An arbitration tribunal at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) on Oct. 26 dismissed all claims brought against Uzbekistan by three Turkish nationals and a Turkish company over a food-industry business, the Ministry of Justice said.
The ruling in the case of Mehmet Zeki Obuz v. Uzbekistan is final for the parties to the dispute. The proceedings had lasted more than five years.
The claimants were Obuz, Sevde Yilmaz, Hüriye Obuz and Obuzlar Gıda, a company that was in liquidation. ICSID registered their request on June 4, 2021.
They relied on a bilateral agreement on the reciprocal promotion and protection of investments that Uzbekistan and Turkey signed in 1992. It is unclear from publicly available materials which measures taken by Uzbekistan the claimants challenged, or how much they sought.
The tribunal was constituted in February 2022. Hearings on the merits were held in Washington from July 1 to 10, 2024.
Uzbekistan was represented by the Ministry of Justice and the international law firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle (Curtis), which opened an office in Tashkent in November 2025.
Background: In 2007, the newspaper Narodnoye Slovo reported that Obuz had been sentenced in Uzbekistan to 16 years in prison on charges including evasion of customs duties, value-added tax and excise tax, and embezzlement and misappropriation of budget funds. The newspaper said he arrived in Uzbekistan in 1995, became a co-founder of the joint venture Sundus that year and its director general in 1998.
