Uzbekistan: 4352 corrupt officials were prosecuted during two years

During two years, the Prosecutor General’s Office and law enforcement agencies brought 1986 officials to justice. The most common corruption crimes are misappropriation or embezzlement of property, excess of powers, giving and receiving bribes.

In the economic sphere, corruption occurs mainly in the use of budget funds. During this period, the damage to the state budget was more than $ 35 million, more than two thousand persons were brought to criminal responsibility for these facts.

The Prosecutor General’s Office estimates losses from corruption at $ 193 million. The head of the department, Nigmatilla Yuldashev, announced the scale of the crimes at the interdepartmental meeting. He gave examples that raised questions even after a superficial analysis.

For example, the director of the specialized market of Yangiabad, a certain Ismailov, was previously convicted several times. In 2016, he received a term for excess of powers and embezzlement of funds, after which he was deprived of the right to occupy leadership positions. However, in February 2019, he was reappointed as the director of the market of Sergeli, and in April, he was transferred to lead the special market. With the help of relatives and accomplices, three large markets in Tashkent came under the control of the former criminal.

For dubious personnel decisions, as it turns out from the speech of the Prosecutor General, no one was held responsible. With indignation, he interrogated at the meeting the Director General of the Center for municipal assets management under the hokimiyat of Tashkent, Muzaffar Abdurakhmanov. From the answer, it became clear that one of the departments of the Prosecutor General’s Office was behind some of the appointments, and all personnel transfers are possible only with the approval of the mayor of the capital, Jahongir Artykhodjaev, one of the confidants of the President Mirziyoev.

Manipulating the numbers of those accused or already convicted does not affect the extent of the spread of elite corruption. The statistics include insignificant amounts of damage to the state, albeit estimated at hundreds of millions US dollars.

Nigmatilla Yuldashev called on journalists and bloggers to be active in covering corruption topics; although the opposite is observed – the suppression of civil activity by the security forces in the blogosphere. Earlier, ACCA wrote about the attempts of the State Security Service to discredit the blogger Bazarov. He appealed to the management of IMF and ADB not to provide the government of Uzbekistan with billions of loans, since there is no guarantee of their intended use.