Kazakh Wikipedia 30 million tenge spent in 2011 for paid editing, digitalization, and author rights transfer. At the Wikimania 2011 conference WikiBilim president Rauan Kenzhekhanuly was awarded the Wikipedian of the Year award by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales for his work on the Kazakh Wikipedia expansion. In April 2012 Tengri News reported that "in 2011, the Samruk Kazyna sovereign wealth fund allocated a total of $204 thousand to develop the Kazakh-language Wikipedia. This year, another $136 thousand will be earmarked", citing the Fund’s Press Service. Wales thanked the Kazakh government for its support of the Kazakh Wikipedia at Wikimania 2012. The Kazakh
Jimmy Wales away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied. Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past". Later in March 2008, it was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation,