OREANDA-NEWS. On 09 February 2009 was announced, that at the meeting of the Board of Directors of JSC BTA Bank, Mr. Arman Dunayev was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors. In other changes, Mr. Sadwaqas Mameshtegi, formerly chairman of the board of directors of JSC Astana Finance, and Mr. Seitkali Rakhimov, a representative of JSC The Samruk-Kazyna National Welfare Fund (Samruk-Kazyna), were both appointed members of the Management Board. Also, the Board voted to hold an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders on March 6, 2009.

Also yesterday, Mr. Dunayev confirmed that a day before, on February 2, a sum of KZT 212 billion (USD1.7 billion) had indeed been transferred by Samruk-Kazyna to the designated account with the National Bank and that there was a resumption in the flow of funds into accounts of state-owned companies. Thus, since February 3, all payments have been handled in normal order.

Mr. Dunayev also pointed out that with the government as a shareholder, BTA was in a much better position as far as confidence in the bank on the part of depositors and lenders was concerned. "I am here to assure everybody that any negative information out there about our operations comes from sources that are untrustworthy and is not accurate, plain and simple. The situation with customer accounts and payments will be sorted out in the next few days. We are certain that as Kazakhstan’s largest financial institution, BTA will continue taking part in government programmes, specifically, we expect that our participation in the KZT 10 billion SME lending programme will continue, too".

Yelena Bakhmutova, Chairwoman of Kazakhstan’s Agency on Regulation and Supervision of Financial Market and Financial Organisations (FSA), had this to say on BTA subsidiaries and partner banks: "BTA Bank and all its subsidiaries and entities that it controls continue their normal operations, all existing shareholders have retained every single one of their shares and will continue to have a role in running the bank to the extent of the proportions they now own. Secondly, BTA foreign subsidiaries and other entities abroad controlled by BTA are corporations subject to regulation by their respective jurisdictions and it’s business as usual for them as well".

Minister of Finance Bolat Jamishev in his turn pledged that "the government will make every effort to ensure BTA’s success and, in due course, will take steps to let the bank back into private hands".