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…
Read the full investigation
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.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced on 16 October the creation of an Investors’ Council for the fuel and energy sector, placing his daughter and Head of the Presidential Administration, Saida Mirziyoyeva, at its helm. The president cited bureaucracy and corruption as the explicit reasons for the new body.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced on October 16 that Saida Mirziyoyeva will chair a newly created energy sector investors council, established in direct response to complaints from major international energy companies about land allocation delays, grid connection bottlenecks and slow issuance of technical specifications.
British Ambassador Timothy Smart is departing Tashkent after three years, leaving behind a bilateral trade relationship that expanded nearly eightfold, a new international commercial court in the works, and deepened security ties — with a high-level Uzbek delegation to London still to come.
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.
Uzbekistan’s Deputy Minister of Investments, Industry and Trade Shohrukh Gulyamov held a series of bilateral meetings with major UAE companies in Abu Dhabi, advancing project frameworks for water treatment in New Tashkent, logistics digitalisation, gas transportation financing and urban development.
Saida Mirziyoyeva, Head of the Presidential Administration, met Henderson Land Group Chairman Peter Lee on October 16 to discuss potential joint projects in renewable energy, New Tashkent infrastructure and education, as Tashkent seeks to deepen investment ties with Hong Kong’s largest holding companies.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has announced the creation of an Investors’ Council for the fuel and energy sector, appointing Saida Mirziyoyeva, head of the Presidential Administration, to lead the body. The council is designed to resolve persistent administrative bottlenecks — from land allocation to grid connections — that have slowed major energy infrastructure projects.
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.
Six energy agreements worth US$4.7 billion were signed at an investor dialogue chaired by President Mirziyoyev, adding 3,000 MW of generation and 400 MW of storage capacity. A new Investors’ Council will be chaired by Presidential Administration head Saida Mirziyoyeva, while tenders for a further 2,200 MW of solar and wind capacity are imminent.
The number of people living in acute multidimensional poverty has reached 1.2 billion — a rise of 51.5 million and the first increase recorded since the Global MPI was launched in 2010. A new UNDP and Oxford University report finds that more than half of those affected are children, and that regional neighbour Tajikistan is among the few countries to have cut both poverty rates and total numbers of deprived people.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited Tashkent on 17 October 2026, meeting President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov. Beijing pledged to increase imports of Uzbek products, reaffirmed commitment to the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, and identified energy, artificial intelligence and modern agriculture as priority areas for expanded cooperation.
The State Assets Management Agency has confirmed the cancellation of oil-field licenses held by Sanoat Energetika Guruhi and the termination of the $100 million Fergana Oil Refinery sale, as the company’s financial collapse leaves nearly 39,000 workers owed $131 million in wages.