Two Thirds of Kazakhstani Census Money stolen

    Officials at Kazakhstan’s state statistics agency have stolen at least two thirds of state cash earmarked for this year’s national census, the Financial Police said on Wednesday.
    Kazakhstan, a steppe nation five times the size of France, carried out a nationwide count of all people and households in February and March this year. The census cost the government 1.14 billion tenge ($7.6 million).
    “The investigation has found out that the actual cost of the census was 379 million tenge,” Financial Police spokesman Murat Zhumanbai told reporters.
    “The remaining 764.8 million tenge were embezzled by agency officials and managers from private companies.”
    Zhumanbai said the police have arrested a deputy head of the statistics agency and detained one other official, according to Reuters.