British authorities seize property controlled by Gulnara Karimova

The British High Court approved the decision by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to seize property belonging to Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Islam Karimov, the first president of Uzbekistan.

What happened? The U.K. SFO has seized three luxury properties owned by Gulnara Karimova.

«We unpicked a complex financial trail, involving multiple offshore accounts and companies, to take control of these properties today,» said SFO Director Lisa Osofsky.

What was confiscated? The authorities seized two apartments in Belgravia and a mansion in Surrey, which were valued at $25 million.

What has the SFO found? According to the agency, Karimova received hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from telecommunications companies between 2004 and 2012 in exchange for helping them gain access to the Uzbek market.

According to Uzbek media, in July 2022 a court in Switzerland satisfied a complaint filed by the lawyers of Karimova, who was accused of corruption. Thanks to this decision, Karimova is expected to recover $303 million out of her frozen funds.

In February 2022, Switzerland and Uzbekistan agreed to establish a new multi-donor trust fund under supervision by the UN. The core task of the fund is to facilitate recovering assets that were seized within the investigation process.

In August 2015, Karimova was convicted of extortion and tax evasion. On December 18, 2017, she was sentenced to an additional ten years in prison. On March 18, 2022, a court, which examined another case against Karimova increased her prison term to thirteen years and four months.

According to multiple media reports, Uzbekistan is closely cooperating with law enforcement agencies in the U.S., Switzerland, France, Russia and Latvia as the country wants to recover more than $1.3 billion Karimova illegally withdrew from Uzbekistan.