On February 5, a court in Bishkek sentenced former Minister of Natural Resources Dinara Kutmanova to eight years in prison following a conviction on abuse of office charges. Kutmanova’s son, Kemelbek Kutmanov, was also sentenced to eight years on a large-scale fraud charge. The pair were detained back in 2023, accused of massive corruption linked to the country’s most lucrative asset: the Kumtor Gold Mine.
Kutmanova was tapped to head the State Committee for Ecology and Climate in May 2021. The committee was upgraded to the Ministry of Natural Resources, Environment and Technical Supervision in October of that year. When Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov reshuffled his Cabinet in October 2021, Kutmanova was the only female minister named. She ran the Natural Resources Ministry until March 2023 and was arrested in July of that year.
Among the ministry’s responsibilities was oversight of the Kumtor Gold Mine, which Bishkek seized control of in May 2021.
Kutmanova, and her son, have a long history with the mine. Much like Japarov, she rose to prominence by campaigning against foreign ownership of the mine. Kutmanov, in fact, was one of the plaintiffs in a May 2021 lawsuit against Kumtor alleging environmental damages that served, in part, as the trigger for the government takeover of the lucrative gold mine.
On July 20, 2023, State Committee for National Security (SCNS) head Kamshybek Tashiev accused Kutmanova of massive corruption in remarks during a Cabinet meeting. “The officials who robbed the country will be punished in any case, even after their dismissal,” he said ominously. “Everyone will be punished. Therefore, do not think that dark deeds can be hidden by leaving the post.”
The following day Kutmanova gave an interview to RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, Radio Azattyk, in which the former minister rejected the security chief’s accusations.
The next day, Kutmanova made news again when she alleged that in late June her son had been kidnapped in Istanbul and held for ransom – she said she’d been instructed not to report this to the media, lest her son be hurt.
The SCNS put out a statement the same day outlining the massive corruption case Tashiev had indicated was in the works, with Kutmanova at its center. (The son, Kutmanov, was extradited from Turkiye to Kyrgyzstan in October 2023.) The charges centered on allegations that Kutmanova had misused funds from Kumtor’s then-owner that were supposed to go toward environmental protection.
The SCNS statement claimed that from 2021 to 2023 the Kumtor Gold Company funded the Nature Development Fund, situated inside the ministry, to the tune of 325 million soms ($3.7 million) annually. The SCNS said that the total funding over three years was more than 969 million soms and that more than 789 million soms had been allocated to individuals and organizations for 110 projects.
This model, in which Kumtor’s commercial overlords fed money into the fund for environmental protection initiatives, was established in 2017 between Kyrgyzstan and Canada’s Centerra Gold. The Canadian company long owned and operated the mine, much to the frustration of Kyrgyz nationalists.
The Nature Development Fund’s director was detained on corruption charges in June 2023.
Kutmanova herself was arrested on July 25, 2023, with Kyrgyz authorities laying out a case that she used her position within the ministry and her authority over the fund to funnel money to friends and family. One specific instance outlined by the SCNS involved the purchase of 1,000 sets of “special clothing” for a total of 34 million soms from a family friend in an agreement made without a tender process.
“According to the expert opinion of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Kyrgyz Republic,” the SCNS said in its July 22, 2023 statement, “the cost of special clothing does not exceed 11 million soms in the country’s markets, the difference in the amount of 23 million soms was appropriated by the family of Dinara Kutmanova.”
The SCNS further claimed that it had “checked” on 22 of the 110 funded projects and found “most… do not correspond to their intended purpose.”
The SCNS characterized Kutmanova as “the key ideological inspirer and main organizer” of corruption within the ministry.
Both Kutmanova and her son were sentenced to eight years each, with the confiscation of their property as well as a a three year ban on holding public office for her and a three year ban on individual entrepreneurial activity for him.
In October 2024, the Kumtor Gold Company announced declining output, through the authorities characterized the decline as temporary. In 2023, the company reported that it had extracted and sold 13.5 tonnes of gold, below a 14 ton target. The company expressed aims to extract 17-18 tons annually in the near future.