Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court is in the southern city of Bellinzona – Copyright POOL\/AFP Henry NICHOLLS<\/p>\n
Switzerland\u2019s Federal Criminal Court on Tuesday dismissed a money laundering case against Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan\u2019s former president, who has been incarcerated in her home country.<\/p>\n
The trial of Karimova and a Swiss private bank opened on Monday but Karimova was not present as she is serving a 13-year sentence in Uzbekistan for embezzlement.<\/p>\n
A spokeswoman for the court in Bellinzona told AFP the proceedings against Karimova were dismissed due to what she called a \u201cpersistent impediment\u201d.<\/p>\n
Karimova, whose father Islam Karimov ruled Uzbekistan for 25 years until his death in 2016, was indicted by Switzerland in 2023 in a vast case involving alleged corruption, fraud and organised crime stretching over many years.<\/p>\n
The full decision to dismiss the case will be published along with the final judgement, the spokeswoman said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe judgement will address the potential confiscation of the seized assets and valuables held by Ms Karimova,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Swiss domestic news agency Keystone-ATS, in Bellinzona, said the court justified the dismissal by saying Karimova would not be able to leave Uzbekistan before the statute of limitations on the Swiss charges expires in 2028, with Tashkent refusing to allow her to leave before the end of her sentence.<\/p>\n
This non-culpable absence from her trial therefore constituted an impediment to the proceedings and the case against Karimova was dismissed, it said.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Bank refutes allegations \u2013<\/p>\n
The dismissal \u201cis equivalent to an acquittal under Swiss law\u201d, her lawyers, Gregoire Mangeat, Fanny Margairaz, and Romain Wavre, told AFP in a statement.<\/p>\n
This \u201cvery clearly shows that in Switzerland, a person who has been arbitrarily held in a detention for more than 10 years cannot be tried\u201d, they said.<\/p>\n
They also claimed it proved that someone \u201csubjected to sham trials\u2026 cannot be tried in absentia\u201d and someone \u201ccannot be tried when their most basic rights to a defence are blatantly violated by a state \u2013Uzbekistan \u2014 that scoffs at the rule of law\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Swiss charges covered the period from 2005 to 2012 and revolved around \u201cparticipation in a criminal organisation\u201d, \u201cmoney laundering\u201d, \u201cacceptance of bribes as foreign public officials\u201d and \u201cforgery of documents\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Swiss attorney general\u2019s office (OAG) first opened an investigation in 2012, although Karimova herself initially enjoyed diplomatic immunity, since she was serving as Uzbekistan\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.<\/p>\n
After that immunity was lifted in 2013, the investigation expanded to focus on her.<\/p>\n
The OAG said its investigation led it to conclude that some of the funds laundered in Switzerland were allegedly deposited into accounts at the Lombard Odier bank in Geneva.<\/p>\n
Proceedings against the bank and a former employee are still going ahead, the federal court spokeswoman said.<\/p>\n
In a statement Monday, the bank said the charges \u201cpertain to alleged organisational shortcomings in relation to the effective prevention of money laundering.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bank firmly refutes these allegations and intends to defend itself at trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Tuesday\u2019s dismissal of the case against Karimova, the bank told AFP: \u201cAfter nearly 15 years of investigation, this decision highlights the fundamental difficulties of the current proceedings \u2014 with regard to all the defendants.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court is in the southern city of Bellinzona – Copyright POOL\/AFP Henry NICHOLLS Switzerland\u2019s Federal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[657,1240,41,17,31591],"class_list":["post-57194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-corruption","tag-court","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland","tag-uzbekistan"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116483634324780837","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57194","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=57194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}