The StAR Secretariat
1818 H street NW
Washington DC 20433
USA
CC: US
Department of State; US Department of Justice;
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, United
Kingdom
From:
Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, Le Mans, France;
Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights, Berlin, Germany
December 1, 2017
OPEN LETTER
We,
two Uzbek civil society organizations in exile, the Association for Human
Rights in Central Asia and the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights, write to
the organizers and participants of the 2017 Global Forum for Assets Recovery to
express our support to “Civil Society Statement for Global Forum on Asset
Recovery” and to call attention to the situation surrounding return of the
proceeds of corruption to Uzbekistan, a country that continues to be run by a
repressive, kleptocratic regime following the transfer of power following the
death of long-time autocrat Islam Karimov.
Hundreds
of millions have been stolen from the Uzbek people by the members of the ruling
regime, whose constituent members remain the same despite the ascendancy of new
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The
widespread siphoning off of public funds through bribery and corruption in
Uzbekistan has not been the fault of a single public official’s greed or poor
leadership, but is rather the product of the systemic and entrenched nature of
government corruption in the country, perpetuated by a network of public
officials that remains largely unchanged, and indeed, unchallenged.
Return
of the proceeds of corruption to the same government without safeguards to
prevent their theft once again is against the word and spirit of the UN
Convention against Corruption and is against the interests of people of
Uzbekistan – the true victims of the corruption committed by country’s ruling
elite. Those
countries currently holding assets that are the ill-gotten proceeds of
corruption in Uzbekistan who are considering repatriation of such assets to
Uzbekistan must first consider whether the conditions that allowed for
high-level bribery and money laundering in Uzbekistan have fundamentally
changed. To date, anti-corruption reforms that would prevent the repeated theft
of such assets have not yet been implemented in Uzbekistan. As such, an
unconditional return of ill-gotten assets to Uzbekistan (or any requesting
state without such reforms) will make the requested countries complicit in
continued corruption in the country of origin.
What happened in Uzbekistan?
Gulnara
Karimova, the daughter of former Uzbek President Islam Karimov, extorted more
than one billion USD in bribes from international telecom companies VimpelCom,
TeliaSonera, Mobile Telesystems and others in exchange for local licenses to
operate. Karimova received this amount through offshore companies and bank
accounts in a number of western European countries. In total, the bribery
scandal amounted to approximately 7% of the annual state budget of Uzbekistan and,
as such, has brought harm to Uzbek people, depriving them of public services
such as education, pension funds, and healthcare they would otherwise have received.
What made this possible?
The
absence of institutional integrity and policy mechanisms to prevent corruption
and bribery is a primary reason. Uzbekistan still lacks any regulation on
conflict of interests, does not make declarations of income by public officials
obligatory, and does not have a transparent and accountable system of public
procurement or allocation of state licences. Still today there are no independent
anti-corruption bodies; no independent judiciary, and no other institutional safeguards
against corruption.
Alongside
Uzbekistan’s institutional weakness, a culture of corruption prevailed. Under
former president Islam Karimov, high level public officials were instrumental
in facilitating the enrichment of the ruling Karimov family and, in exchange,
were enabled to enrich themselves. The government of Uzbekistan, was
operationalized to serve the interests of ruling elites, rather than the
interests of its citizens.
Have any of these conditions changed
and has anyone responsible been held to account?
No serious steps have been taken by
the government of Uzbekistan under the leadership of new President Shavkat Mirziyoyev
toward institutional reforms, with the only exception of a step taken towards
liberalization of currency exchange policies. Since the start of Mirziyoyev’s
presidency, there have been no demonstrable reforms to tackle corruption, to establish
rule of law, and to implement standards of transparency and
accountability.
In fact, the same high-level public
officials complicit in the theft of more than one billion USD by Gulnara
Karimova’s still occupy top government positions. Mr. Abdulla Aripov, who in
his past capacity of Chairperson of the State Telecommunication Agency
personally sanctioned the corrupt allocation of telecom licenses, has even been
promoted to Prime Minister. At least one additional figure involved in the
scheme, Rustam Inoyatov, Chairperson of the National Security Service, remains in
his position. No legal proceedings have been initiated to hold these and other
public officials to account.
