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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Anorbank shareholder Kakhramon Olimov has publicly denied Uzbek kidnapping charges, saying he was the victim of a Paris abduction in June 2025 — not its perpetrator — as a French investigation leads to seven suspects and an Interpol red notice quietly disappears.
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.
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View allUzbekistan’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.
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.
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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…
Average monthly electricity consumption per household fell from 212 kWh in 2023 to 184 kWh in 2025, while gas use dropped from 431 to 342 cubic metres over the same period, the Ministry of Economy and Finance reported on October 14.
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.
Household liquefied gas prices are proposed to more than double to 5,000 soums per kilogram from November 1, 2026, under a plan that would also introduce a targeted 158 billion soum compensation scheme to shield families on the Social Protection Register from the full impact of the increase.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has expressed support for Chinese proposals to build a logistics hub in Andijan and develop agrivoltaics projects, following talks with the heads of CAMCE, China Energy and Sinoma Energy on the sidelines of the Council of Foreign Investors in the Fuel and Energy Sector.
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.
President Mirziyoyev has ordered a new Investors’ Council for the fuel and energy sector, chaired by Presidential Administration head Saida Mirziyoyeva, after companies including Acwa Power, EDF and Voltalia called for a standing mechanism to resolve land, grid and permitting delays.
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.
President Mirziyoyev has created an Investors’ Council for the fuel and energy sector, chaired by Presidential Administration head Saida Mirziyoyeva, citing bureaucracy and corruption as the forces compelling the decision.
Representatives of non-governmental organizations from all 14 regions of Uzbekistan have completed a structured training program on public oversight, open data analysis, and anti-corruption legislative review, under a project jointly implemented by the Anti-Corruption Agency and international partners from Latvia and Kyrgyzstan.
Tashkent’s city council has approved a concept to buy 14 five-car trains for the metro, with seven international manufacturers assessed and only China’s CRRC and Russia’s Global Transport Solutions submitting commercial proposals.
IPU President Tulia Ackson told young parliamentarians gathered in Samarkand that they must use legislative tools, budget decisions, and parliamentary oversight to demand accountability for human rights violations, warning that armed conflicts have reached their highest level since World War II.
The EU’s 21st Russia sanctions package targets two Kazakhstani firms, three Kyrgyz companies, a Kyrgyz bank connected to Russia’s SWIFT alternative, and 14 cryptocurrency platforms, as Brussels escalates pressure on Central Asian trade and financial channels.