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The head of a catering company that fed children at a boarding school and kindergartens in Khorezm region has been convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to two years of corrective labour, after a court found he systematically inflated meal costs to extract more than 445 million soums in excess payments from public funds.
The Gurlan district criminal court handed down its verdict on 2 October 2026, finding the director of LLC Tayorlov guilty under paragraph (a), part three of Article 167 of the Criminal Code — embezzlement or misappropriation on an especially large scale. He will serve the sentence at his place of work, with 20 percent of his earnings withheld monthly in favour of the state.
How the Scheme Worked
Tayorlov held outsourcing contracts to provide meals at Specialised Boarding School No. 43 in Gurlan district and at preschool institutions in Shavat district. Between 2023 and 2025, the company’s reporting consistently overstated the per-child daily meal cost at the boarding school. In 2024, the approved daily rate ranged from 29,600 to 32,300 soums per child; certain submitted reports recorded figures as high as 56,600 soums. The court calculated that this inflation generated 268.2 million soums in unjustified payments.
A further 177.1 million soums in overcharging was established for the Shavat kindergartens, where the company inflated ingredient prices in menus and payment documents during 2024 and 2025. The court also noted a methodological error in the initial audit: inspectors had compared the company’s charges against prices from a 2022 contract without accounting for subsequent food-price increases. After recalculating against officially approved regional average prices, the kindergarten overcharge figure settled at 177.1 million soums.
A Larger Charge That Did Not Hold
Prosecutors had also sought to hold the director liable for an additional 699.7 million soums, alleging that investment obligations to the kindergartens — covering kitchen equipment, furniture and building repairs — had never been fulfilled. The defendant contested this charge, arguing that the spending had taken place and that the original auditors had simply failed to visit the facilities or examine supporting documents. One of those auditors acknowledged in court that the initial report had been compiled without an on-site inspection.
A court-ordered re-audit confirmed that the investment commitments had in fact been met. The court found no criminal offence on that count and removed it from the indictment. The 699.7 million soums that had been deposited as security was ordered returned to the defendant and his company.
The defendant admitted guilt on the two proven episodes and told the court he had already made full restitution. The court took that repayment into account, along with his family circumstances and the absence of any outstanding civil claim from the injured institutions, when settling on the corrective-labour sentence rather than a custodial term.