Former Uzbekistan President’s Daughter Constructed $243 Million Property Empire, Here is How

Ms Karimova used UK firms to buy properties by utilizing bribery cash.

Gulnara Karimova, daughter of former Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov, moonlighted as a pop sensation and diplomat spent $240m on properties from London to Hong Kong, based on BBC. 

In response to the Freedom For Eurasia research, Ms Karimova used UK firms to buy properties and a jet by utilizing cash earned by means of bribery and corruption. It additional acknowledged that UK companies taking part within the agreements used accountancy corporations from London and the British Virgin Islands.

In response to the outlet, the British authorities has confronted criticism for not doing sufficient to cease overseas criminals from utilizing UK property to launder cash. There isn’t any indication that these performing for the corporations linked to her had been conscious of any connection to her. No one within the UK who offered these providers has been probed or penalised. It’s to be famous that Ms Karimova was previously anticipated to succeed her father. She made appearances in music movies utilizing the stage identify “Googoosha”, owned a jewelry enterprise and was an Ambassador to Spain. 

Nevertheless, in 2014, she vanished from the general public eye. She was jailed in December 2017 when it was later revealed that she had been imprisoned on suspicion of corruption whereas her father was nonetheless in energy. Ms Karimova was sentenced to jail in 2019 for violating the situations of her dwelling arrest. She was charged with being a member of a prison organisation that was in command of greater than $1 billion in belongings unfold over 12 nations, together with the UK, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Nevertheless, a number of the actual estates reportedly bought with corrupt money had already been bought.  In response to Freedom For Eurasia, which carried out its investigation into property and land registry information, not less than 14 properties within the UK, Switzerland, France, Dubai and Hong Kong, had been purchased with reportedly suspicious funds previous to her detention.

As per the BBC, the report focuses on 5 properties bought in and round London that at the moment are estimated to be price 50 million kilos. These properties embrace three flats in Belgravia, which is close to Buckingham Palace, a house in Mayfair and a manor home in Surrey with a non-public boating lake. Earlier than Ms Karimova was jailed in 2013, two of the Belgravia residences had been bought. The Critical Fraud Workplace froze the Surrey property, the Mayfair dwelling and the Belgravia condo in 2017.

In its research, Freedom For Eurasia additionally cites firms in London and the British Virgin Islands that it alleges Karimova or her colleagues used to buy each actual property and a non-public aircraft by utilizing the proceeds of crime. Rustam Madumarov, Ms Karimova’s boyfriend and different people who find themselves now allegedly her accomplices, had been named in official information because the “useful homeowners” of firms with places within the UK, Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands. The research says that they served simply as stand-ins for Ms Karimova, who utilised the companies to launder lots of of tens of millions of {dollars}.

In 2020, SH Landes, an accounting agency linked to Ms Karimova’s UK-based companies, tried to include or purchase out one other enterprise. The target was to purchase a non-public aircraft for about $40 million, together with her boyfriend recognized because the useful proprietor. Nevertheless, Ms Karimova was in actuality the driving drive behind the acquisition, as per the report.