The deal on carving out a large stock of Kazakhtelecom’s shares serves close attention not only on the part of the experts but all the Kazakhstan citizens. Especially since the name of the person who is now in control of the national communication service provider is not yet publicly known.
On August 28, 2018, Kazakhstan’s Prime-Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev signed Governmental Decree 534 «On the Disposal of a Strategic Asset»
The document is short, so we will quote it in its entirety.
«In accordance with Article 193-1 of the Kazakhstan Civil Code (General Part) dated December 27, 1994, the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan hereby decrees:
1. To allow company SOBRIO LIMITED to complete the transaction on carving out 2 672 592 ordinary shares of Kazakhtelecom JSC which equals 24,96% of the total number of the ordinary shares of Kazakhtelecom JSC for the benefit of SKYLINE INVESTMENT COMPANY S.A.
2. The present Decree is to be put into action from the day on which it is signed».
On September 13, 2018, this document was published by website Nomad and a number of other Kazakhstan media-resources, however, it did not elicit a strong response on the part of the civil society. In the meantime, this event deserves attention not only of the press and the experts but all the citizens as well since it has to do with a large stock of shares of Kazakhstan’s national communication service provider.
Earlier, we have already written about the problems (and not just the financial ones) that businessman Alexander Klebanov, the beneficial owner of Sobrio Limited, has been experiencing. During the past months, he has been forced to retire from the Boards of Directors of two Kazakhstan banks whose banking licenses were revoked by the National Bank of Kazakhstan — Eksimbank and Bank of Astana. Note that he was the majority shareholder of the former.
It is not yet clear who the beneficial owner of Skyline Investment Company S.A. is; we do not know whether it is Alexander Klebanov or an entirely different person.
If it is the former, the transfer of 24,96% of Kazakhtelecom’s ordinary shares from one offshore company to another is just a technicality. However, the question arises — what’s in it for Alexander Klebanov or, in other words, Dariga Nazarbayeva, the President’s eldest daughter and the Senate Deputy, whose interests Klebanov represents?
If it is the latter, we are curious as to who has become a major shareholder of Kazakhtelecom with the approval of the Government? It may be a person or persons to whom Mr. Klebanov has sold, given or perhaps simply returned the shares of Kazakhstan’s national communication service provider.
The only thing we do know is that Skyline Investment Company S.A. is a typical offshore company registered in Luxemburg in May 2018 with the capital stock of 30 thousand euro and the staff of one to ten employees.
