Gulnara’s Gold: Why Tashkent Fears the Swiss Case Against the Daughter of Islam Karimov

According to the Swiss prosecutors’ version, Gulnara Karimova, during the peak of her influence — from 2005 to 2013 — received multimillion-dollar kickbacks from international telecommunications companies for access to the Uzbek market. The mechanism was set up so that foreign business was made to understand: it is impossible to work in Uzbekistan without a “proper local partner”. That partner was her. Companies reluctantly agreed and transferred large sums to offshore accounts linked to Karimova. The money then went into her accounts in foreign banks, including Swiss ones.

Of course, she had no authority to lobby for the interests of foreign business. The positions of adviser to the Foreign Ministry, representative to the UN in Geneva, and ambassador to Spain, which the president’s daughter held at various times, were more of a representative nature. In essence, the main resource she traded on was her family ties to the head of state.

The total amount of funds frozen in foreign accounts in this case is estimated at between $800 million and $1.5 billion. Over years of investigation, the Uzbek authorities have managed to recover only part of that money. However, the process required Gulnara Karimova’s personal participation, including her questioning in court. In April, when she was summoned again to give testimony, the Uzbek authorities refused even to temporarily let her leave the country. She will not be released until 2028 at the earliest, and by then the statute of limitations in the Swiss case will already have expired. This has effectively made any further proceedings pointless.

The fate of the frozen funds also remains unclear. If the Swiss side has still not been able to conclusively prove their illegal origin, the prospect of the assets being fully returned to Uzbekistan looks unlikely. However, the Uzbek authorities, it seems, have long since come to terms with this.

Ending the case against Gulnara, even at the cost of losing the seized funds, apparently suits the authorities more than the risk of her public testimony in the West.

In Uzbekistan, she has already been serving a prison sentence for more than ten years, and the longer her figure remains out of the public eye, the fewer threats there are to the current authorities. Even her children’s ties to her are limited.

At the same time, in Uzbek society Gulnara’s sentence is seen as the restoration of justice, and so, despite complaints from relatives and lawyers about the case’s secrecy and the impossibility of mounting a proper defense, no public demand for a trial ever emerged. What is known is only that Gulnara is found guilty in a case involving the creation of a criminal group, fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering. At the same time, it is unknown what sums of embezzlement are being referred to.

Besides the Swiss judges, international organizations, including the UN, are also seeking contact with her and the opportunity to question her in the presence of witnesses. However, Tashkent consistently states that the punishment was imposed in accordance with Uzbek and international law, and that she is serving her sentence in a settlement colony in the Tashkent region under normal conditions.

After the Swiss case is closed, the Uzbek authorities probably expect her figure to disappear from the Western agenda altogether — at least until her sentence ends, unless new charges are brought. Gulnara’s release carries unpredictable consequences.

By Family Values

Corruption is the key, but not the only, reason Gulnara ended up in prison. The main threat to the system was that during the period of her power she acted as an independent center of authority. At the same time, her influence rested solely on her kinship with the president.

She built her influence through the Forum foundation, as well as a network of offshore companies, foreign structures, and connections that in the materials of the Swiss investigation are referred to as the “Office”. Into this quasi-system she drew officials and created alternative centers of influence in education, healthcare, and culture. In this way, her structure effectively created a parallel state infrastructure.

Around this network of hers she formed a circle of loyal officials, luring them away from the state apparatus and redirecting them toward herself. At the same time, through the Forum foundation’s educational grants and opportunities for young people to study abroad, she tried to cultivate a layer of young politicians and technocrats. Gradually she began to absorb business as well. Karimova failed to take into account that even a personalized regime, such as her father’s, does not rest on one person alone. Its stability depends on loyal security structures, and in her parallel system there were none.

Judging by indirect signs, it was precisely the hard confrontation with the state security services, which did not recognize Gulnara as an independent player in the system, that eventually led to her arrest and later imprisonment. Previously, the key levers of control over business and the redistribution of financial flows were in the hands of the National Security Service and its head Rustam Inoyatov — in effect the “grey cardinal” of Uzbek politics and one of Islam Karimov’s most trusted people. As Gulnara’s influence grew, a direct conflict of interests with the NSS emerged.

In addition, Gulnara’s strengthening position put many officials in a difficult situation. On the one hand, they were embedded in Karimov’s rigid vertical of power; on the other, they often carried out her instructions as well, believing they had been approved by the president. Supporting Gulnara became, for many, a way to keep their positions ahead of a transfer of power that, though not discussed openly, was seen as inevitable.

