"Recent change of government" said to be the reason for Astana's payment delays

After having gone through similar issues in the past, it was recently reported in early March that the Astana Qazaqstan Team staff and riders were yet to be payed their January salaries. That has in the meantime happened - to some extent - but the financial problems are yet to be resolved.

“To be honest, I learned about this whole story from the press," he said regarding the ongoing court case against Abacanto S.A., the agency responsible for providing the team's payments.

"Until that moment I was not familiar with the details of this investigation. Apparently, we are talking about some kind of legal procedure that was initiated a year ago, when another person was the managing director of Abacanto S.A., while I performed purely sports functions until the summer of 2021. Officially, after a break, I returned to work with the team in January 2022, so it’s difficult for me to comment something on this issue," team general manager Alexander Vinokourov told VeloNews. The news outlet also reports that Vinokourov's name is in fact involved in the case.

Team managing director Assem Kunakbayeva said the following: "We are aware that you did not receive the salary of January and/or February but please be informed that we are proceeding to complete the payments rapidly. We had to work to solve all the problems in Qazaqstan, after the recent change of government, to get urgently the funds released to the Team as quickly as possible.”

Astana are currently racing Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico where, despite modest performances so far, they have David de la Cruz and Miguel Ángel López in the overall contention and will hope to gather some strong results by the end of the week.