Listen to the article
Uzbekistan’s Anti-Corruption Agency has more than doubled grant funding for civil-society anti-corruption projects in the first nine months of 2026, while blocking procurement contracts worth nearly 36.1 billion soums and forcing the disclosure of hundreds of documents that local authorities had improperly classified as secret, according to a briefing held by the agency’s information service chief, Sherzod Saparov.
Grants and Training
A total of 6.3 billion soums was allocated in grants during the first nine months of 2026 to fund 25 civil-society projects focused on anti-corruption work — an increase of roughly 85 percent, or nearly double, compared with the 3.4 billion soums distributed across all twelve months of 2025. The funding flows from a standing presidential instruction signed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev directing that 10 billion soums be set aside annually in grants and social contracts for non-governmental organisations working on anti-corruption initiatives.
Projects under the programme include monitoring of local budgets, preparing practical guides for investigative journalism, developing integrity-lesson methodologies, building a digital transparency platform, conducting anti-corruption legal analysis of legislation, and designing a concept for transparent neighbourhood governance. Separately, for the first time in Uzbekistan, representatives of non-governmental organisations monitored compliance with the requirements of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
Training activity has expanded sharply alongside the grant increases. Nearly 20 practical workshops and seminars were held in the first nine months of 2026, reaching approximately 400 participants — compared with 135 participants in all of 2025. A summer school programme covered more than 100 NGO representatives active across all regions of the country.
To extend reach beyond Tashkent and regional capitals, the agency and the Academy of Law Enforcement have jointly developed a dedicated online course for NGOs within the Anti-Corruption Virtual Academy. The course is set to launch in November, allowing participants to build knowledge and practical skills without leaving their home regions; those who complete it successfully will receive a certificate.
Document Secrecy and Procurement Violations
Transparency in local government decision-making remains a live concern. Of 128,174 documents adopted by local administrations in the first nine months of 2026 through the e-qaror (e-decision) system, 71 percent — 90,859 documents — were made public, while 37,315, or 29 percent, were classified as secret or marked with a restricted-distribution designation. That share of closed documents is nonetheless 15 percentage points lower than in the same period of the previous year.
Agency monitoring identified 771 documents that had been classified without legal justification. The agency submitted 53 formal representations to administrations, resulting in those documents being made public. Three senior officials responsible for the unjustified classifications were dismissed, two received formal reprimands, and 96 others were officially warned of potential disciplinary liability.
On procurement, the agency identified legal violations in 33 state purchases with a combined value of approximately 36.1 billion soums during the first ten months of the current year, and secured the cancellation of those contracts. Among the cases highlighted: four purchases worth a combined 4.38 billion soums commissioned by Uzbekneftegaz were identified following a critical media report; two purchases by Samarkand Invest Company JSC with a starting value of 3.7 billion soums were uncovered through a complaint received by the agency; and a purchase worth 2.2 billion soums commissioned by the Public Fund for Support of Children was detected through the agency’s Raqamli Komplayens (Digital Compliance) software system.
Attestation and Research
An ongoing attestation process for officials responsible for internal anti-corruption compliance in state bodies has so far tested 736 candidates through written examinations, of whom 526 have proceeded to interview. The process is continuing in stages according to an approved schedule.
The agency also reported an analysis of 40 academic dissertations defended between 2021 and 2026 on anti-corruption topics — six at the level of doctor of science and 34 at the level of doctor of philosophy — with 22 further research projects currently under way. Of 159 scientific findings from that body of research, 109 have been incorporated into normative legal documents, four into innovation projects, eight into educational materials, and 38 into other applications.
International cooperation has included a study visit to Riga by 17 NGO representatives under a project on improving public governance in Uzbekistan, where they examined Latvian experience in civil-society development and transparent NGO financing. Experts from Transparency International Latvia and Transparency International Kyrgyzstan conducted training sessions for local NGO representatives in Tashkent, Fergana, Navoiy, Syrdarya and Khorezm regions under a joint project with the European Union and international partners.