWC meeting. In other words, the event that Kabidayev actually organised was absent from the documents underlying the tender procedure.
Moreover, the subject of the procurement itself, following which the contract with Kerneu-K LLP was subsequently concluded, was called 'Engaging experts in the composition of intergovernmental Joint Commissions and Working Groups with neighbouring states to strengthen negotiation processes'. That is, the tender documentation concerned engaging experts, not organising the anniversary ICWC meeting and international conference.
The fate of the procurement itself also became clearer. According to the protocol of 2 September 2022, Prof Event LLP was declared the winner, but the contract with the company was never concluded after it was placed on the register of dishonest suppliers. As a result, the contract worth 42.9 million tenge (and later, after reductions, 3.5 million) was concluded with Kerneu-K LLP.
Meanwhile, the ministry itself does not dispute who actually organised the event. A memo from the legal service department does state that 'the entire volume of services was performed by the sole trader "Kabidayev"'. Thus, within the department, the identity of the actual performer is not in doubt, while the subject of the court dispute remains solely the issue of the legal basis for paying for these services.
Adding to this is another detail that explains why the dispute has remained without a responsible person. Vice-Minister Serik Kozhaniyazov, who signed both the guarantee letter and the letter of thanks, was dismissed on 23 June 2022 'due to moving to another job' - that is, less than two months after thanking Kabidayev for the high-quality organisation of the event.
Against this background, the response from the State Treasury Committee of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan stands out. Unlike the Ministry of Ecology, which did set out specific facts and dates, the Treasury limited itself to paraphrasing general norms - with reference to the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan 'On Government Procurement' dated 1 July 2024 - merely explaining that payment is made exclusively after the conclusion of a contract through the government procurement web portal.
WHAT THIS MEANS
The responses received do not refute the courts' conclusions. As before, a deputy minister's guarantee letter does not replace a government procurement contract and does not in itself create an obligation for the state to pay for work performed.
Before receiving the ministry's response, one could assume that the numerous tender procedures were related to an attempt to arrange financing for an already held event. But the problem here lies on a slightly different level. On the one hand, the guarantee letter concerned the organisation of the anniversary ICWC meeting and the international conference. On the other hand, the tender documentation, as follows from the ministry's response, did not include this event, and the procurement itself was dedicated to engaging experts for the intergovernmental commissions.
This is where the main contradiction arises. The ministry simultaneously confirms three facts: the entrepreneur performed the entire scope of work, the anniversary meeting was absent from the action plan that was part of the tender documentation, and the contract resulting from the procurement was concluded for a different subject. Moreover, the state did partially pay for holding the event - covering hospitality expenses totalling 2.65 million tenge. The remaining part of the expenses, which Kabidayev claims should have been paid by the Ministry of Ecology based on the guarantee letter, never received independent legal formalisation.
Therefore, after receiving the ministry's response, the key question is no longer why Kabidayev lost the court case. The court provided an answer to that. A more significant question emerges: what exactly mechanism did the Ministry of Ecology plan to use to honour its own guarantee letter, if the subject of the tender documentation did not match the event for which it had previously provided a written guarantee of payment?
