TALDYQORGHAN, Kazakhstan -- The chief of the KazTAG news agency in Kazakhstan, Aset Mataev, who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2016 on a tax-evasion conviction he disputes, will be transferred to a lower-security facility.
A court in the southeastern city of Taldyqorghan ruled on April 24 that Mataev, 33, will be transferred from a prison to a penitentiary in his native Almaty in which convicts live close to an industrial facility or a farm where they work.
Mataev's father, Seitqazy Mataev, 63, was tried with his son and sentenced to six years in prison on tax evasion and embezzlement charges. He was released in December, after his sentence was reduced under a 2016 mass amnesty marking the 25th anniversary of Kazakhstan's independence.
Seitqazy and Aset Mataev were arrested in February 2016. They were sentenced in October that year after a court convicted both men of tax evasion and found the older man guilty of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from Kazakhstan's Communications Ministry.
Both have denied the charges. Rights groups say Seitqazy Mataev was prosecuted on trumped-up charges in response to his work as head of the Union of Kazakhstan's Journalists.
