The commission’s chair, Aida Balayeva, the deputy chair of the Security Council, reported to the president on Monday. The first stage of the inspection has produced 13 criminal cases. Prosecutors opened them over possible theft of state property, abuse of office and other violations in the defence ministry’s organisations and units, according to Akorda’s readout, which says the preliminary findings show serious miscalculations in the planning of military activities and a lack of proper control by the previous leadership.
On the exercise itself the commission found substantial shortcomings in its preparation and planning, in the assessment of risks, in the organisation of the landing and in the safety of the servicemen. The pre-trial investigation into criminal negligence by the command staff continues, and the final legal assessment of their actions will come when it ends. Five officials are under arrest in that case, the readout says, and it does not say whether they are the 5 officers, the navy’s chief of staff among them, who were detained after the deaths and held as suspects, as Tengrinews reported in September.
The first stage of the inspection has produced 13 criminal cases.
Those officers are accused of a negligent attitude to service and of violating the rules of navigation with grave consequences, the offences of article 453 part 2 and article 465 of the Criminal Code, which carry prison terms of up to 5 and up to 7 years. The 14 who died were swept into the sea from the patrol boat Qaisar during the landing, in bad weather, by the interior ministry’s account of 25 September.
Also in the readout are individual cases of hazing and violence against servicemen, on which criminal cases have been opened, and shortcomings in military discipline and preventive work. Tokayev said the first personnel decisions had been taken and every official guilty of the servicemen’s deaths must bear the responsibility the law sets, with the matter under his personal control.
Earlier on Monday the chairman of the Higher Audit Chamber, Alikhan Smailov, reported on the chamber’s own unplanned audit of the ministry’s use of budget funds, a separate exercise from the commission’s. It covers 50 sites, 48 of them military units, with a team of state auditors and IT and communications specialists, and will assess supply, training, exercises, infrastructure and the modernisation of weapons and equipment. A completed audit of the state defence order sent 57 recommendations and instructions to the government and the agencies concerned, Tengrinews reported from the readout.
The commission is to draw up concrete proposals with the ministry’s new leadership, and the inspection’s results are to feed the reform plan for the armed forces that minister Aidos Myrzakhmetov, in office since 27 September in place of Dauren Kosanov, owes by Wednesday 7 October under decree 1507. Akorda’s text calls for an army of a new type and says the inspection must not affect combat readiness.
The leadership below the minister is partly refilled. Aitkurman Omarbekov of the State Guard Service became chief of the General Staff on Monday, and the posts of navy commander Kanat Niyazbekov and deputy minister Almaz Dzhumakeev, both relieved on 3 October, had no named successor on Akorda’s pages by Tuesday morning.
The readout is the first official diagnosis of 24 September, and it names a previous leadership that did not control what it planned. It prints no name, no unit and no sum behind the 13 cases, no date for the commission’s final report and no line of the reform plan due tomorrow. What the 13 cases on possible theft and abuse of office do show is the inspection’s reach: past the exercise, into the ministry’s property and contracts, with the audit chamber’s 48 units behind it.