BTA Bank
third largest lender in Kazakhstan by assets
BTA Bank (Kazakh: БТА; БТА Банкі; BTA Banki) (BTA Bank Joint-Stock Company in full) is a Kazakhstan bank with headquarters in Almaty. As of 2013 it was the third largest lender by assets. In 2009, BTA Bank was subject of one of the world's biggest financial frauds totaling US$5 billion.
History
Foundations and early years
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Kazakh operations of the Soviet Promstroybank were re-organized as Turan Bank and those of the Soviet Vnesheconombank were re-organized as Alem Bank. On 15 January 1997, Turan Bank and Alem Bank merged to form Bank Turan Alem (BTA), a joint-stock company in accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan "On reorganization of the Kazakh joint-stock bank Turan Bank and joint-stock bank Alem Bank Kazakhstan". On 1 October 1998 Bank Turan Alem CJSC was renamed to Bank TuranAlem OJSC and then to Bank TuranAlem JSC.
In spring 2008 the bank underwent rebranding, which resulted in the change of the name, logo and corporate identity of the bank. After this the BTA Bank JSC name was no longer perceived as an acronym.
Events between 2009–2012
Fraud & Embezzlement
It was revealed in 2009 that the bank was defrauded of up to $6 billion of cash in one of the world's biggest cases of financial fraud. The bank's former chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov is alleged to have perpetrated the fraud. Ablyazov has said that under his leadership BTA did conceal assets to protect them from being seized by the government.
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This entry incorporates text from “BTA Bank” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.