{"id":56558,"date":"2026-04-27T18:07:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T18:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/56558\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T18:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T18:07:22","slug":"daughter-of-former-uzbek-president-accused-of-masterminding-crime-ring-known-as-the-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/56558\/","title":{"rendered":"Daughter of former Uzbek president accused of masterminding crime ring known as ‘The Office’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The daughter of a former president of Uzbekistan was facing a trial in absentia starting Monday in Switzerland in connection with\u00a0alleged bribery and money laundering<\/a>\u00a0involving assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Gulnara Karimova<\/a>, the daughter of former President Islam Karimov, is behind bars in Uzbekistan as the trial opens in a Swiss federal criminal court in the southern city of Bellinzona. It\u2019s set to run through May 22.<\/p>\n

Swiss prosecutors say Karimova developed and ran a crime ring known as \u201cThe Office\u201d that involved several dozen people and multiple companies. She is accused of depositing hundreds of millions of dollars\u2019 worth of funds \u201cof criminal origin\u201d in Switzerland and abroad, and arranging for safe deposit boxes for the deposit of cash, jewelry and other valuables of criminal origin, the prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

Gr\u00e9goire Mangeat, one of her defense lawyers, said in an email that Karimova was being prevented from leaving the \u201cprison colony\u201d where she has been detained in Uzbekistan to attend the trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will seek the full and complete acquittal of Gulnara Karimova,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Uzbek news outlet Podrobno described Karimova\u2019s presence in the Swiss courtroom as \u201cvirtually impossible\u201d as the 53-year-old was already serving her sentence in Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n

It said that Karimova had been moved to a women\u2019s penal colony in Uzbekistan\u2019s Zangiota region, on the outskirts of the capital, Tashkent, in early 2025.<\/p>\n

Alleged crimes during her father\u2019s tenure<\/p>\n

Karimova was indicted three years ago in Switzerland along with a former director-general of the Uzbek subsidiary of a Russian telecommunications company for crimes allegedly committed between 2005 and 2013.<\/p>\n

That was during her father\u2019s tenure. He led the Central Asian country for over a quarter-century until\u00a0his death<\/a>\u00a0in 2016. Karimova had previously worked in Geneva in connection with the United Nations, and benefited from diplomatic immunity.<\/p>\n

Karimova has faced a series of trials after a first conviction in Uzbekistan eight years ago, and is serving a 13-year sentence for organizing a criminal group, extortion and embezzlement.<\/p>\n

In November 2024, Swiss prosecutors announced the indictment of Swiss private bank Lombard Odier and a former employee on allegations they had a \u201cdecisive role in concealing the proceeds of the criminal activities of \u2018The Office.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Lombard Odier, in an email, said the prosecutor doesn\u2019t allege that the bank knowingly or intentionally engaged in money laundering, \u201cbut rather raises claims relating to alleged organizational shortcomings in prevention measures, which the bank firmly contests and will defend in court.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The daughter of a former president of Uzbekistan was facing a trial in absentia starting Monday in Switzerland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1655,1830,13045,136,41,17,1726],"class_list":{"0":"post-56558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-geopolitics","10":"tag-money-laundering","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-swiss","13":"tag-switzerland","14":"tag-trial"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116478007382829321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}