Paris returns $10m defrauded by Uzbekistan’s first daughter

TASHKENT: Uzbekistan said on Thursday it has received from France assets worth $10 million illegally acquired by the daughter of its late strongman ruler Islam Karimov. The justice ministry said in a statement that the assets once controlled by Gulnara Karimova were transferred to Uzbekistan’s state budget from France.

It did not give any more details on the assets, which represent a fraction of more than $1.3 billion Uzbekistan has sought from foreign jurisdictions since announcing Karimova’s imprisonment in 2017.

Last year Switzerland announced the return to Uzbekistan of 130 million Swiss francs ($133 million) held in its bank accounts. As "first daughter," Karimova was once seen as one of the most powerful people in the former Soviet republic, serving in diplomatic posts and tipped as a potential successor to long-ruling Karimov.

She organised a fashion week, had her own jewellery line and released pop singles as well as running entertainment television channels. But several years before her father’s death in 2016, she fell dramatically from favour and feuded publicly with her mother and sister before being placed under house arrest.

She was then sentenced to 10 years in prison on fraud and extortion charges in 2017, although the penalty was later commuted to five years of house arrest. In 2017, the Uzbek authorities said Karimova had been sentenced to 10 years in on charges of massive fraud and organised crime. In March this year she was handed a fresh sentence of more than 13 years backdated to 2015, meaning that she could be behind bars until 2028.