openDemocracy: The strange connections of Tashkent City’s “British investor”

Corso Solutions LP appears to be an unusual property developer. The Edinburgh-registered company has no website, no contact details and no obvious business activity. And yet it was named last autumn as a foreign investor on the Tashkent City project, a giant property redevelopment in the centre of Uzbekistan’s capital. openDemocracy has found that Corso Solutions has connections to an opaque international network that provides company formation services, including to apparent money laundering vehicles.[...]

According to the UK companies registry, Corso Solutions has not logged any activity or accounts since its formation. As reported by Scottish newspaper The Herald, the company should have disclosed its beneficial owner (“Person of Significant Control”) after new UK legislation on Scottish Limited Partnerships came into force in 2017. Concerns about this situation were raised in September last year. [...]

Corso Solutions was first mentioned in a September 2018 report by Uzbek media on investors in Tashkent City. Since then, we have been unable to find any information on the exact nature of Corso Solutions’ investment, and it is not mentioned on Tashkent City’s official website. When Radio Ozodlik contacted Tashkent City in October 2018 regarding Corso Solutions, an official responsible for foreign investment stated that information on approved foreign investors, including Corso Solutions, was a “commercial secret”. When we contacted Tashkent City project administration to confirm Corso Solutions’ role in the project in January and February 2019, we received no response.[...]

OCCRP and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists report that the GT Group has set up offshore corporate networks used by Russian organised crime, Hezbollah and the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel to launder funds and hide ownership. Companies House records that Ian Taylor has been disqualified as acting as a company director until 2021 under section 6 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 (Duty of court to disqualify unfit directors of insolvent companies).

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Al Jazeera: On the reform path: Uzbekistan opens up after years of isolation

Since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev took power in December 2016, following the death of Islam Karimov, who ruled the country since independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has been on the reform path.

The rule of law reform, aimed to enhance the transparency and accessibility of the allegedly corrupt courts, has been just one of the steps to improve Uzbekistan's image.

Faced with a collapsing economy, international isolation, and a growing number of unemployed youth following years of Karimov's misrule, the country had little choice but to open up. [...]

"Fairly quickly, he (Mirziyoyev) set a new tone. And that new tone has been the main factor driving change because the system has had to adapt both to the new president's expectations and to his willingness to make the state more responsive to citizen concerns," said Uzbek VOA journalist Navbahor Imamova, noting that her views shared here were personal and did not represent her employer's. [...]

"The most notable developments on human rights in the little more than two years of Mirziyoyev's presidency has been the release of approximately 30 or more high-profile political prisoners, the easing of some restrictions on the freedom of speech and assembly and in that area we've seen the emergence of a fairly dynamic media environment as compared to what used to exist," Steve Swerdlow, Human Rights Watch Central Asia researcher, told Al Jazeera. [...]

Forced cotton picking, obligatory for all public administration workers, medical and educational staff, students and schoolchildren has been abolished.

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The New York Review of Books: A New Dawn in Uzbekistan?

NATO officials have long confirmed that there are hundreds of Uzbek and Tajik fighters in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and many of them are now returning home to their countries of origin. Together with ISIS and the Taliban, these fighters are trying to create bases in northern Afghanistan and infiltrate back into Central Asia. In early March, ISIS released a video in which its fighters boasted of establishing a “caliphate” in northern Afghanistan. Another ISIS and Taliban goal is to capture Kunduz, a city on the Uzbek border that fell to insurgents last year but has since been recaptured by Afghan Army forces.  [...]

Everyone expected Mirziyoyev to continue the same repressive regime as his predecessor, but instead, he has surprised even his own countrymen. Under Karimov, the jails were packed with an estimated 10,000 political prisoners, and international humanitarian organizations were banned from visiting the country for years. Last year, though, a thaw became apparent when long-time political prisoners and journalists in detention began to be released from jail. This included one of the world’s longest-serving political prisoners, the journalist Muhammad Bekjanov, who was freed after eighteen years of hard labor. Releasing prisoners was possible only after Mirziyoyev dismissed his much-feared rival and powerful head of the secret police, Rustam Inoyatov. Since then, Mirziyoyev has removed other high-ranking officials, replacing them with political allies. [...]

After years of maintaining an aggressive posture toward its neighbors, Uzbekistan is using this week’s conference to project its image as a more friendly and responsible state. Already, Mirziyoyev has visited all the countries in the immediate region, promising to work with them closely. In March, he traveled to Tajikistan and pledged to scrap an unpopular visa system that prevented family visits on both sides. Uzbek officials have also stopped haranguing Kyrgyzstan for its political liberalism. All the Central Asian states have excessive apparatuses of centralized control and repression and are effectively still police states—with the exception of Kyrgyzstan, which has a parliamentary form of government and is the most democratic country in the region. Uzbekistan, by comparison, has a long road to reform. Only two dozen political prisoners have so far been released, and thousands of Uzbeks remain on a security blacklist as potential enemies of the state. The secret police and judiciary need a complete overhaul, and the press remains fully under state control. The country has never held a free and fair election.

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