A new Freedom For Eurasia study has revealed how Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Islam Karimov, who ruled Uzbekistan as president from 1989 until his death in 2016, spent $240 million (£200 million) on properties from London to Hong Kong while acting as a diplomat for her country.
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According to the report, Gulnara Karimova used UK companies to purchase homes and a jet using funds obtained through bribery and corruption, and accounting firms in London and the British Virgin Islands acted for UK companies involved in the transactions.
The ease with which Karimova obtained UK property was described as “concerning” in the report.
The ease with which Karimova obtained UK property was described as “concerning” in the report.
According to the report, there is no evidence that those working for the companies linked to her were aware of any connection to her, nor that the source of funds was suspicious.
Gulnara Karimova was once expected to succeed her father. She appeared in pop videos as “Googoosha,” ran a jewelry company, and served as ambassador to Spain.
She then vanished from public view in 2014. She was arrested on corruption charges while her father was still in power, and she was sentenced in December 2017. She was sentenced to prison in 2019 for violating the terms of her house arrest.
Prosecutors accused her of being a member of a criminal organization that controlled assets worth more than $1 billion (£760 million) in 12 countries, including the United Kingdom, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates. “The Karimova case is one of the largest bribery and corruption cases in history,” says Tom Mayne, a research fellow at the University of Oxford and one of the researchers on the Freedom For Eurasia report.
Freedom For Eurasia investigated property and land registry records to identify at least 14 properties purchased with allegedly suspicious funds before she was arrested in countries such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Dubai, and Hong Kong.
The report, titled Who Enabled the Uzbek Princess?, will be released on Tuesday 14 March and focuses on five properties purchased in and around London that are now worth an estimated £50 million, including three flats in Belgravia, just west of Buckingham Palace, a house in Mayfair, and a £18 million Surrey manor house with a private boating lake.
Two of the Belgravia flats were sold in 2013, prior to Karimova’s arrest. The house in Mayfair, the Surrey mansion, and a third flat in Belgravia were all frozen in 2017.
