Management of Foreign Investments Slammed

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The management of the state's overseas investments portfolio has been severely criticised in two reports prepared by the Kuwait Audit Bureau and the national assembly's finance and economy committee. The reports, drawn up in the light of the collapse of Grupo Torras in Spain, charged former employees at the London-based Kuwait Investment Office (KIO) with embezzlement and failure to provide the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) with data and information. Since August 1990, the KIO-administered fund for future generations has been reduced by about half to an estimated $40,000 million, while the general reserve fund is believed by some local economists to have moved into the red. The drop has been mostly attributed to …