U.S. Government to Monitor the Liquidation of Tengri Bank in Kazakhstan

In 2018 the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) provided Tengri Bank with a $15 million loan, making the liquidation of the bank a matter of interest for the U.S. government, according to the press service of the American embassy to Kazakhstan.

The U.S. Embassy has cooperated with Kazakhstan to diversify and boost the country’s economy for more than 30 years. One of the tools the U.S. government uses is International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), formerly OPIC. In 2018 this organization issued a loan in $15 million to Kazakhstani Tengri Bank. However, now Kazakhstan’s authorities want the bank to stop its business amid allegations of fraud with loans to affiliated persons, who never had any intentions to repay these loans.

In the first quarter of 2020, Tengri Bank showed 3.538 billion tenge of net loss ($8.4 million); its volume of assets has declined this year by 2.5% to 121.235 billion tenge ($290.8 million). A similar trend was also seen in 2019.

On September 18, 2020, the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan for Regulation and Development of Financial Market has revoked the bank’s license and the investigation has begun. The agency blamed Tengri Bank for systematical violations of the national banking standards. For example, the bank failed to make its capitalization bigger as the regulator had required.

Two top managers of the bank allegedly involved in fraud have managed to sneak out of the country. Both of them, Almas Bakytuly and his attendant Togzhan Rakhmetova, are currently under an international search.