ALMATY, Kazakhstan (Reuters) – Uzbekistan’s government is negotiating with Belgian authorities over the return of $108 million in frozen assets belonging to Gulnara Karimova, the jailed daughter of the country’s former president, Russian state news agency RIA reported on Thursday.
RIA cited Uzbekistan’s deputy finance minister as saying that the funds may be given back to Uzbekistan via United Nations’ mechanisms, and spent on UN projects in the Central Asian country of 35 million people.
Karimova, a powerful businesswoman during her father Islam Karimov’s presidency, also held a series of official posts, recorded pop songs, and produced her own fashion line.
She ultimately fell out with her father, who died in 2016, in around 2014.
Karimova, 47, was jailed in March 2019 for violating the terms of her house arrest after receiving a five-year sentence in 2015 on charges of embezzlement and extortion.
She had amassed a fortune of well over a billion dollars, much of which was stashed overseas.
Uzbekistan has previously reached agreements with Belgium and Switzerland for the restitution to the Uzbek government of several hundreds of millions of dollars of Karimova’s frozen assets.
On Karimov’s death in 2016, his former prime minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev succeeded him as president, promising a loosening of Karimov-era controls on the economy, as well as a crackdown on corruption.
(Reporting by Mariya Gordeyeva, Writing by Felix Light; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
