Kazakhstan’s central bank has fired the head of its investment management arm after he said the country’s oil fund was in jeopardy.
In a statement on January 13, the National Investment Corporation (NIC) said the central bank had dismissed NIC Chief Executive Berik Otemurat on January 8.
The NIC did not say why Otemurat had been fired, but the action came the same day interviews with him were published in The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.
In both interviews, Otemurat urged the government and the central bank to invest the fund’s assets in riskier, higher-yielding assets.
He also told The Wall Street Journal that the $64 billion fund could be depleted in six or seven years.
According to central bank data, the fund's assets peaked at $77.2 billion in August 2014 and have since dropped to $63.5 billion.