Daughter of former Uzbekistan president faces Swiss trial

[ad_1] GENEVA (AP) — The daughter of a former president of Uzbekistan was going through a trial in absentia beginning Monday in Switzerland in reference to alleged bribery and money laundering involving belongings value a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars}.

Gulnara Karimova , the daughter of former President Islam Karimov, is behind bars in Uzbekistan because the trial opens in a Swiss federal felony court docket within the southern metropolis of Bellinzona. It’s set to run by Might 22.

Swiss prosecutors say Karimova developed and ran a criminal offense ring referred to as “The Workplace” that concerned a number of dozen individuals and a number of firms. She is accused of depositing a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars}’ value of funds “of felony origin” in Switzerland and overseas, and arranging for secure deposit bins for the deposit of money, jewellery and different valuables of felony origin, the prosecutors stated.

Grégoire Mangeat, one among her protection attorneys, stated in an e-mail that Karimova was being prevented from leaving the “jail colony” the place she has been detained in Uzbekistan to attend the trial.

“We are going to search the complete and full acquittal of Gulnara Karimova,” he stated.

Uzbek information outlet Podrobno described Karimova’s presence within the Swiss courtroom as “just about unattainable” because the 53-year-old was already serving her sentence in Uzbekistan.

It stated that Karimova had been moved to a girls’s penal colony in Uzbekistan’s Zangiota area, on the outskirts of the capital, Tashkent, in early 2025.

Karimova was indicted three years in the past in Switzerland together with a former director-general of the Uzbek subsidiary of a Russian telecommunications firm for crimes allegedly dedicated between 2005 and 2013.

That was throughout her father’s tenure. He led the Central Asian nation for over a quarter-century till his death in 2016. Karimova had beforehand labored in Geneva in reference to the United Nations, and benefited from diplomatic immunity.

Karimova has confronted a sequence of trials after a primary conviction in Uzbekistan eight years in the past, and is serving a 13-year sentence for organizing a felony group, extortion and embezzlement.

In November 2024, Swiss prosecutors introduced the indictment of Swiss personal financial institution Lombard Odier and a former worker on allegations they'd a “decisive position in concealing the proceeds of the felony actions of ‘The Workplace.’”

Lombard Odier, in an e-mail, stated the prosecutor doesn’t allege that the financial institution knowingly or deliberately engaged in cash laundering, “however quite raises claims regarding alleged organizational shortcomings in prevention measures, which the financial institution firmly contests and can defend in court docket.”

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