Land Sold Illegally to Expat Returned Back to Municipality

By Tamara Sukhomlinova

Pursuant to the Nature Protection Prosecutor’s lawsuit, the court ruled to return a land plot (1 439 sq meters) to the state fund that was sold in 2012 to the citizen of India for the construction of a restaurant and a hotel.

To recall, last year the land plot near the restaurant “Ural” was sold to expat for only 3 million tenge. There were many violations made during that deal. Shortly before his arrest the mayor of Atyrau Askar Kerimov issued a resolution about land allocation, bypassing all required approvals that were supposed to be obtained from a number of relevant government agencies, including the inspectorate for regulation of use and protection of water resources.

The construction activities were planned to take place only 13 meters from the river-side and a site fence was abutting an embankment parapet (see “Ex-Mayor sold land to foreigner”).