The main news in Kazakhstan on 12 November was a confirmation from the National Security Committee: the heads of the Samruk-Kazyna fund and of the national railway company have been detained. By evening Akorda had scheduled a meeting of the Security Council for 13 November. The rest of the state machine kept to its timetable during those hours: it counted oil in the pipe, issued licences without an official and planned a town beside a future nuclear plant.
The day in figures
- 33,000
residents in the planned nuclear workers’ town in Ulken - 87,088
public services provided automatically since 2024 - 38.306 million tonnes
oil pumped by KazTransOil in ten months - 1.35 million
smart gas meters under the Aqyl Energy project
According to the Agency for Atomic Energy, the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, KazTransOil and the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources
- 33,000
A detention, a statement and an announcement
The chronology of the day fitted into three messages. The Anti-Corruption Service of the National Security Committee (KNB) said that on 11 November it had detained Nurlan Zhakupov, chairman of the management board of the Samruk-Kazyna fund, and Yelzhas Otynshiyev, chairman of the management board of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), on suspicion of a corruption offence. The committee did not name the article, the amount or the measure of restraint and cited the secrecy of the pre-trial investigation.
Samruk-Kazyna is the state fund that owns the largest national companies, and KTZ is one of them. So the second message of the day was a statement from the fund itself: it is operating as normal and assisting the investigation, and its obligations to investors and creditors remain in force.
The third was an announcement from Akorda. President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will on 13 November hold an operational meeting of the Security Council on the development of transport and logistics and will set out there the state’s principled position in connection with the detentions. The agenda names the principle of “Law and Order”, the personal responsibility of the heads of national companies and the transparency of strategic enterprises. Detention and suspicion do not mean guilt: that is for a court to decide.
A town beside the plant
While one national company was explaining itself to investors, the nuclear industry spoke about the future. Almassadam Satkaliyev, chairman of the Agency for Atomic Energy, said at a meeting with Kazakhstanis who are building the Akkuyu nuclear power plant (NPP) in Türkiye that a nuclear workers’ town designed for up to 33,000 people is to be built into the settlement of Ulken on the shore of Lake Balkhash. Housing, schools, medical facilities and a training centre have been promised.
The scale is set by the arithmetic of construction. One plant needs up to 15,000 builders and fitters at the peak of the work, and about 2,000 staff once it is finished. According to Satkaliyev, Kazakhstan intends to build at least three plants. The town has no deadline and no budget yet, and that is the main gap in his account.
A decision without a counter
The most routine message of the day turned out to be the most telling. Licences and permits under 12 public services for business are now issued by an information system: it takes information from state databases itself, checks it against the requirements and makes the decision. This used to take from 15 to 30 days. Since 2024, a total of 87,088 services have been provided this way through the eLicense.kz portal.
The queue at the counter has disappeared together with the counter.
On the same day the Constitutional Court showed where such automation ends. It found sufficiently clear the concept of “immoral misconduct”, for which the Labour Code allows a teacher to be dismissed. The law contains no list of such acts and, in the court’s view, cannot contain one: the concept is evaluative, and it has to be judged by the circumstances. Where requirements can be written into a database, the decision passes to a machine. Where the yardstick is morality, it stays with people: the employer, the conciliation commission and the court.
Pipe, wind and meters
The day’s economy consisted of reports and signatures. KazTransOil reported that it had pumped 38.306 million tonnes of oil in ten months, 1.323 million tonnes more than a year earlier. Almost half of the increase came from deliveries to Kazakhstani oil refineries.
At the UN climate conference in Antalya, five agreements were signed in Kazakhstan’s pavilion. Two of them open the way for carbon projects under the Paris Agreement. The other three are loans from the Development Bank of Kazakhstan and Halyk Bank for two wind farms and for 1.35 million smart gas meters.
The head of the platform where electricity is traded has changed too: the market operator KOREM is now led by Arman Shaikhanov, who worked for almost twenty years at the grid company KEGOC.
What today will show
All the routine news of the day has one thing in common: it is about the rules by which the state and its companies are supposed to work without failures. The main news is about what happens when investigators have questions for the heads of such companies. The answer is expected at the Security Council meeting, and it will determine how the fund’s investors and creditors read yesterday’s statement.
