Moldovan businessman Anatolie Stati’s spokeswoman said on January 9 that Stati will ask bailiffs to sell a $5.2bn stake in the Kashagan oil field owned by Kazakh sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna if Kazakhstan fails to pay a $500mn arbitration award.

The statement came following Amsterdam District Court’s decision to uphold a Samruk-Kazyna asset freeze. The wealth fund holds half of Kazakhstan’s 16.88% Kashagan stake through a Dutch company. Samruk-Kazyna said the freeze had no effect on the day-to-day management of its Kashagan stake “save for payment of dividends to Samruk-Kazyna”. Kashagan’s operations are crucial for Kazakhstan’s oil-export dependent economy, which enjoyed some recovery in 2017 thanks to the relaunch of Kashagan at end-2016.

The fund also referred to all necessary arrangements to protect its interest in accordance with the applicable procedure and said it would "continue to vigorously defend its rights".

Kashagan is Kazakhstan's largest oil field and is operated by Eni, Total, Shell , ExxonMobil, Kazakh state firm KazMunayGaz , China’s CNPC and Japan’s Inpex.

“We will aggressively pursue enforcement in all relevant jurisdictions until the Republic of Kazakhstan complies with its treaty commitment to the award,” Stati's spokeswoman said.

Earlier, Bank of New York Mellon froze $22.6bn in assets owned by Kazakhstan's National Fund, another sovereign wealth fund, as part of the ongoing legal battle between Statis and the Kazakh government.

Stati is trying to recover money he invested in two companies holding operating licences for natural gas fields Borankol and Tolkyn in Kazakhstan and in developing a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) plant. He has claimed his firms in Kazakhstan were nationalised with incomplete compensation and that he, his son and other businessmen were subjected to substantial harassment from the Kazakh state, with the ultimate aim of forcing them to sell their investments cheaply.

In 2010, Stati asked for supplementary compensation under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), an organisation Kazakhstan has been a member of since 1998. The ECT’s Arbitral Tribunal issued its final decision in 2013, ruling that Stati was entitled to $500mn worth of compensation. The Kazakh authorities have denied the allegations and refused to pay supplementary compensation.