So, the country's president,
Nazarbaev, kept the funds abroad "for use in the event of either an
economic crisis or a threat to Kazakhstan's security".
The money was used to pay off pension arrears in 1997 and to offset
the pernicious effects of the 1998 devaluation of the Russian ruble.
What was left was duly transferred to the $1.5 billion National
Fund, the PM insisted. Alas, the original money in the Fund came
entirely from another sale of oil assets to Chevron, thus casting in
doubt the official version.
The National Fund was, indeed, augmented by a transfer or two from
the slush fund - but at least one of these transfers occurred only
11 days after the damning revelations. Moreover, despite
incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the unfazed premier
denied that his president possesses multi-million dollar bank
accounts abroad.
He later rescinded this last bit of disinformation. The president,
he said, has no bank accounts abroad but will promptly return all
the money in these non-existent accounts to Kazakhstan. These
vehemently denied accounts, he speculated, were set up by the
president's adversaries "for the purpose of compromising his name".
On April 15, even the docile opposition had enough of this fuzzy
logic. They established a People Oil's Fund to monitor, henceforth,
the regime's financial shenanigans.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25