Kazakhstan ratifies Council of Europe criminal legal assistance convention

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the law ratifying the European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters on 6 October, according to the Central Communications Service under the President, which listed it as the only law signed that day and said its text would be published in the press. The release gives no law number and no reservations.

The convention is the Council of Europe's 1959 treaty on cooperation between prosecutors and courts in criminal cases, European Treaty Series No. 30. The Council's Committee of Ministers invited Kazakhstan to join on 18 June 2025, and the Kurultai, the parliament, approved the ratification law on 23 September 2026, The Times of Central Asia reported. Kazakhstan still has to deposit its instrument of accession with the Council of Europe's Secretary General, and accession takes effect 90 days after deposit, according to the same report. The deposit date is the one to watch: until it happens, the treaty does not bind Kazakhstan or its partners.

The step matters for compliance teams and for anyone on the receiving end of a Kazakh request, because it gives the country's asset recovery work a multilateral channel alongside the bilateral arrangements its prosecutors have signed, including with Moldova and Bulgaria, the newspaper reported. Prosecutors say recovery measures have reached more than KZT 1.3 trillion.

What the instrument requires

Parties to the convention undertake to give each other assistance in criminal proceedings, including taking evidence, transmitting records and serving judicial documents, and executing some search and seizure requests, according to The Times of Central Asia's summary. Search and seizure requests can be carried out only where the conduct is an offence in both countries and punishable under Kazakh law. Requests are handled under the law of the receiving state and subject to any reservations each party enters.

On the Kazakh side, the Supreme Court handles requests about cases already before the courts and the Prosecutor General's Office handles all others, the report says. Deputy Prosecutor General Galymzhan Koigeldiyev told lawmakers that Kazakhstan had sought accession since 2001.

The presidential release is a one-line notice. It does not say which reservations or declarations Kazakhstan will lodge, and those will set how far the treaty reaches in practice.

The asset recovery record

A 2023 asset recovery law made the Prosecutor General's Office responsible for tracing and recovering assets at home and abroad, according to The Times of Central Asia. By March 2026 recovery measures covered more than KZT 1.3 trillion, and KZT 1.076 trillion, about $2.4 billion, had been returned, the outlet reported, citing official figures. The report does not break those totals down between domestic and foreign recoveries, and the presidential release gives no figures at all.

The same report recalls the court cases that frame Kazakhstan's foreign recovery effort. Default judgments recorded by the UK Supreme Court against Mukhtar Ablyazov, the former chairman of BTA Bank, total about $4.6 billion, and in 2024 a New York jury awarded BTA Bank and the city of Almaty more than $32 million. Ablyazov denies the allegations against him, and former Almaty mayor Viktor Khrapunov, also mentioned in the report, rejects the accusations, according to the outlet.

What the release does not say

Neither document gives a date for the deposit of the instrument, a list of reservations or declarations, or the authority Kazakhstan will designate as its central contact under the convention beyond the split between the Supreme Court and the Prosecutor General's Office. Neither says how many requests Kazakhstan expects to send or receive, or whether existing bilateral treaties will be amended.

The practical test will come in individual requests. Because each request is handled under the receiving state's law, the report notes, a Kazakh request to a European state will still have to meet that state's own rules and any reservations it has entered, including the dual criminality condition for search and seizure.

The next procedural step is publication of the law's text in the official press, followed by deposit of the instrument with the Council of Europe, after which the 90-day period to entry into force begins.