The Paris kidnapping: a banker seized in the 16th arrondissement
The facts of 23 June 2025, so far as they are publicly established through French and international reporting, are these. An Uzbek banker, 48 years old, checked into…
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Batyr Rakhimov, a businessman and former president of football club Pakhtakor, was unanimously elected chairman of the Uzbekistan Tennis Federation on 17 February 2025 at an extraordinary conference held at the National Olympic Committee, replacing Alisher Mirsоatov, who departed to lead the Association of Winter Sports.
The former head of Jambay District’s ecology department has been sentenced to five years in prison for accepting an 11-million-soum computer in exchange for shelving an illegal tree-felling case and releasing an impounded truck.
Cabinet Resolution No. 585, signed on 21 October 2026, sets out a graduated financial penalty system for firms that over-abstract water or operate without contracts and permits, effective from 2027.
Uzbekistan’s road inspectorate found 5,815 violations at construction, reconstruction and repair sites in the first nine months of 2026, issuing more than 2,100 mandatory orders and forwarding 452 administrative cases to courts, even as fines for non-compliance were cut sharply under new legislation.
Joint raids by five Uzbek agencies between 19–21 October uncovered more than 120 cases of illegal gas-cylinder hoarding and above-rate resale, with state utility workers implicated in 39 cases and over 3,000 cylinders seized as evidence.
Amendments to 33 departmental instruments, registered by the Ministry of Justice on 20 October 2026, require banks, notaries, domestic airports and other bodies to accept digital versions of passports, ID cards, birth certificates and other key documents.
President Mirziyoyev has ordered officials to advance a package of infrastructure projects in Kashkadarya including a $350mn ADB-backed highway reconstruction and water supply schemes targeting 1.25 million residents.
A draft regulation published for public comment sets out the rules, principles and timelines for state accreditation of Uzbekistan’s educational institutions, with five-year cycles and the State Inspectorate for Education Quality Control as the governing authority.
Franklin Templeton’s Marius Dan says Uzbektelecom is the leading candidate for a 2027 listing as UzNIF maps out a pipeline of six portfolio IPOs, while shareholders face an 18-month wait for the fund’s first dividend payment.
Latest Investigations
View allEvery political family has members it would rather not discuss. Very few have a member whose résumé includes the alleged financing of political assassinations abroad, laundering for security-service generals, a collapsed bank, a Paris kidnapping investigation, allegations of money laundering in Spain, a €10 million bribery scheme in Turkey, alleged…
Franklin Templeton’s Marius Dan says Uzbektelecom is the leading candidate for a 2027 listing as UzNIF maps out a pipeline of six portfolio IPOs, while shareholders face an 18-month wait for the fund’s first dividend payment.
President Mirziyoyev has announced a $350 million reconstruction of 100 kilometres of the A-380 highway in Qashqadaryo, backed by a proposed ADB loan, alongside major water supply investments for the region.
President Mirziyoyev returned a payment-sector reform law to parliament, and deputies voted to drop it entirely — without debate or disclosure of which provisions he opposed.
Presidential Decree No. PQ-380 grants the newly appointed Education and Science Minister direct-hire authority for central staff until February 2027, as Uzbekistan consolidates two former ministries into one.
A Ministry of Justice regulation registered on 20 October 2026 requires banks to open dedicated accounts for businesses in insolvency, freezing ordinary debit operations and centralising fund management under court-appointed administrators.
More than 720 Tashkent apartment buildings were constructed without architectural permits, Construction Minister Sherzod Khidoyatov told parliament. The cases are under Prosecutor General oversight as authorities digitise controls and allocate 520 billion soums for residential-area improvements.
Business
More ⮞The facts of 23 June 2025, so far as they are publicly established through French and international reporting, are these. An Uzbek banker, 48 years old, checked into a hotel in Paris’s 16th arrondissement. He was, by the accounts that followed, a significant figure: the manager of an investment portfolio…
Governance & Reform
More ⮞Batyr Rakhimov, a businessman and former president of football club Pakhtakor, was unanimously elected chairman of the Uzbekistan Tennis Federation on 17 February 2025 at an extraordinary conference held at the National Olympic Committee, replacing Alisher Mirsоatov, who departed to lead the Association of Winter Sports.
Uzbekistan’s Competition Committee has approved VEON’s roughly $207 million purchase of mobile operator Perfectum on conditions including a three-year operational separation requirement and a 12-month freeze on 5G tariffs for existing subscribers.
Uzbekistan’s competition regulator has approved Veon’s purchase of all shares in Perfectum mobile operator, imposing seven conditions including a three-year independence requirement and a freeze on 5G tariffs.
Uzbekneftegaz’s petroleum depot network has posted a net profit of 25.2 billion soums in the first nine months of the year, reversing a 108.3 billion soum loss in the same period last year — the first time the depots have been in the black.
Uzbekistan has begun formal preparations to privatise the $3.42 billion Uzbekistan GTL plant, with an IPO also under consideration, but the agency leading the process could not provide current financial figures at a press conference — while a criminal trial over construction defects and a $1 billion Air Products deal add complexity to any future sale.
The ADB’s representative in Uzbekistan says the bank will prioritise semiconductor manufacturing and special economic zones over traditional infrastructure, aiming to help the doubly landlocked country offset steep export transport costs.
Wizz Air will place Uzbek-speaking staff on all its Uzbekistan flights in 2025 after the Competition Committee investigated a passenger who was refused safety information in his language and treated rudely when he asked for it.
Amendments to Uzbekistan’s Tax Code that took effect on 1 January 2018 set fines for unauthorised land use at four times the land tax for companies and three times for individuals, while leaving corporate officials simultaneously exposed to separate personal penalties.
AUGA chief Sohibjon Murodov says Big Four firms — not the agency itself — screen privatisation bidders for ties to senior officials, but key details of how those checks work remain publicly unexplained.
Batyr Rakhimov, the Uzbek businessman and former owner of the Paxtakor football club, faced sustained negative coverage in the Turkish press in June 2021 as a US-citizen claimant pursued civil and criminal proceedings in Bodrum alleging he acquired a luxury hotel through a fraudulent $47 million cheque following the suspicious death of its owner.
The Asian Development Bank will lend Uzbekistan $200 million to reconstruct 60 substations, cut transmission losses and unlock grid capacity for at least 3.3 GW of renewable energy, under a loan signed in Bangkok on 15 October.
Batyr Rakhimov, long-serving president of the Pakhtakor football club, was unanimously elected chairman of the Uzbekistan Tennis Federation on 17 February 2025 at an extraordinary conference held at the National Olympic Committee, succeeding Alisher Mirsоatov, who moved to lead the Winter Sports Association.
Senate Speaker Tanzila Norboyeva told a plenary session on 23 April 2021 that more than 301 billion soum was stolen from over 2,500 state institutions in 2020, as corruption cases among officials rose to 1,723 and irrigation fraud surged nearly tenfold.