Uzbekistan and Switzerland signed a deal today in Tashkent on the return of the confiscated assets which belonged to the late president Islam Karimov’s elder daughter, Gulnara Karimova.

According to Ministry of Justice, the document stipulating the return of nearly $182 million to Uzbekistan was signed by Minister of Justice Akbar Toshkulov and the Ambassador of Switzerland, Konstantin Obolensky.

“These illegal proceeds made by some citizens of Uzbekistan and which were completely confiscated in 2012 by the Swiss Attorney General’s Office as part of a criminal case against Gulnara Karimova,” the statement said.

The money will be transferred to Uzbekistan through the Uzbekistan Vision 2030 Multilateral Trust Fund, created under the United Nations (UN).

An agreement was signed in Bern on August 16, 2022 between the countries on the return of confiscated illegal assets in the interests of Uzbekistan.

The agreement envisaged the return of $131 million to Uzbekistan. The signing of the new document, will bring the total amount of returned funds to $313 million.

The funds returned through the Uzbekistan Vision 2030 fund will be directed to socially significant projects in the interests of the Uzbek population, in particular for the public health and education

The total value of assets in France, the United States, Latvia and other countries which belonged to Gulnara Karimova and the criminal group that she led is estimated at almost $1.4 billion, or 15 trillion soums. Deputy Minister of Justice Muzraf Ikramov said back in 2022 fo which 1,400 schools could be built.

Gulnara Karimova was sentenced to 5 years of house arrest in 2015 and then transferred to a penal colony in 2019. In March 2020, she was sentenced to another 13 years and 4 months “for embezzlement of public funds and concluding transactions contrary to the interests of Uzbekistan, as well as seizure of someone else’s property by extortion on an especially large scale.”