This house, the Château de Groussay in Montfort-l'Amaury, France, is owned by a close associate of Gulnara Karimova, Bekhzod Akmedov. Source: Wikipedia. This story began in 2012, when two associates of Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, tried, apparently on her order, to conduct a transaction involving an account at Lombard Odier bank in Geneva, Switzerland. Shokhrukh Sabirov and Alisher Ergashev were later arrested by the Swiss police on suspicion of money laundering.
This prompted criminal investigations and forfeiture cases targeting assets belonging to Karimova, who ended her extraordinary career as a powerful oligarch and socialite with house arrest in February 2014. She later found herself in prison after being convicted for extortion and embezzlement in 2015. The assets in question are being pursued by a number of jurisdictions, including, apart from Switzerland, Sweden, the United States and The Netherlands. In 2015, the US Department of Justice filed a civil case to forfeit $850 million of cash deposited in Swiss, Irish, Belgian and Luxembourg bank accounts registered in the name of Gulnara’s associates, alongside charging telecoms international Vimpelcom $795 million as a penalty for alleged bribery in Gulnara Karimova-related case. The total amount of Karimova’s assets seems to be even larger. In Switzerland alone, $700 million has been frozen and is being targeted by the Federal Prosecutor's Office (BA) of Switzerland.
Indeed, the Swiss authorities are about to confiscate these assets. On 22 May, the BA issued two penal orders leading to the confiscation of Karimova’s assets. Karimova’s lawyers have appealed the decision. If this confiscation process is completed, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs will start negotiations with the Uzbek government over the repatriation of these assets. In principle, the decision to return them has already been made by the Swiss government.
