Samruk-Kazyna's boards share a small pool of directors, company pages show

Samruk-Kazyna, Kazakhstan's sovereign wealth fund, fills the boards of its largest subsidiaries from a small pool of people. The fund's own board page and the board pages of Air Astana, KazMunayGas (KMG), Kazatomprom and KEGOC show six fund executives or representatives holding 11 non-executive, non-independent seats across the four companies, and two independent directors each sitting on two of the boards.

A common template

Each of the four boards combines Samruk-Kazyna nominees, independent directors and a chief executive. Air Astana has nine seats: three nominees, five independents and the chief executive (company page). KMG lists eight: three representatives, four independents and the chief executive (company page). Kazatomprom lists six: two fund managers, three independents, including the chairman, and the chief executive (company page). KEGOC, the grid operator, lists three representatives and three independents, one of them a senior independent director, plus the chairman of its management board (company page). Independents hold between three and five seats on each board by this count. Air Astana's code sets a floor of one third of the board for independents (clause 3.8), a mark each of the four lists clears.

Who sits where

Nurlan Zhakupov, the fund's chief executive, chairs KMG, KEGOC and Air Astana, according to the three company pages. Bakhytzhan Taubayev, a fund managing director, sits on the same three boards. Aidar Ryskulov, also a managing director at the fund, sits on the Kazatomprom and Air Astana boards. Taubayev joined the Air Astana board in February after BAE Systems (Kazakhstan) Limited sold a significant shareholding and its representative, Simon Wood, planned to resign, according to the airline's 2025 integrated report. Air Astana's page also lists Ryskulov as a director of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy and Taubayev as a director of QazaqGaz (Air Astana board page).

Two independents recur. Arman Argingazin chairs the Kazatomprom board and is an independent director of KMG, where he chairs the strategy and portfolio management committee. Armanbay Jubaev is an independent director of Kazatomprom and, according to its page, of KMG, whose own board page lists an Armanbai Zhubayev as an independent director. Jubaev's Kazatomprom biography also lists seats at Tau-Ken Samruk and Samruk-Energo, making four boards in all.

Rules differ by company. Kazatomprom's page says its directors may not sit on the boards of more than four legal entities or chair more than two (Kazatomprom board page). Zhakupov is not a Kazatomprom director, and the pages reviewed do not say what limit, if any, applies at the fund or at the companies he chairs. Air Astana's code lets the board chairman sit on the nomination and remuneration committee but not chair it (clause 7.5), while Kazatomprom's page lists Argingazin, its chairman, as chair of that committee, the audit committee and the production safety committee.

The fund's own board

The fund's board page lists 11 members (board page). Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov is chairman. The others are Zhakupov, an adviser and an assistant to the President, Erbolat Dosaev, whose role the page does not give, five independent directors (Wong Heang Fine, Bolat Zhamishev, Luca Sutera, Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi and Jon Dudas) and SKAI, Samruk-Kazyna Artificial Intelligence.

The government's report of 17 October 2025 on a board meeting described SKAI as an independent digital board member with voting rights, built on the Kazakh-language model Alem LLM, with all board documents since 2008 uploaded to it and its data held on a Kazakhtelecom GPU cluster in Kazakhstan (prime minister's website). The fund's page lists SKAI as a member without the "Independent Director" label carried by the five human independents. The sources reviewed do not describe SKAI's legal status or how its votes are recorded.

At a board meeting reported on 27 August, Bektenov chaired a review of January to July results and measures to support domestic producers, and issued instructions on investment project timing and procurement, according to the prime minister's office.