An unidentified investor has acquired a 30% stake in Forum Muider Limited — the holding company that owns Bogatyr Komir, Kazakhstan’s largest coal producer — through a new share issuance that simultaneously diluted the stakes of both existing shareholders, state energy holding Samruk-Energo and Russian aluminium giant Rusal, raising transparency concerns about the privatisation of a strategically significant national asset.
According to Samruk-Energo’s 2025 financial statements, Forum Muider Limited issued and placed 7,779 new shares in favour of the new investor in the course of 2025. As a result, from 24 September 2025, the stakes of both Samruk-Energo and Rusal’s Miradore Enterprises Limited were reduced from 50% to 35% each, with the new investor holding the remaining 30%. Data from adata.kz identifies the third shareholder as a non-resident entity called Primet LLC.
Samruk-Energo’s exit from the structure is now imminent. On 30 December 2025, the national company signed an agreement to sell its remaining 35% stake to the same investor, subject to a number of conditions precedent including the signing of an undertaking agreement on the mechanism for declaring and paying historical dividends owed to both Samruk-Energo and Miradore at the level of both Bogatyr Komir and Forum Muider. The company’s management expects all conditions to be met and the transaction to close in 2026. Samruk-Energo had already classified the investment as an asset held for sale at year-end, valued at 77.1 billion tenge on its balance sheet, while recognising an impairment and disposal loss of 15.7 billion tenge during 2025.
The identity of the beneficial owner behind Primet LLC has not been publicly disclosed, prompting questions about whether the privatisation of Samruk-Energo’s stake in Kazakhstan’s largest coal enterprise is proceeding with adequate transparency.
Bogatyr Komir is a major contributor to Kazakhstan’s energy system. Its Bogatyr and Severny open-pit mines in Ekibastuz produced 45.3 million tonnes of coal in 2025 — a 6% increase on 2024 output of 42.7 million tonnes — supplying coal-fired power plants in Astana, Pavlodar, Petropavlovsk, Stepnogorsk, Almaty and Karaganda. The company raised its Ekibastuz coal prices by 30% last year and is planning a further 20% increase in July 2026. A cyclical-flow extraction technology upgrade at the Bogatyr mine is also planned, which is expected to significantly improve profitability.
The ownership restructuring follows a broader corporate reorganisation in which Forum Muider B.V., previously registered in the Netherlands, was merged into Forum Muider Limited — a company registered in Cyprus in 2023 — which then relocated to the Astana International Financial Centre jurisdiction in late October 2025.
