Fifth criminal case was opened against Gulnara Karimova
The daughter of Gulnara, Iman, posted this information on her page on Instagram. Trying to secure her mother’s release, in September, she assured that she would “start publishing full information about the politically motivated case against Gulnara Karimova”.
The Uzbek authorities responded to this pressure with new investigative actions. On December 6, the Prosecutor General’s office issued a statement stating that “there were reports from international structures and citizens about new crimes of G. Karimova that were not covered by previous investigations. This served as the basis for initiating a new criminal case due to newly discovered circumstances”.
The statement also notes that the Prosecutor General’s office and the Ministry of Justice of Uzbekistan are working together with the United States, Switzerland, France, Russia and Latvia on the issue of returning criminally acquired proceeds worth more than $1.3 billion. Criminal cases in foreign countries are also being investigated on these facts.
In the framework of the new criminal case under investigation, the amount of alleged damage amounts to more than $174 million. Gulnara Karimova has been charged with crimes related to extortion, embezzlement, conclusion of a transaction contrary to the interests of the Republic of Uzbekistan and organization of a criminal community, according to the relevant articles of the Criminal Code.
The ACCA previously reported that in the autumn, the District Criminal Court of Yashnabad in Tashkent applied a preventive measure to the daughter of the former president of the country in the form of detention.
According to observers in Uzbekistan, all this is due to unsatisfactory backstage negotiations of official Tashkent with international partners. Gulnara, with unnamed like-minded people, persists in bidding for the return of part of the Swiss assets worth 800 million francs acquired in the course of corruption by the daughter of former President Karimov, although she had previously stated that she had given everything. A new criminal case, the details of which are still unknown, may force Gulnara to become more compliant.
