President Tokayev: “New AMT owner's responsibility will be huge”

The president wants the cabinet to assist Qarmet (previously known as AMT), especially at the initial stage / Collage by Kursiv.media

According to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the new owner of ArcelorMittal Temirtau renamed Qarmet will bear much responsibility to the government.

What should the new AMT owner be prepared for? As the president highlighted, the issue of ownership over the Karaganda Metallurgic Plant has been successfully solved and currently is under the control of a Kazakhstani company.

«The cabinet should give a hand to the company, especially at the initial stage. However, in the end, the new owner will be fully responsible for everything that is happening at the plant. The control will be very strict,» Tokayev said while delivering a speech at the Altyn Sapa and Paryz awards ceremony.

What did Tokayev say about the failures of crucial infrastructure? According to the president, all these failures at critically important facilities revealed the acute need for total modernization of engineering and energy infrastructure throughout the country. Officials have turned a blind eye to this problem for decades.

He also recalled that the government has conducted an audit of the heating distribution network and other engineering communication systems and has already started massive work on overhauling old energy facilities and commissioning new ones.

The context. On December 8, 2023, the media reported that Andrey Lavrentyev, owner of Allur Group would be the new investor in ArcelorMittal Temirtau. The change of the company’s owner happened after Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal gave Kazakhstan’s government his stake in the company in the form of Qazaqstan Investment Corporation. This was then acquired by Lavrentyev, who currently is the sole shareholder of Qazaqstan Steel Group.

Lavrentyev is the chair and key shareholder of Allur Group, which controls Agromashholding and SaryArkaAvtoProm. The group is the official producer, distributor and partner of Chevrolet, Kia and JAC in Kazakhstan. The businessman is also a co-founder of the Business FM radio station, the president of the triathlon federation of the Kostanay region and a participant in projects such as Dom mamy, YPO Kazakhstan and IQanat.

Right after acquiring the company, Lavrentyev renamed ArcelorMittal to Qarmet. However, the enterprise is still under the supervision of Vadim Basin, who was appointed the head of the plant by President Tokayev after a deadly accident at the Kostenko coal mine in late October 2023.

What do we know about Basin? Basin worked at the Karaganda Metallurgic Plant and then at ArcelorMittal Temirtau from 1986 to 2021. His last position within AMT was executive director.

From 2021 to 2023 he served as deputy governor of the Karaganda region. In this position, he was responsible for dealing with emergencies. In August 2023, he supervised a rescue operation at the Kazakhstanskaya coal mine. After the accident at the Kostenko mine, President Tokayev instructed Basin to lead the entire company. At the time, Tokayev called AMT the worst company in the country’s history. He made this statement while meeting with families of those who died at the mine in October.

Basin possesses two diplomas as he graduated from the Karaganda Polytechnical Institute in 1985 and the Tomsk Institute of Control Systems and Radio Electronics in 1990.