Courts & Justice
Closed trials have opened in Tashkent against former MIA deputy minister Bekmurod Abdullayev and 29 co-defendants, ex-State Asset Management Agency head Akmal Ortikov, and former SGB internal-security chief Alijon Ashurov, on charges of embezzlement, abuse of office and bribery totalling hundreds of billions of soums.
A visually impaired Tashkent resident was denied a routine power of attorney on July 24 because a 2019 Ministry of Justice regulation prohibits the facsimile signatures that national disability law explicitly authorises. The Tashkent City Department of Justice defended the refusal, citing a Cabinet of Ministers resolution that requires a specialist of a profession that does not officially exist.
The Akaltyn District Criminal Court has sentenced six people — including the teahouse manager and staff from an unlicensed gas-filling station — over a December 2025 explosion that killed six cooks at the Bek teahouse in Gulistan. The court also ordered the seizure of real estate and vehicles worth 8.7 billion soums.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed legislation imposing life imprisonment for sexual violence against children under 14, as the government simultaneously announced a 30% rise in heating tariffs, dismissed the defense minister, reshuffled four Tashkent district governors, and arrested a deputy district governor for a $25,000 bribe.
A regional round table convened in Tashkent on 29 November 2022 brought together police, prosecutors and legal educators from four Central Asian countries to examine how corruption and institutional shortcomings obstruct the protection of women and girls from violence.
A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to resume the Diversity Visa lottery, setting a registration window opening no later than November 1 and results by December 3, after a legal challenge by immigration law firm Red Eagle Law.
The Akaltyn District Criminal Court sentenced six people on 21 September 2026 over a gas cylinder explosion at the Bek teahouse in Gulistan that killed six cooks and injured dozens on 2 December 2025. The blast was traced to an outdated, uninspected cylinder filled at an unlicensed station the day before.
A new Uzbek law imposes prison terms of three to eight years for unlawfully detaining or investigating individuals protected by immunity, covering parliamentarians, judges, lawyers and senior presidential officials, while barring inadmissible evidence and requiring presidential consent for prosecutions.
Javlon Yunusov, named as the prime suspect in the October shooting targeting presidential insider Komil Allamjonov, has been arrested in South Korea on an Interpol red notice — but extradition is reported to be stalled. The investigation has exposed a web of connections spanning Uzbekistan’s pharmaceutical sector, a Chechen-linked criminal network active in Turkey, and the informal use of privileged government licence plates.
The UFA Ethics Committee has imposed lifetime bans on three match officials and Kokand-1912’s sports director after finding they conspired to fix two Pro League matches in 2023.
Uzbekistan’s National Agency for Prospective Projects has fined Binance 102 million soums for operating without a licence and breaching anti-money-laundering and crypto-asset rules, marking an early enforcement test of the country’s 2023 digital-asset framework.
Subscribe to Updates
Get the latest news and updates about Uzbekistan and the world directly to your inbox.
