Gulnara Karimova accused of $865 million bribery

Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the former president of Uzbekistan, and Behzod Akhmedov, the former general director of the Uzbek subsidiary of MTS LLC Uzdunrobita, are accused in the United States of money laundering and receiving a bribe of $865 million, RIA Novosti reports on Thursday.

“Today it was announced that a criminal case was opened against the former official of Uzbekistan Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the Ex-president of Uzbekistan, and Behzod Akhmedov, the former general director of Uzdunrobita LLC, an Uzbek subsidiary of Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), the largest telecommunications company in Russia,” the prosecutor’s office of the Southern District of New York said.

“This is the third installment in a trilogy of cases arising from an almost $1 billion bribery scheme that reached the highest echelons of the Uzbekistan government and was orchestrated by some of the largest telecommunications companies in the world,” Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement. His office said the case was one of the largest Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) bribery schemes ever charged.

According to Assistant Attorney General Brian Benchkovsky, Gulnara Karimova is accused of using her official position for extortion and taking bribes worth more than $865 million from three public telecommunications companies and the subsequent laundering of these bribes through the US financial system.

In addition to MTS, the text also reports extortion from Vimpelcom LTD (Beeline - Ed.) And Telia Company AB (Telia).

The Russian mobile operator MTS has concluded an agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Justice Department, under which it will pay a total of $850 million.

In the spring of 2015, the US Justice Department announced that, jointly with the Dutch prosecutor's office, they are investigating the transactions of Vimpelcom, MTS and the Scandinavian TeliaSonera with Takilant, which is associated with the daughter of former President of Uzbekistan Gulnara Karimova. In August of that year, the US authorities turned to five European countries with a request to block assets of $1 billion in the framework of the Uzbek case investigation.

According to the inspection, in the corruption scheme, telecom operators transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to structures associated with Karimova, in exchange for the right to enter the market of Uzbekistan, for receiving frequencies and for other transactions in the country. Regarding the case, in 2016, Vimpelcom paid $795 million.