People with direct knowledge of the matter said that top officials who cleaned up and rebuilt Kuwait's Public Institution for Social Security resigned.
The people asked to be identified before the official announcement, and asked General Meshal Al-Othman and three of his deputies, including Raed Al-Nisf, to resign from the fund. Finance ministry and fund officials didn't respond immediately to requests for comment.
In the last fiscal year, the roughly $137 billion pension fund, a quarter of the US private equity firm Stone Point Capital LLC, recorded 20.9% growth in assets.
Kuwait holds parliamentary elections on Thursday after the term of the former National Assembly was cut short because of a political deadlock that has crippled policymaking. Fiscal reforms and development have been hampered by years of squabbling between elected lawmakers and a government appointed by the ruling Al-Sabah family.
One of the people said the officials of the fund resigned under pressure from the political opposition of Kuwait. The opposition has been calling for the government to remove officials from state bodies that are deemed to be associated with the former leadership, regardless of performance or merit.
The fund performed so well that the former parliament approved a law to distribute a one-time special dividend of $10,000 to every Kuwaiti retiree earlier this year, under the directives of Crown Prince Sheikh Mishaal Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah.
In 2017 a new management team, which included the officials that resigned, was brought in to overhaul the state-owned institution after its former head was found guilty of personally profiting from the organization over decades.
PIFSS, as the fund is known, also owns 25% of Oak Hill Advisors and 10% of TowerBrook Capital Partners LP.
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