Shafaq News / Swiss authorities have leveled serious accusations against Gulnara Karimova, a billionaire and daughter of former Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov. These allegations primarily revolve around her leadership of an international criminal gang known as "The Office", comprising dozens of individuals and over 100 separate companies. This organized network clandestinely operates to conceal stolen funds and enrich its members.
According to the British newspaper The Financial Times, Karimova (51 years old), who has been imprisoned in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, since 2014, is facing several charges.
As reported by the British newspaper, these charges center on the embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars from Uzbekistan, in addition to systematically bribing top executives and government officials worldwide.
Furthermore, she is accused of laundering ill-gotten gains through a collection of companies and bank accounts primarily concentrated in Switzerland.
Swiss authorities have brought forth a case against Gulnara Karimova, who, for years, held diplomatic roles at the United Nations and enjoyed immunity from prosecution. She was known for promoting her fashion brand and associating with celebrities. The case is being heard at the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in the city of Bellinzona.
Gregoire Mangeat, Karimova's lawyer in Geneva, stated that she "disputes all the allegations and will fight for her acquittal."
He added, "We entirely contest the theory of the criminal organization; the Swiss prosecutors invented it just a year ago, a decade after the investigation began."
Continuing, he said, "Our client, Gulnara Karimova, has been arbitrarily detained for nearly 10 years. We do not know how long she will remain imprisoned in Uzbekistan."
Shortly after the charges were filed, the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office stated, "The Office conducted its criminal activities as a professional business. There was compliance with mandatory regulatory rules and strict task allocation, accompanied by the use of violence and intimidation."
It is alleged that the hub of "The Office" was the Swiss company Zeromax, which collapsed in 2010, becoming Switzerland's second-largest bankruptcy announcement ever.
Due to Switzerland's vague disclosure laws, the company's collapse did not attract much attention for over a decade.
Millions were spent on jewelry, luxury medical treatments, and seemingly unrelated properties, which had no apparent connection to the company's official activities as a holding company for natural resources and construction projects in Uzbekistan.
"Uzbekistan's Princess"
The charges brought against Gulnara Karimova on Thursday, once known as the "Princess of Uzbekistan" due to her lavish lifestyle, include an ongoing criminal investigation related to one of Switzerland's prominent private banks, Lombard Odier.
Karimova used safe deposit boxes to store diamonds and other precious stones worth millions of Swiss Francs. Over 400 million Swiss Francs (approximately $439.65 million) of liquid assets remain frozen in the bank under Karimova's name.
For years, Karimova managed to evade investigation in Switzerland, thanks to the diplomatic immunity she enjoyed in her roles at the United Nations in Geneva. However, with the declining health and subsequent death of her father, Islam Karimov, who ruled Uzbekistan as a dictator from 1991 until 2016, Gulnara Karimova lost her powerful political protection. In 2014, amid changing political dynamics in Tashkent, she was placed under house arrest and was convicted of embezzlement in Uzbekistan in 2017.
Her legal representatives have claimed that since then, she has been subjected to torture and denied basic human rights. Swiss prosecutors state that "The Office" began its operations in Switzerland in 2005 and used the country throughout the following decade to help preserve stolen funds.
The primary and principal source of the organization's gains, it is alleged, was bribes paid by Western telecommunications companies to develop Uzbekistan's telecommunications network in the early 21st century. From there, the organization's ambitions and reach expanded.
In a leaked diplomatic cable from 2010, the US Department of State described her as a "robber baron" and noted that she had "aggressively expropriated a wide swath of almost every lucrative business" in Uzbekistan by leveraging her father's authority.
The UK's Serious Fraud Office announced last August that it had taken control of assets valued at over £20 million (approximately $24.5 million) belonging to Karimova.