Crypto in Kazakhstan: guess who is to blame? Correct — not the scammers.🤔

The legal agency Cartesius reported the completion of the case of the Spegals.

🇰🇿 How it all began

In 2022, brothers Sergey and Igor Spegal worked as regular cryptocurrency exchangers.

They accidentally became a link in the 'triangle' scheme when Ukrainian fraudulent call centers used their services to deceive Kazakh pensioners.

When the scheme was uncovered, law enforcement decided to punish those 'at hand' rather than the real organizers.

💔 Family tragedy

• Sergey could not withstand the pressure and threats against his brother — and took his own life.

• Igor spent more than a year in a Kazakh pre-trial detention center and colony.

Now Igor has been given a fine instead of imprisonment, and he has left Kazakhstan.

🇰🇿 Features of Kazakh crypto regulation

To understand why this happened, it is important to know the context.

In Kazakhstan, crypto is extremely tightly controlled:

✔️ legal work is only possible within the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC),

❌ anything outside this zone is automatically considered illegal entrepreneurship.

Even if a person is just exchanging USDT for tenge without a license — it is a criminal offense 🤔