A shadowy Uzbek firm with ties to the president’s family has scrambled to reanimate its dormant website after a recent RFE/RL investigation revealed it had secured more than $100 million in secretive state gas deals despite having a virtually imperceptible public business footprint.
Friends in high places come with lucrative benefits in Uzbekistan. For a phantom company with connections to the president’s son-in-law, these included tens of millions of dollars in opaque state contracts, a new RFE/RL investigation has found.
Three years ago, an unknown Uzbek company registered in an apartment emerged from nowhere to land more than $100 million in state contracts before vanishing again. A new RFE/RL investigation reveals the firm’s ties to the Uzbek president’s son-in-law.