What is the Kazakhstan National Fund?
The National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan manages the Kazakhstan National Fund, a sovereign wealth fund for Kazakhstan.
Understanding the Kazakhstan National Fund
The Kazakhstan National Fund was established in 2000, primarily to act as a stabilization fund to lessen the impact that volatility in oil, gas, and mineral prices has on the Republic of Kazakhstan.
This National Fund is financed from surplus revenues gained from taxes on the development of oil, gas, and mineral reserves. The Kazakhstan National Bank lists assets for the fund at $59.8 billion as of January 2021. Some $123.6 billion of that total was in gold.
The fund has no website and issues no public reports on its activities. The Kazakhstan Fund is a secretive organization; little information can be found about its governance, holdings, or investment strategies.
Kazakhstan National FuFund’s frozen assets
Following a Belgian court order in October 2017, the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) froze $22.6 billion in assets held by the KaKazakhstan’sational International Fund as part of a legal battle between the government and a Moldovan investor. Reuters reported that the freeze was connected to years-long political infighting in the country and the possibility of corruption associated with the fund.
In January 2018, a Dutch court overturned the freeze but with several strings attached, and in April 2020, a British court, too, weighed in on the case but did not grant broad relief to the Kazakh government seeking to remove those concessions ordered by the Dutch court.
They deferred that decision to the original Belgian court, which heard the case in December 2020 but has yet to reach a verdict as of February 2021.
At stake among all of these disputes is whether sovereign wealth funds are investment arms of governments or independent institutional investors. These kinds of funds, of which Norway’s the largest at over $1 trillion, hold more than $7 trillion worth of wealth spread all over the globe. As a result, governments worldwide are closely monitoring the final decision in this case.
Conclusion
- According to the National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kazakhstan National Fund is the country’s national wealth fund.
- Established in 2000, the Kazakh FunFund’s purpose is to help keep oil, gas, and mineral costs stable and not affect the Republic of Kazakhstan as much.
- Extra funds for the Kazakhstan National Fund come from taxes on the growth of oil, gas, and mineral sources.
