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Travellers arriving at Tashkent International Airport with newly purchased foreign smartphones are having their devices held by customs officers after Uzbekistan’s State Customs Committee suspended the clearance of imported mobile phones pending resolution of what it describes as growing irregularities in IMEI identification. The committee’s press secretary, Husan Tangriyev, announced the suspension on the evening of 10 November, saying it would remain in force until unspecified questions about verifying device identifiers and confirming lawful importation had been resolved.
Tangriyev said officers had detected a rise in sophisticated schemes to exploit duty-free import allowances, including falsifying IMEI codes, using identifiers belonging to other devices, and transferring one device’s registration data to another to legitimise a separate handset. He said verifying authenticity requires specialist knowledge: officers must confirm that IMEI1 and IMEI2 belong to the same unit and check whether those identifiers have previously been registered on mobile networks.
Since the start of 2026, staff at the Tashkent-Aero specialised customs complex have uncovered 185 cases of unlawful mobile-device importation involving 1,185 devices with a combined declared value of 8.8 billion soums, Tangriyev said. He added that coordinating with other state bodies was necessary to resolve the issues consistently and on a sound legal basis, and that procedures for checking and clearing devices would be clarified shortly.
Devices Held, Not Banned — But No Timeline Given
Tangriyev was explicit that no outright ban on bringing in phones had been imposed. Devices are being retained under an official act, he said, and will be cleared and returned to their owners once the suspension is lifted. He gave no date for when normal processing would resume, and the committee had not answered follow-up questions about the legal basis for the suspension, the maximum retention period, or whether passengers could retrieve their phones before verification is complete.
The suspension applies only to new smartphones being imported for the first time and to devices whose IMEI numbers have not previously been registered on Uzbek mobile networks. Tourists are exempt.
Allegations of Unofficial Fast-Track Fees
Social-media reports that began circulating on 6 November — before the committee’s statement — alleged that scrutiny of devices had intensified and that passengers were being offered expedited clearance for a fee. Travellers claimed that clearing an iPhone 18 Pro Max, which previously cost roughly $150, now required either leaving the device for an examination that could last up to 30 days or paying close to $450 for same-day processing. Depending on the model, passengers alleged, the cost of such accelerated clearance ranged from $400 to $1,100.
The Customs Committee denied that any additional charges for expedited processing had been introduced, but did not separately explain the origin of the figures cited by passengers or the grounds for conducting examinations. The committee urged the public to disregard unverified social-media reports and rely on official sources, and directed anyone encountering problems or suspected corruption during phone clearance to call its round-the-clock hotline, 1108.
The Regulatory Background
Since 1 May 2025, air passengers entering Uzbekistan have been permitted to import goods duty-free up to a value of $1,000, including no more than two SIM-capable devices per trip. Goods exceeding that threshold attract a flat customs duty of 30 percent on the excess value, with the exemption also tied to the duration of the traveller’s stay abroad and the frequency of trips.
All imported mobile devices — new or used — must be declared regardless of value, a requirement linked to the integration of customs systems with the UzIMEI national device registry. Registering a phone in UzIMEI without proof of lawful importation requires payment of a 30-percent customs duty on the device’s value. The registration fee itself is set at 20 percent of the base calculation unit (88,000 soums) within the first 30 days, rising to 25 percent (110,000 soums) thereafter.
On 5 November — five days before the suspension was announced — representatives of the Customs Committee and the Republican Centre for Telecommunications Network Management met to discuss measures to reduce the shadow circulation of mobile devices, including equipping border posts with modern equipment, simplifying clearance and IMEI registration procedures, and integrating inter-agency information systems. Between January and September this year, four million mobile devices were officially imported into Uzbekistan, generating 1.6 trillion soums in customs revenue.