Uzbekistan's big crime game

The trials of Tashkent's most notorious criminals go on in a blur between reports of torture in prison and incredibly mild sentences. With other prominent figures, fugitives abroad, appearing together with local politicians in the stands of major sporting events.

Tashkent (AsiaNews) - Nearly a year after the great ‘40 days of assault’ raid in Tashkent, the trials and appeals against Uzbekistan's most notorious criminals remain in a rather confused and contradictory phase, from protests over torture in prison to pressures of all kinds on the judiciary, with interventions by relatives and politicians linked to the ringleaders even within the police organs.

The trail of Salim Abduvaliev, ‘the rich man’ sentenced to only six years and held in a place unknown even to his closest relatives, has been lost, but other criminal ‘authorities’ in Uzbekistan also escape the actions of the investigative bodies and the courts. For example, Gafur Rakhimov (known as Graf, the ‘Count’), Salim's main adversary, and his nephew Ravšan Mukhiddinov, sheltered abroad but well known in the stands at major sporting events such as the Olympics or Paris Saint-Germain matches, even alongside political figures such as Otabek Umarov, brother-in-law of the President of Uzbekistan Šavkat Mirziyoyev.

In recent days, 36-year-old Saidaziz Saidaliev, known as ‘Saidaziz Medgorodok’ (‘of all countries’), who had been in prison since last summer and was sentenced in August to 20 years in prison, now on appeal, was brought back to the courtroom in Tashkent. Together with 28 of his associates, Saidaziz regulated a vast system of corruption and influence in all institutions of Uzbekistan and many other countries. For the 17 counts of the indictment, the boss admits to ‘having committed some abuses’, but expects to prove his innocence in most cases. His behaviour in prison has already led him to solitary confinement twice, leading to cries of ‘persecution and torture’ by the guards.

Saidaziz Medgorodok is, moreover, very close to Salim ‘the rich man’ Abduvaliev, recognising him as ‘a father’, who has limited his sentences thanks to the complicity of the Uzbek authorities, and there are now fears of similar favourable treatment for Saidaziz and his accomplices, in order to support the smuggling traffic from China, which is very active on the Uzbek and Kyrgyz routes. Acting as a go-between between the various criminal groups would be his nephew Mukhiddinov, internationally wanted since 2007 and already arrested twice in Istanbul and Dubai, only to lose track of him again, and who has earned the title ‘head of the Brothers’ group', one of the definitions of the “criminal syndicate of Eurasia” ruled by Rakhimov.

Mukhiddinov recently thanked his presidential brother-in-law Umarov on Instagram for his support of Uzbek sportsmen, sport being one of the favourite areas of the Central Asian mafias. The authorities in Uzbekistan continue to keep all information about these characters and their trials absolutely confidential, which are only partially open to journalists, unlike those in Kyrgyzstan, who want to demonstrate their resolute action against the local mafias.

Kyrgyzstan's greatest success was the killing of one of the other ringleaders, Kamči Kolbaev, on 4 October 2023, triggering the start of major cleansing operations and excellent arrests, which now seem to be dissipating into adjustments that the public cannot understand. Another prominent Uzbek criminal, Bakhtiyor Kudratullaev, known as Bakhty Taškentskij, has issued an appeal to the authorities and the judiciary to ‘moderate the punishments’ to all other accused, who are ‘only trying to do good for their people’.