However, the parallel existence of two centers of influence — the president with his security apparatus and his daughter with her own system of influence — created competition within the regime, even though neither Karimov himself nor the security bloc, in all likelihood, viewed Gulnara as a possible successor.

Her activity gradually eroded state structures. As a result, a campaign began to neutralize the president’s daughter, designed so that the president himself would appear to be the one initiating the “exposure”.

According to one version, it was Inoyatov who told the president about the real scale of his daughter’s activities and schemes. In this reading, Gulnara’s arrest looks less like an anti-corruption measure and more like the result of an internal redistribution of control. In the end, she had no comparable resource to counter the security apparatus. After Karimov’s death, her informal influence collapsed in an instant, and no one within the system stood up for her. The rest of the family — her mother and younger sister — stayed on the sidelines.

Gulnara’s son, Islam Karimov Jr., lived abroad and tried to draw the attention of Western media to the fact that his mother’s case was being handled behind closed doors, without disclosing the substance of the charges. However, he never achieved any result. In the end, the system built on the informal arrangements Gulnara herself used turned against her.

A Change of Signboard

Uzbekistan’s current president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, inherited Gulnara’s case from the previous system. During the period of her influence he held the post of prime minister, and the admission of foreign business to the market could not but fall within his field of attention. Thus, Gulnara’s son mentioned in media interviews that his mother often invited Mirziyoyev to family events. All this raised questions about the nature of these contacts and whether he knew about Gulnara’s schemes or preferred not to notice them.

It would seem that an open investigation into Gulnara’s case — with witness questioning and a review of corruption schemes — would demonstrate his noninvolvement and lack of fear in handling the case publicly. Such openness would destroy Mirziyoyev’s image as the direct heir to the Karimov system. It would also show that there are no untouchables anymore and that the law applies to everyone. This would strengthen the perception of him as a reformer and reinforce his legitimacy as an independent and autonomous politician in the eyes of society.

However, he did not plan to radically dismantle the old system, so Gulnara’s case was made non-public, presumably to avoid political risks. A significant part of Mirziyoyev’s team was formed back under Karimov, and many of these people, who worked with Gulnara, most likely knew about her corruption schemes. Public discussion of these ties could cast a shadow over the new authorities and undermine public trust — a key resource for Mirziyoyev in the first years after coming to power, when he had not yet secured his position in the eyes of the elites.

An open trial of Gulnara could create a dangerous precedent in which the participation of politicians’ relatives in power was considered unacceptable. But Mirziyoyev did not plan to abandon reliance on family in governing the country.

All the more so in the first years of his presidency, when many influential people from Karimov’s circle remained in the system, his main support became a close inner circle, mostly family members. Over time, dropping any sense of restraint, he began appointing relatives to key posts in state institutions.

The most notable was the rise of the eldest daughter — Saida. In 2019, she began working in communications in the presidential administration, and then quickly moved up the career ladder and headed her father’s administration. Saida was increasingly compared to Karimov’s eldest daughter, although the latter never held such high official positions.

In addition to working in the administration, Saida Mirziyoyeva takes part in cultural and public projects — in the sphere of art, education, fashion shows, and exhibitions, promotes Uzbekistan’s image abroad, and meets with foreign officials and prominent figures. In effect, the president’s daughter is engaged in the same areas that Gulnara Karimova once handled. This similarity sparked talk that Mirziyoyev may see his daughter as a future successor. The same question was once asked about whether Gulnara would become her father’s successor.

And yet there is an important difference between Saida and Gulnara. Gulnara’s system was created as an alternative to state institutions and collapsed immediately after her arrest, whereas the state system remained stable. In Saida’s case the situation may prove riskier, because the solution to many issues is tied less to her formal position as head of the presidential administration — a bureaucratic body by nature — than to her kinship with the president. This is personalized, “hands-on” governance. With this approach, the role of institutions — the government, parliament, courts, and law enforcement agencies, already limited in personalized regimes — is reduced even further. The real centers of decision-making shift toward the president and his closest family circle.

In the long term, the legacy of such a regime, centered on one person — even its significant and progressive decisions for its time — disappears with it. Just as today there is almost no discussion about whether Karimov’s regime had any positive contribution to Uzbekistan’s development, the achievements of the current authorities may also be forgotten over time.