Council of Europe is currently supporting the Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) in the preparation of a roadmap for the establishment of a Beneficial Ownership (BO) Register in Kazakhstan. As a first step, a scoping mission took place in Astana on 20-21 April 2023 to present international best practices and models of BO registers, as well as to discuss the existing practice in Kazakhstan with the representatives of FMA and the Ministry of Justice.

The BO transparency is an important tool in fighting against money laundering and terrorist financing and the support of the Council of Europe aims at improving the practices of the national authorities of Kazakhstan to successfully implement the beneficial ownership registry for the needs of the economic crime investigations. During the meetings the international experts presented the best practices of BO registers in different countries to 19 representatives of FMA and Ministry of Justice who learned the challenges in the establishment of BO register in other jurisdictions.

Kazakhstan is undergoing an evaluation process on compliance and effectiveness of the national anti-money laundering system with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and other international standards.

This activity was organised by the Action on “Promoting Transparency and Action against Economic Crime” of the Central Asia Rule of Law Programme 2020-2023, a joint initiative co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe.