Head of Medical Insurance Fund speaks out on embezzlement in the MSIS system

Gulmira Sabdenbek, Chairwoman of the Board of the Fund for Compulsory Social Health Insurance (FSMS) in Kazakhstan, has declared a firm stance against covering up violations within the mandatory social health insurance system. She stated that the fund has identified a significant portion of cases currently under investigation by law enforcement during routine audits.

Sabdenbek reported that in the first half of 2026 alone, 72 cases of identified violations totaling 4.5 billion tenge were referred to law enforcement. This led to the registration of 27 criminal cases, with established damages amounting to 3.7 billion tenge. For comparison, in the entirety of 2025, 73 cases totaling 630 million tenge were referred, resulting in only eight criminal cases.

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No more covering up violations

The FSMS attributes the increase in detected violations not to a rise in abuses, but to stricter controls, improved analytical tools, and a commitment to pursuing legal action for every identified instance. The fund is also changing its approach to financial control, shifting focus from detecting violations after funds are transferred to preventing them before payment.

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Our position is firm: we will not cover up violations, we will seek a legal evaluation of every confirmed fact, facilitate compensation for damages, and eliminate the conditions that allowed such schemes to exist.

To achieve this, a unified digital ecosystem for financial control is being implemented, incorporating the Qalqan IT platform, an automated anti-fraud system, and risk-oriented data analysis algorithms. Kazakhstanis will soon be able to independently check medical services recorded under their name and report any they did not receive, providing additional risk indicators for audits.

"Our goal is to make unjustified payments impossible before funds are even transferred to medical organizations. This will ensure the targeted use of every tenge and strengthen public trust in the OSMS system," Sabdenbek commented. The Financial Monitoring Agency recently uncovered schemes involving the fictitious registration of approximately 140,000 citizens and falsified medical service records, leading to illegal acquisition of funds.

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Our goal is to make unjustified payments impossible before funds are even transferred to medical organizations. This will ensure the targeted use of every tenge and strengthen public trust in the OSMS system.