Timur Turlov’s Freedom Holding Corp. has signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Financial Monitoring Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan, DKNews.kz reports.
The document, discussed during a meeting between Timur Turlov and FMA Chairman Zhanat Elimanov, provides for joint work to improve digital financial monitoring tools, develop analytics and risk-based approaches, introduce modern RegTech solutions, and implement educational and expert initiatives aimed at improving the qualifications of specialists in this field.
According to the FMA’s Telegram channel, the meeting also addressed the use of artificial intelligence to detect operations related to fraud, dropper schemes, financial pyramids, and illegal drug trafficking.
Representatives of Freedom Bank, the holding company’s banking business in Kazakhstan, said at the meeting that the company is actively developing its own solutions, including AI-based tools, that help minimize the risks of illegal transactions. These solutions make it possible to respond not only while suspicious transactions are being carried out, but also at the user registration stage by identifying potential “suspicious markers.”
It is worth noting that such meetings between representatives of Kazakhstan’s financial sector and the Financial Monitoring Agency are held on a regular basis.
In early June, the FMA published a draft resolution tightening control over banking transactions by Kazakhstanis. The new measures are aimed at combating fraudsters, droppers, online casinos, and illegal money transfers. Banks were given only a few weeks to reconfigure their internal systems in order to adapt them to the new requirements. Kazakhstanis with a large number of bank cards will come under special scrutiny, while operations involving cryptocurrency will also face significant restrictions.
Earlier this year, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a decree expanding state control over illegal financial operations, such as money laundering and terrorist financing, while broadening the powers of the FMA. The agency’s new functions include combating the shadow economy, coordinating risk assessment in the field of financial crimes, and monitoring compliance with legislation by financial monitoring entities. At the same time, the agency was granted the authority to determine the procedure for checking clients and beneficiaries, participate in decisions on removing individuals from lists related to terrorist financing, and establish rules for transmitting data on suspicious activity.
This process involves not only government bodies, but also participants in the country’s banking and financial sectors. For example, over the year and a half since the National Bank’s anti-fraud center began operating, transactions worth 3 billion tenge have been blocked in this area alone.
According to the FMA, last year investigations were completed in 1,135 criminal cases, victims were reimbursed 141.5 billion tenge, and 15 criminal groups and 29 platforms involved in illegal cash-out operations with turnover exceeding 128 billion tenge were dismantled. The activities of 22 shadow crypto exchanges were stopped, more than 1,100 illegal online cryptocurrency exchange services and 20,000 dropper cards involved in laundering drug-related proceeds were blocked. Banks and other financial organizations closed more than 2,000 accounts of legal entities and 56,000 accounts of individuals on suspicion of laundering criminal proceeds.
Timur Turlov’s international fintech company Freedom Holding Corp., whose ecosystem includes banking, brokerage, and insurance businesses, has been consistently strengthening its infrastructure for countering illegal financial operations. Freedom Holding Corp. undergoes annual voluntary and mandatory audits of its compliance processes by KPMG and Deloitte. Chief Compliance Officer Dmitry Dovzhenko has noted that the group employs around 200 compliance officers in more than 20 countries around the world. Their responsibilities include checking clients, transactions, and counterparties, ensuring compliance with sanctions regimes, maintaining transparency of sources of funds and cross-border operations, monitoring anti-corruption risks, and interacting with local and global regulators.
According to Dovzhenko, the regulatory framework and compliance risk management system have now become part of the company’s “license to grow”: the more transparent and verifiable the system is, the easier it is to scale and attract capital.
“The role of cross-border regulation has increased, with greater focus on management responsibility and the quality of internal controls. In addition, digitalization has changed the very nature of control: requirements for data, cyber resilience, information protection, and transaction traceability have become part of the overall regulatory framework. It has become more dynamic, technological, and comprehensive. The products offered to clients have become more complex. Changes are happening faster, requirements are becoming more detailed, and regulators increasingly expect not just formal compliance with rules, but a demonstrable and functioning risk management system,” Dmitry Dovzhenko said.
Overall, cooperation between the private sector and government structures, including banks, is standard global practice in combating financial crimes. In the European Union, a single center coordinates investigations into cross-border economic crimes based on data received from banks and fintech companies. In the United States, FinCEN Exchange serves as a platform for cooperation between financial intelligence and the banking sector, enabling secure data exchange to prevent financial fraud. In the United Kingdom, the JMLIT task force brings together banks, regulators, and police for rapid data analysis, the uncovering of complex criminal schemes, and the freezing of illegal assets.
According to Nasdaq’s latest global report, the volume of various financial crimes worldwide has grown from $1.1 trillion to $4.4 trillion since 2023. The report notes that although criminals have begun actively using artificial intelligence in their schemes, it is the synergy of technological solutions and cooperation between the state and private business that could, in the near future, “permanently exclude criminals from the financial system.”
