Recently, cases of intentional bankruptcy have become more frequent, when companies, failing to cope with their obligations or deliberately avoiding their fulfillment, are recognized as bankrupt through the court. However, today such actions do not go unpunished.
The concept of deliberate bankruptcy is enshrined in the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy”, according to which it means deliberate actions of a founder or an official, as well as an individual entrepreneur, aimed at evading the fulfillment of obligations to creditors, committed through alienation or concealment of property.
Signs of deliberate bankruptcy may include conclusion of knowingly unfavorable or fictitious transactions, withdrawal of assets, refusal to collect debts, concealment and transfer of property, fictitious increase of debts, deliberate destruction of management and accounting system, other illegal actions.
The legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan, namely the above Law, the Code of Administrative Offenses and the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan provides for personal liability of founders and officials.
If it is established that the bankruptcy was intentional, the controlling person may be brought to subsidiary liability in court, i.e. the company's debts will have to be paid from its own funds.
In addition, subsidiary liability is possible even after the bankruptcy procedure has been completed, if the guilty person is found guilty as a result of an administrative or criminal investigation.
In 2024 - 2025, 120 administrative proceedings and more than 44 criminal cases on the grounds of intentional bankruptcy of companies were initiated as a result of analyzing the activities of all debtors in bankruptcy proceedings.
Now the state revenue authorities are planning to use automated tools to detect signs of intentional bankruptcy, analyze transactions, connections between companies and debtors' behavior, for which they have started active work on the automation of rehabilitation and bankruptcy procedures.
For example, the former director of a company in Zhambyl region in 2024 was found guilty of deliberate bankruptcy by court verdict, and already in 2025 the court recovered from this person more than 45 million tenge in favor of creditors for the withdrawn assets in the form of cash from bank accounts before the company was declared bankrupt.
These cases are not isolated, in 2025 alone, more than 12 such court rulings against guilty persons were issued, and given the introduction of automated processes for identifying misconduct of debtors, state revenue authorities expect an increase in the effectiveness of materials sent to law enforcement agencies due to analytical validity and systematic evidence base, respectively, an increase in the number of lawsuits sent to court.
Thus, bankruptcy procedure ceases to be a way of evading responsibility for unscrupulous entrepreneurs and becomes an effective tool for restoring justice - a mechanism aimed at maximizing satisfaction of creditors' claims by bringing guilty persons to personal responsibility. Statute of limitations can be extended, and financial and criminal liability is real.