Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with the government of Kazakhstan regarding knowledge sharing and capacity building on (1) sanctions compliance, (2) anti-money laundering measures, (3) regulation of cryptocurrencies, and (4) ‘Know Your Customer’ compliance.

The UK Government has recently had several high-level engagements with the Government of Kazakhstan, including hosting the UK-Kazakhstan Strategic Dialogue in December, the UK-Kazakh Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Investment in February and the Foreign Secretary's visit to Astana on 18 March, meeting President Tokayev and other senior Kazakhs. In our engagements, we continually emphasise the importance of developing and maintaining a quality business environment to support international investment into Kazakhstan. Although senior meetings have not covered the cryptocurrency regulations, the UK successfully ran a pilot project in 2022 on financial compliance to assess different types of training on tackling illicit finance.