Uzbekistan: 459 officials are being held liable for corruption
Security agencies, through press releases from the Prosecutor General’s Office, reported on the institution of criminal cases against corrupt officials at the regional level. In the first half of the year, 459 officials were brought to justice in 327 criminal cases, reported the press service of the department. For the same period in 2019, 537 persons were brought to justice in 397 criminal cases.
Of the total number, 4 officials are employees of the republican level, 13 of regional, and 442 of district or city levels. The officials were charged with embezzlement, extortion, bribery, abuse of office, official forgery, negligence, and other crimes. Another wave of arrests of corrupt officials again showed that only minor officials are suspected of committing crimes. There is no information on the counteracting of elite corruption.
Due to the crimes committed by corrupt officials in the first half of 2020, the state suffered damage in the amount of 172.26 billion soums ($ 16.8 million), of which 114.267 billion soums ($ 11.1 million) or 66% were returned.
Local mass media regularly report on the successes in the fight against grassroots corruption of the employees of the State Security Service. The Uzbekistan 24 TV channel reported on the detention of an employee of the Bektemir district administration of the capital when receiving $ 4,000 for registration of land, an associate professor of the Samarkand Institute of Economics and Service – $ 10,000, a doctor of a polyclinic in the Urgut district of the Samarkand region – $ 18,000, a deputy dean and an employee of the Nukus State Pedagogical Institute – $ 3,000 and $ 8000, a lecturer at Bukhara State University – $ 4000.
Earlier, ACCA posted about the bribe received by the head of the administration department of the Chilanzar district of Tashkent. Then the Prosecutor General’s Office announced the detention of his accomplice, the deputy head of the capital construction department of Tashkent.
At the same time, the case of the destruction of the Sardob reservoir is not solved, the construction was worth $ 404 million. High-ranking officials from the circle of President Mirziyoyev are directly related to the emergence of the hydroelectric construction. Therefore, the citizens of the country were amused and not surprised by the interrogations about fish farms in the reservoir. During the investigation, the State Security officers asked the specialists quite seriously: could the breeding of these catfish cause the dam to collapse?
