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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The Ministry of Construction has corrected its own minister’s parliamentary testimony, saying Tashkent has 61 illegal apartment blocks, not 720-plus — but the revised total across all unauthorised structures is itself smaller than the original apartment-only figure, a discrepancy the ministry left unexplained.
President Mirziyoyev visited Sulton Tex Group’s new $54 million Kashkadarya factory on 21 October and ordered the National Bank to prepare financing to double the cluster’s capacity, as its founder pledged 30,000 new jobs by 2028 and $150 million in annual exports.
Uzbekistan’s Competition Committee is investigating claims that pharmaceutical importers and wholesale distributors are forcing pharmacies to buy unwanted medicines alongside high-demand drugs, a practice that may breach competition law and expose offenders to fines of up to five percent of relevant revenues.
Uzbek economists Otabek Bakirov and Murod Muhammadjonov have challenged four tax proposals—cashback abolition, expanded product marking, social-tax exemptions and a carbon levy—arguing each lacks the independent cost-benefit analysis needed to justify it.
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.
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View allJoint 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.
Every 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.
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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…
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.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has announced a new Investors’ Council for the fuel and energy sector, to be led by Saida Mirziyoyeva, head of the Presidential Administration, after international energy companies cited persistent bureaucratic obstacles to project delivery.
Uzbekistan has quietly built one of Central Asia’s largest rosters of naturalized Russian athletes, spanning rowing, tennis, figure skating, swimming and fencing. The strategy delivers medals but raises hard questions about what it costs domestic talent and the sports budgets meant to develop it.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has signed two grant agreements totaling USD 1.1 million with Azerbaijan to fund early-stage feasibility work on the Caspian Green Energy Corridor, a cross-border project that would connect Uzbekistan’s power grid to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan through a proposed 400-kilometre submarine electricity cable.
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.
Turkmengaz has halted natural gas deliveries to Russia’s Gazprom following a breakdown in price negotiations, ending a five-year supply arrangement that had delivered 5.5 billion cubic metres annually. The head of the Turkmen state concern says commercial talks are continuing, while Ashgabat simultaneously pursues a fourth pipeline branch toward China.
The Competition Committee reviewed 878 draft regulatory acts submitted through the government’s unified legislative portal in 2025 and found that 425 — nearly half — contained provisions contradicting competition law. The rate was highest for Presidential-level acts, where 147 of 239 drafts, or 61.5%, were flagged.
The Migration Agency under the Cabinet of Ministers has urged Uzbek citizens engaged in temporary labor activity in Russia to regularize their legal status no later than September 10, 2025, following a decree by the President of the Russian Federation extending the original deadline.
An expanded presidential meeting on October 27 set a GDP target of $135 billion and ordered a new budget monitoring system for 22 ministries and local administrations, as the economy grew 7.6% in the first nine months of the year — well ahead of forecast.