The story of a client who decided to do it all in-house — and how that turned out
Registering an LLP in Kazakhstan takes one business day. That figure appears in every second article on the subject, and it is true. The problem is that it describes only one stage — and almost never describes what happens around it.
In February 2026 a product IT company from Eastern Europe came to us. By the time of our first conversation, they had already spent three months setting up a Kazakhstan legal entity on their own. The reasoning at the outset was understandable: the procedure looked purely administrative — there is the eGov portal, there is a list of documents, and there was a contractor promising “turnkey registration”. They decided not to involve lawyers: it seemed an unnecessary cost item on what looked like a technical task.
The objective was specific — incorporate the company, relocate part of the team, obtain Astana Hub participant status and reach new clients before the end of the quarter. In the end it took four months instead of the three weeks planned.
Below are the five mistakes that cost them that time. All of them are typical: we see them regularly, and almost always in the same sequence. The company and the details have been changed; the sequence of events has not.
They chose the structure the group was used to: a holding company with a sole shareholder incorporating a Kazakhstan LLP, also with a single participant. The refusal came quickly.
The law of the Republic of Kazakhstan does not allow an LLP with a single participant to be incorporated by another business partnership that itself consists of a single participant. A chain of single-participant companies — the so-called “matryoshka rule” — blocks both the registration and any subsequent re-registration. For holding structures this is a standard ground for refusal.
The difficulty lay not in the refusal itself, but in the fact that the solution required corporate changes at the level of the parent company in another jurisdiction — with its own board of directors and its own procedure. That added several weeks to the timeline.
Check the ownership structure before the documents are prepared and choose one of the options in advance: admit a second participant to the holding company, admit a second participant (including a technical one) to the Kazakhstan LLP, or change the entity through which the group enters.
While the structure was being rebuilt, the extract from the commercial register expired. It was ordered again, apostilled and translated. In the translation, the parent company’s name was rendered differently from the founder’s resolution prepared earlier. A one-letter discrepancy. The system returned the application.
A foreign legal entity acting as a participant needs a Kazakhstan BIN (business identification number), and the documents evidencing its legal status (extract from the commercial register, charter, tax registration document) must be apostilled or legalised through consular channels and translated into Kazakh and Russian with notarial certification.
The digital systems of the Ministry of Justice reject applications automatically: without verification of the foreign legal entity through the tax authorities, the application simply does not go through. An expired extract and a discrepancy in the spelling of the company name across documents are the two most frequent reasons for an application being returned.
Tellingly, none of these errors was substantive. But each one cost between two and four weeks, because the document had to be ordered again, legalised abroad, translated and certified.
Obtain the BIN and assemble the legalised set of documents as a single block before registration starts, verifying the spelling of names across all documents and translations.
The OKED codes for the registration were selected by the contractor from a general description of the business, without analysing the revenue structure. By the time they reached the Astana Hub application, it turned out that the declared activities fell only partly within the priority list of ICT activities.
For IT companies this is the most expensive mistake, because it does not hit the registration — it hits the tax benefits.
It is important to understand: Astana Hub participant status is not a form of registration but a layer on top of an ordinary LLP. A foreign company does not apply to the technology park directly: first a Kazakhstan legal entity is registered, and only then can it apply for the status.
A technology park participant is required to derive income exclusively from priority activities. With our client, a significant share of revenue came from ancillary services that did not qualify for the benefit. They had to amend their registration data and restructure their client contracts — the status was obtained a quarter later than planned.
It should also be borne in mind that annual monitoring of participants’ activities was introduced on 1 January 2026: according to Astana Hub, one company in nine loses its benefits or has them temporarily restricted because of reporting errors.
Map the business model against the priority list of ICT activities before registration, select OKED codes that match the actual revenue structure, and decide in advance how the revenue streams that do not qualify for the benefit will be structured.
They used the model charter — to save time. The issue surfaced later, when the company began preparing for a funding round and discussing options for the development team.
The law of the Republic of Kazakhstan permits the use of a model charter, and many stop there. For IT companies this is rarely a workable solution: a model charter does not govern precisely what such projects usually need to protect — option programmes for developers, vesting, the procedure for admitting new investors, the allocation of powers between the participants and the director, the procedure for taking key decisions, and restrictions on the disposal of participatory interests.
Prepare a bespoke charter tailored to the actual cap table and the planned funding rounds. Reworking the structure after an investor has come in is considerably more expensive than putting it in place from the outset.
The founder entered on a business immigrant visa, registered the company and left without extending the visa. When the time came to sign the first contracts and deal with the bank, the company had no one with the correct status who could do this on the ground.
Extending a category C5 visa requires a letter of support from the local executive body, and that in turn requires a business plan, a lease agreement and confirmation that a bank account has been opened for the legal entity. A newly registered company usually has no business plan — it is worth preparing one in advance. If the visa is not extended, obtaining a new one effectively means registering another company.
The converse is also worth taking into account: where the participant in the LLP is a foreign legal entity rather than an individual, the ultimate beneficial owner does not, as a rule, need a business immigrant visa. This is one of the arguments in favour of entering through a holding structure.
Run the corporate and the immigration track in parallel from the very start — including visa deadlines, residence permits, the business plan and permits for engaging foreign labour, if the team is to be relocated.
The LLP was registered — that same single business day. The bank requested a rationale for the business model, the beneficial ownership structure, the intended counterparties and evidence of operational presence. None of this existed in ready form. The first bank refused; at the second, the procedure took another month.
Formally this is not a registration mistake, but this is precisely where the process most often stalls. The company already exists — but it can neither accept payments, nor pay salaries, nor pay rent. Banks run full compliance checks and are cautious about structures whose connection with the jurisdiction is limited to the fact of registration.
Prepare the rationale for the business model and the evidence of operational presence before filing with the bank, not after a refusal.
Four months instead of three weeks. Two registration refusals, one refusal by a bank, and market entry with new clients pushed to the following quarter. The direct costs of repeat legalisation, translations, travel and amendments to registration data exceeded, several times over, the cost of the legal support they had declined at the start.
None of these problems required a complex legal solution. All of them required one thing — to be considered before the documents were filed, not after a refusal.
Registering a company really does take one day. Everything else is the preparation for that day and what happens after it. That is exactly where the time is lost.
If you are planning to set up an LLP in Kazakhstan, do not gauge the complexity of market entry by the registration timeline. One business day is merely the moment the company appears in the register. Before it, the ownership structure, the documents and the OKED codes have to be checked; after it, Astana Hub, the bank, taxes and the team’s immigration status have to be dealt with.
REVERA Kazakhstan helps you take this path without a gap between registration and the business actually operating. From choosing the structure and preparing the documents through to tax planning, obtaining Astana Hub status, opening a bank account and support with corporate changes.
If Kazakhstan is the next market for your business, discuss your entry model with us before you start collecting documents. This is a case where a few hours of professional preparation can save months and materially reduce the cost of the launch.
