Fraud and corruption hold back Uzbekistan’s growth and reforms
President Mirziyoyev has made several appeals to Uzbeks abroad to invest in a "modern Uzbekistan,” but corruption remains rampant, worsen and more dangerous than in the past. Saidikrom Ahrorov, a medical engineer by training who opened the country's first disposable syringe factory, bemoans the situation.
Moscow (AsiaNews) – Saidikrom Ahrorov, a medical engineer who opened the Uzbekistan's first factory of disposable syringes, playing a leading role in country's social and economic life, returned to his homeland after a few years of voluntary exile.
He made this choice trusting President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's promises on reforms and the improvement of the business climate, but ended up the victim of financial fraud and corruption.
The 78-year-old pioneer of medical equipment production decided to tell Radio Ozodlik (Radio Liberty) the reasons for his disappointment, criticising the ineffectiveness and hypocrisy of presidential announcements.
His left Uzbekistan because of stagnation and isolation under the presidency of the first post-Soviet era leader, Islam Karimov. When his successor took the reins of the country in 2016, he tried to believe in his “opening”.
Ahrorov began his activities in the early 1980s, when the then-Communist Uzbek authorities tasked him, as deputy director of the state-owned UzMedTekhnika, with opening a facility to make medical equipment, a project worth US$ 16 million, to be completed within a year.
He therefore brought in specialists from Spain to open the Mediz plant, inaugurated in 1991 when the Soviet Union ended.
The company was soon privatised. Ahrorov, who was director, acquired a 40 per cent of stake in the business. Production developed very quickly, with output reaching 100 million syringes a year, rising to 250 million in the early 2000s, with considerable profits.
However, Ahrorov’s fortunes vanished after his son's divorce from his wife Lola, the youngest daughter of the then all-powerful President Karimov.
He was almost forced to leave the country, ending up in Spain with his whole family, and then moving to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he got into real estate.
When he finally returned to Uzbekistan, he found that his factory was no longer operational, “It was an abandoned place, like a museum,” he said, so he decided to try to make it work again, looking for other investors, like MedPharm, a company set up by the Uzbek Turkiston Bank.
In four months, working tirelessly, the facility reopened in 2020, and, working three shifts, was soon making profits again.
Ahrorov then decided to modernise the machinery left over from the 1990s, but the bank refused him credit. Eventually, the Prosecutor-General’s Office said that Turkiston Bank was under investigation for a series of false loans and other scams.
Once again, the syringe factory was forced to close, but the financial machinations are still unpunished, with no one held responsible.
Over the years, President Mirziyoyev made numerous appeals to Uzbek businesspeople abroad to return home to help build a "modern Uzbekistan," but Ahrorov said that the much-vaunted reforms have not touched the system; in fact, business has become much more corrupt and dangerous, even compared to the Karimov era.
“Corruption obviously did exist in 2003, but it wasn’t to the extent that we’re witnessing today,” Ahrorov said in the interview. “People were afraid back then because they would end up in prison for illegally getting loans from the bank. Now they are not afraid – they’re committing such crimes and getting away with it.”
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