Samruq-Qazyna Head Clarifies Executive Pay and Travel Policies

The Head of the Samruq-Qazyna state fund, Nurlan Zhakupov, has addressed public concerns over high salaries, bonuses, and business-class travel for top management, Orda.kz reports.

Zhakupov emphasized the scale of the fund's operations and the weight of executive responsibilities, citing over $82 billion in managed assets.

The fund's board members make decisions on large sums every day. For example, in the energy sector, there are new projects worth 14.4 trillion. And there are projects to maintain current capacities, and so on. That is, this is diversification across all portfolio companies, this is a big responsibility. And to make such decisions, you need skills, competence, education, experience... Now I have a question for you. What do you think is the fair remuneration of a board member who takes questions on such astronomical sums every week? 

He noted that the exact amount of compensation cannot be disclosed due to internal rules.

We have a corporate standard that we cannot disclose the amount of our compensation. Whether this is right or wrong is another matter, but we have such a restriction. And this restriction is in line with the corporate practice of similar funds and structures, such as Temasek. 

According to Zhakupov, board members are not paid extra for sitting on the boards of subsidiaries.

Regarding travel, Zhakupov confirmed that fund employees — including himself — fly business class in line with internal policies.

I fly business according to the corporate standard. This is part of our plan. As you have seen, Samruq-Qazyna's profit for the last reporting period was two trillion 400 billion tenge. Therefore, I think that we are not going beyond our budget.

He added that he does not use private jets and typically travels on commercial airlines, especially the national carrier.

Original Author: Artyom Volkov