Uzbekistan's First Daughter Is Accused of Pocketing $1 Billion From Telecoms

Uzbekistan’s First Daughter Is Accused of Pocketing $1 Billion From Telecoms

The investigative journalist-led Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reported this week that Gulnara Karimova -- the daughter of Uzbekistan’s leader, Islam Karimov -- has accepted more than $1 billion from Scandinavian and Russian telecommunications companies seeking a share of the mobile-phone industry.

Gulnara Karimova at the Fashion Week in Moscow in 2011. (AP / Mikhail Metzel)

The investigative journalist-led Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reported this week that Gulnara Karimova — the daughter of Uzbekistan’s leader, Islam Karimov — has accepted more than $1 billion from Scandinavian and Russian telecommunications companies seeking a share of the mobile-phone industry.

The Guardian reports:

Occrp described her schemes as “audacious” accusing them of diverting money from Uzbekistan’s national coffers in to banks, an offshore hedge fund and luxurious real estatearound the world.”

The investigators accuse Karimova of demanding percentages of companies and extorting cash for her “personal services and lobbying efforts”.

Karimova “demonstrated a ruthless ability to acquire a share of ownership (her preferred rate was 26%) of lucrative telecom-related companies — without actually putting up any money,” they said.