Luxury UK properties belonging to former dictator’s daughter seized

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has taken control of three luxury properties from convicted fraudster Gulnara Karimova, including two Belgravia flats and a mansion in Surrey.

It alleges that Karimova received hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from telecommunications companies between 2004 and 2012 in return for helping them gain access to the market in Uzbekistan.

Prosecutors hailed the move as a victory in the UK’s bid to “root out dirty money”.

Gulnara, 51, is the daughter of Uzbekistan’s former dictator Islam Karimov who died in 2016. She is currently serving a 13-year jail sentence in Uzbekistan for fraud and money laundering.

The SFO brought a proceeds of crime case to recover properties worth more than £20m from Karimova, daughter of the former Uzbekistan president, and her family after linking them to the proceeds of corruption in her country.

The Uzbek Supreme Court granted permission for the SFO to personally serve Ms Karimova and her boyfriend, Rusam Madumarov with a Civil Recovery claim issued by the High Court in London.

The writs were served on both Karimova and Madumarov, who are imprisoned in Uzbekistan on 22 December 2020. Luxury properties linked to Karimova have also been seized by the French authorities.

Uzbekistan’s Justice Ministry says it has already obtained assets worth more than $130m (£102m) from luxury properties linked to Karimova.

It said authorities in Switzerland, the US, France, Russia, as well as other nations have returned some of Karimova’s assets, which it says were “earned through criminal activities.”

Described as the ultimate “central Asian It girl’” she has acted as a former diplomat for Uzbekistan, while also acting as entrepreneur with a series of projects such as clothing and a jewellery design. She enjoyed a career as a pop singer using the stage name Googoosha.

Prosecutors would later accuse her of being part of a criminal group that controlled assets of more than $1bn (£760m) in 12 countries, including the UK, Russia and United Arab Emirates.

A US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks in 2010 called her a “robber baron” who had become “the most hated person in the country”.

A report into her activities published this year said: “The Karimova case is one of the largest bribery and corruption cases of all time.”

The report, entitled “Who Enabled the Uzbek Princess?“, found Karimova bought several properties worth an estimated £50m – including three flats in Belgravia, a house in Mayfair and an £18m Surrey manor house, complete with a private boating lake.

Two of the Belgravia flats were sold in 2013 before Karimova was detained. In 2017, the house in Mayfair, the Surrey mansion and a third flat in Belgravia were frozen by the Serious Fraud Office.

SFO Director Lisa Osofsky said “We unpicked a complex financial trail, involving multiple off-shore accounts and companies, to take control of these properties. This ruling is a step forward in our case and in our ongoing efforts to root out dirty money from the UK.”