The only individuals who have
been charged and sentenced, under an extremely non-transparent process, is Gulnara
Karimova herself and a few of her close associates who played exclusively
technical roles (as nominal owners of shell companies) in the schemes. The
trial and sentencing of Karimova and her associates transpired in violation of
internationally acceptable norms of due process. While Karimova and her
associates should without doubt be tried for this case, there is ample reason
to believe the case against her has been used to substantiate the government of
Uzbekistan’s claim for the ill-gotten proceeds of the scheme, and to ensure
that the current ruling elite is able to recapture these proceeds.
As a result, there have so far
not been any changes in Uzbekistan that would allow the safe return of the
assets in question.
If asset holding countries decide
to return the proceeds of this corruption back to Uzbekistan unconditionally,
the leading members of its administration will recapture more than one billion
USD will be taken under control by the same people who helped to steal these
assets. That would only perpetuate the cycle of grand corruption in this
country.
Why are we writing to the Global Forum on Asset Recovery?
GFAR, in practical terms, is not
an official decision-making forum for governments on repatriation of assets,
but is the most significant global event for policymakers to come together to
discuss such issues. As such, we have chosen to write this open letter to GFAR
in the hopes that policymakers will take the abovementioned issues into
account.
Here are our recommendations, which are based on the example of Uzbekistan,
to the sponsors, facilitators and participants of GFAR:
First: Stolen assets cannot to be
returned to countries like Uzbekistan unconditionally. Conditionality is not necessarily
against principles of state sovereignty. In the case of Uzbekistan, the
government is in violation of both international law and in violation of its
own laws, which exist on paper rather than in practice. International law,
which prevails in other such cases where, for instance, governments are accused
of war crimes or crimes against humanity, should prevail in cases of grand
corruption where the government is the primary sponsor and perpetrator of the
crime. There should be similar legal and policy provisions for crimes of grand
corruption and money laundering stipulated by international law, and adopting
conditionality in returning stolen assets to kleptocratic regimes would be a
step in this direction.
Second: Asset restitution is an
opportunity to challenge the impunity of corrupt ruling elites in countries
notorious for grand corruption and systemic human rights violations. The UN Convention against
Corruption provides for asset-holding states (countries of transit or
destination) to return assets to the countries where they were stolen (country
of origin). This provision should not be applied unconditionally. The process
of asset return must be conditioned on a legal judgement of a requesting state
(the country of origin) for their repatriation. This legal judgement must meet
the standards of due process to be accepted by a requested states, a standard
impossible to ensure if the requesting state fails to establish and enforce the
rule of law.
Third: Requested states should take into
account the institutional conditions that enabled the original theft of assets
from the country of origin, and whether these conditions have changed.
Requested states should also consider whether effective anti-corruption
mechanisms have been established, and whether these mechanisms are implemented
in practice.
Fourth: The decision to return the
assets should also be assessed from the point of view of the norms of
international law on human rights. A ruling regime that systematically abuses
the human rights of its own population and where torture in custody and prisons
is a routine practice cannot be credited to receive and manage stolen assets
that are the proceeds of corruption. We hope to be heard by the
sponsors, facilitators and participants of GFAR, and we ask that the example of
our country be taken into account.
A few words about ourselves:
The Association for Human Rightsin Central Asia (AHRCA), based in Le Mans, France, was established in 2006 by
Uzbek political refugee Nadejda Atayeva and colleagues. Since then, the organization
has provided assistance to 1,250 political refugees and victims of human rights abuses from Central
Asia. AHRCA promotes their cases pro bono within international mechanisms for human
rights. Over the last several years, AHRCA has
submitted 40 reports to
the EU and 11 reports to UN human rights mechanisms on the human rights
situation in Central Asia. E-mail: ahrca.org@gmail.com; : http://ahrca.org/; address: Centre MBE 140, 16, rue du Docteur
Leroy, 72000 Le Mans, France.
The
Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights (UGFHR), based in
Berlin, Germany, was established in 2010 by Uzbek political refugee Umida
Niyazova and colleagues. UGFHR specializes in monitoring and advocating for the
abolishment of state-orchestrated systems of forced labor in Uzbekistan’s
cotton industry, an issue that is fundamentally related to both human rights
and corruption. UGFHR also runs the news-website Eltuz.com;
Email: umida.niyazova@gmail.com; http://uzbekgermanforum.org/.
Sincerely Yours,
Nadejda Atayeva, Association for Human Rights in Central Asia
Umida Niyazova, Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights
