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A grading scheme introduced by one of Uzbekistan’s largest commercial banks has drawn a formal illegality finding from the country’s official trade-union body and sparked court proceedings that employees say were conducted without them — exposing a collision between corporate performance management and the labour protections guaranteed under Uzbek law.
Staff at Kapitalbank, including a deputy chief accountant at the Sergeli branch with 27 years of banking experience and a senior internal-audit officer with a Group II disability, have complained to the editorial board of Effect.uz that the bank’s ABCD classification system is being used to cut salaries, apply psychological pressure and force employees out. The bank’s own October 2025 circular told staff the test was “neither an IQ test nor an examination” and that a “D” rating was “not a verdict but a growth point.” In practice, employees say, workers placed in the D category — a word that translates from English as “outsider” or “laggard” — had individual salary supplements and bonuses accumulated over years cancelled in a single day.
A Regulation Applied Retroactively
The ABCD test and self-assessment were administered between 27 and 29 October 2025. The bank’s new internal regulation on “Employee Assessment and Classification” was not approved until 4 November 2025 — after the assessments had already taken place — and was then applied retroactively, a practice employees describe as contrary to law. The Republic Trade Union Federation issued a formal written opinion stating that no ABCD test exists anywhere in the Labour Code of the Republic of Uzbekistan and that the bank’s conduct was unlawful.
The health consequences alleged by the complainants are severe. Following what they describe as threatening and demeaning treatment by bank consultant O. Lyndina and other responsible officials, several employees suffered acute hypertension, cardiac insufficiency and hypertensive crises, with emergency medical services called to the workplace on multiple occasions. Senior auditor Nigina Ibragimova, who holds a Group II disability certificate and was preparing for major spinal surgery, says the bank refused to recognise her official sick-leave certificates issued through the state’s my.gov.uz portal. Bank representatives are also alleged to have visited the neighbourhood civic assemblies — mahallas — at employees’ home addresses to make inquiries about who lived with them, who visited them and their moral character, conduct that employees say violates Article 31 of the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, which protects the inviolability of private life, and Article 176 of the Labour Code.
Court Hearings Held Without the Plaintiffs
Seeking redress, the employees filed claims with the Mirzo Ulugbek Inter-District Civil Court. They allege that hearings were held urgently in their absence and that of their lawyers, despite the court and the bank having been notified that the claimants were on certified sick leave. The court is further said to have disregarded electronic sick-leave certificates issued through the official my.gov.uz portal, treating the bank’s internal paper registers as the authoritative record instead. The claims were dismissed.
The employees — described as single mothers, a person with a registered disability and women with between 20 and 30 years of service — have called on the Supreme Judicial Council, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Poverty Reduction and Employment to assess the legality of what has occurred. Article 4 of the Labour Code explicitly prohibits any discrimination in employment relations. Effect.uz has stated it is awaiting an official response from Kapitalbank’s management and the officials named in the complaint before publishing their position.