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A cassation court has overturned an earlier verdict against the director and food technologist of a Fergana catering company implicated in the mass poisoning of more than 100 children, issuing stiffer sentences after finding the original judgment inadequate. The case has also renewed scrutiny of why regional authorities failed to act on a formal anti-corruption finding made more than two years before the poisoning occurred.
What the Anti-Corruption Agency Found — and What Followed
In July 2024, the Anti-Corruption Agency identified a series of violations in the organisation of school meals at pre-school education institutions across Fergana region. Specifically, the agency found that public procurement legislation had been breached in the selection of a food supplier. Despite that finding, neither the regional governor nor the regional prosecutor placed the matter under proper oversight. The company at the centre of the violations, Garden Catering Trade LLC, continued operating without interruption.
The consequences proved severe. More than 100 children subsequently suffered mass food poisoning, an incident that triggered a criminal case. The Furqat district court issued a verdict on 21 September 2026, but the cassation instance has now set that ruling aside — at least in the part concerning the company’s director, Shavkat Turdialiyev, and its food technologist, Rasuljon Alimov — and replaced it with a new sentence.
New Sentences and Unanswered Questions
Under the cassation ruling, Turdialiyev has been sentenced to four years’ deprivation of liberty, while Alimov received three years and six months. The revised sentences are more severe than those handed down at district level, though the precise original terms were not disclosed in the available record.
The episode raises pointed questions about institutional accountability that the courts have not addressed. The Anti-Corruption Agency’s 2024 finding was a formal, documented warning that procurement rules had been broken in the very supply chain that later poisoned children. The regional governor and regional prosecutor, the two officials with the clearest supervisory mandate, took no recorded action. The catering company’s uninterrupted operation in the intervening period sits at the heart of the case against them — and, implicitly, against the oversight system that allowed it.