Ukraine denied the extradition of Uzbek businessman Akbar Abdullaev and granted him a refugee status.
Abdullaev, 34, is a nephew of late Uzbek President Islam Karimov and was indicted for money laundering and the embezzlement of state funds back in Uzbekistan.
“We achieved an extraordinary decision by the Ukrainian authorities, and I’m absolutely delighted that they followed the rules of European Court of Human Rights,” German lawyer Oliver Wallasch told the Kyiv Post in a phone interview on June 27.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Kyiv confirmed that Abdullaev had been granted a refugee status on June 14.
The Ukrainian legislation on refugees doesn’t prohibit them from traveling, but, according to his lawyers, he currently stays in Kyiv.
Official Tashkent hasn’t responded to Ukraine’s decision yet.
Arrest in Kyiv
Abdullaev was arrested in Kyiv on Jan. 14 upon arrival in Zhulyany airport and remained in custody hitherto.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Uzbekistan had opened a criminal case against him on Nov. 15, 2016 and requested from Interpol to issue a “red notice.”
According to the court materials, back in Uzbekistan Abdullaev was accused of illegally acquiring public funds worth 262.5 billion Uzbek sums ($91 million), concealment of foreign currency worth $195.3 million and 271,602 euros ($291,400), and laundering of 77.4 million Swiss francs ($77.2 million) and 200,000 Latvian lats ($302,900).
However, his defense claimed that his prosecution by the Uzbek government had been politically motivated and fabricated from the beginning due to his relation to the Karimovs family.
Several Ukrainian human rights organizations condemned the prospect of the extradition of Abdullaev to Uzbekistan where he would have been subject to torture.
In early May the Commission for the control of Interpol’s files deleted the “red notice” on Abdullaev from its databases upon request from his lawyer Wallasch, because “the data weren’t compliant with Interpol’s rules.”
Abdullaev already had convictions. In 2014 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for embezzlement, corruption and the illegal acquisition of public funds. However, after obtaining three reductions to his sentence he was released at the end of August 2016, just days before the death of his uncle, the former Uzbek President Karimov.
One of the Uzbek elite
Reportedly, Abdullaev, his mother and partners controlled industrial production in Uzbekistan and was involved in Uzbek elite’s corrupt schemes in Europe.
In the past, journalistic investigations conducted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism revealed Abdullaev’s luxurious property and multi-million euro hotel business in Latvia as well as a complex fraud scheme linked to a Latvian businessman of Afghan origin Gulam Gulami.
He was also linked to the late Karimov’s eldest daughter Gulnara Karimova, at one time the most powerful woman in Uzbekistan, who has been accused of financial corruption by Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, and Sweden, and who is now thought to be under house arrest in Tashkent.
Editor-in-chief of Moscow-based news agency Fergana, which covers Central Asia, Daniil Kislov wasn’t happy to learn that Abdullaev was granted a refugee status and may avoid further investigation on his economic crimes.
“We believe that Abdullaev lawyers misinformed the public and human rights organizations, manipulating facts and presenting him as a ‘reformer prosecuted for political motives’ and ‘a martyr of Uzbek regime’,” Kislov said.
