Switzerland is set to transfer approximately $182 million of confiscated assets previously owned by Gulnara Karimova, the convicted elder daughter of the late President Islam Karimov, back to the people of Uzbekistan.
The corresponding agreement was signed between Uzbekistan’s Justice Minister Akbar Tashkulov and Swiss Ambassador to Uzbekistan Konstantine Obolenskiy, as reported by the Ministry of Justice’s press service.
«Under this agreement, Uzbekistan will recover about $182 million. The statement read that these funds were illegally obtained by certain citizens of the Republic of Uzbekistan and confiscated in 2012 as part of the criminal case initiated against Karimova by the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland,» the statement read.
The ministry noted that the assets will be recovered through the multilateral trust fund Uzbekistan Vision 2030. Established in 2022, this fund operates under the U.N. to recover assets owned by Karimova and seized during the criminal investigation in Switzerland.
According to the Interfax news agency, Uzbekistan and Switzerland had already signed a similar agreement in August 2024, allowing the Central Asian country to recover $131 million. In total, the reclaimed assets now amount to $313 million. Uzbekistan intends to use this money to finance socially significant projects in various sectors, including health care and education.
Karimova was jailed in August 2015 on charges of extortion and tax evasion. In December 2017, she was sentenced to a 10-year prison term in connection with another criminal case. In March 2020, the Tashkent city court increased her sentence to 13 years and 4 months in a new case related to organized criminal activities, extortion and embezzlement.
The General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Uzbekistan announced that, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, it is negotiating with the U.S., Switzerland, France, Russia and Latvia to recover approximately $1.3 billion in assets that Karimova illegally withdrew from the country. Some of these countries are also conducting criminal investigations into the matter.
In December 2017, the U.S. Department of the Treasury added Karimova to the sanctions list under the Global Magnitsky Act of 2016. At the time, the agency stated that Karimova was the leader of a powerful criminal syndicate engaged in business takeovers, market monopolization, bribery and extortion.
