In the Pavlodar region, a lieutenant colonel and a captain, who served in the Aksu police department, have been detained and stripped of their ranks.
On October 15, 2022, unknown individuals smashed the window of a car belonging to an Aksu resident with a brick and stole a phone worth nearly 120,000 tenge from the salon. The victim reported the incident to the duty officer's assistant at the city police department. An operational-investigative group arrived at the scene, a detective took statements, and officers collected fingerprints. The man awaited the apprehension of the perpetrator and the return of his property. Despite repeated visits to the department to inquire about the progress of the investigation, he was only assured that the search was ongoing.
In March 2023, the victim went to the prosecutor's office with a complaint and was surprised to learn that the theft had not even been initially registered in the Information Register Book (KUI) and the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations (ERDR). Essentially, there was no criminal case.
Upon this revelation, a supervisory authority initiated an investigation against the senior duty officer and the detective who responded to the theft. The case was transferred to the Anti-Corruption Service. The lieutenant colonel and the captain were suspected and later accused of deliberate concealment of the crime. According to the case materials, they had ignored the regulations requiring them to register offenses in the KUI and ERDR and to document the incidents. It was discovered that the officers had relied on each other and their colleagues. Meanwhile, the victim's statement was never accepted, and the crime scene protocol and physical evidence were lost.
Simultaneously, in March 2023, a case of the phone theft was registered and shortly after, the device was found: the Aksu resident had purchased it at a pawnshop for his son. The phone was confiscated from the family and returned to the owner.
The case against the police officers was brought to the court of Aksu. "The court concluded that they committed a criminal offense due to the non-performance of their official duties and violation of legislative requirements, independently, without prior collusion," stated the court's press service in Aksu.
As a result, a guilty verdict was issued under Part 2 of Article 433 of the Criminal Code - "deliberate concealment of a crime from registration, committed by an authorized official..." The convicted individuals were sentenced to one year of restricted freedom each. They were stripped of their special ranks of "lieutenant colonel" and "captain" and barred from holding positions in law enforcement agencies for two years. The court ruling has not yet entered into legal force and can be appealed.
On April 30, in Taldykorgan, a former chief of the city police was convicted of rape.
