Uzbekistan: Gulnara Karimova was deprived of liberty until 2028
On March 18, the last criminal trial of the criminal case of Gulnara Karimova and her closest associates, called the prosecution “members of an organized criminal group”, was held at the City Criminal Court in Tashkent.
According to the press service of the Supreme Court, she “was found guilty of organizing a criminal group, fraud, embezzlement, legalization of proceeds from criminal activity and the commission of other crimes”.
The process began in January of this year and ended in a closed court session in secrecy. All participants in the process gave a non-disclosure subscription. Therefore, the details of the sentence according to which she was deprived of her liberty for 13 years and 4 months with the calculation of the term of serving her sentence from August 21, 2015, are unknown. Other persons, involved in the case, were also sentenced to long term.
Gulnara has repeatedly claimed that she returned all the money from corruption deals. In the appeal to the President Mirziyoev, published by her daughter Iman on a social network, she stated her readiness to renounce claims for $686 million frozen in Switzerland in exchange for ending the criminal prosecution. It says, “For the sake of family and health, under the right conditions, I’m ready to abandon any claims for money, the only ones our family has, frozen in Switzerland, with the adoption of a “simplified procedure for closing the case”, that is, without a public court, with a transfer of 686 million US dollars in favor of the state.”
The Ministry of Justice of Uzbekistan has denied allegations that Gulnara Karimova personally returned assets to Uzbekistan. “Such conclusions, formulated by the lawyers of convict, have no legal basis and are not true. The agency is working on a return of assets worth more than $1.3 billion,” the statement said.
The verdict itself looks doubtful from the point of view of the law, because it was not announced publicly. The court simply neglected the article 26 of the Constitution of Uzbekistan, “Everyone accused of committing a crime is presumed innocent until he/she is found guilty by law, through a public trial, in which he/she is provided with all opportunities for protection.” In a situation of secret conviction, probably no one will know the specific guilt of Gulnara Karimova, nor the scale of the criminal activity.
The population reacted sluggishly to the demonstrative neglect of the Basic Law, more worried about the problems of the spread of coronavirus in the country. In social networks, users initially did not doubt the verdict, and the news of the harsh sentence was not a surprise.
The President of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, Nadejda Atayeva, in her commentary to ACCA, expressed an opinion concerning the court decision. “How could someone imagine 8-10 years ago that the eldest daughter of one of the worst dictators of the world would be repeatedly sentenced for fraud and other criminal offenses,” the human rights activist asks. “The fact of the lack of a transparent trial raises even more questions for the new government and Shavkat Mirziyoev, and the irony about the activity of the daughters, sons-in-law and other relatives of the “first family”.
Uzbekistan’s activists, in fact, were indifferent to the punishment of Gulnara Karimova. Before the final court hearing, an appeal was made by nine people, five of them were political emigrants. They called on the Swiss authorities not just in words, but in fact to fulfill their obligations to ensure transparency in the process of transferring assets to their countries of origin, which includes transparency in the negotiations with the Uzbek side.”
