French authorities are investigating a money laundering case that targets Gulnara Karimova, the Uzbek leader’s daughter, among others, a judicial source said on Friday.
The glamorous eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Karimova was educated at Harvard and is closely watched as a possible successor to her 75-year-old father.
The source, who wished to remain anonymous, said a French probe was opened in February into “money laundering by an organized gang” and “corruption of a foreign official,” in a case allegedly involving Karimova.
Photo: AFP
The case centers around real-estate, including a villa in the south of France, the source close to the case said.
Karimova has become the public face of her ex-Soviet country that borders Afghanistan, and until recently served as its permanent representative in the UN in Geneva.
The 41-year-old has denied any ambitions to replace her father.
However, earlier this year, she posted critical tweets of Uzbek Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Azimov — considered to be one of the most influential officials serving under Karimov — prompting speculation of a struggle between the two would-be successors.
Karimova also runs her own jewelry and clothing lines, heads a number of charity projects and is also known as a pop star under the name of GooGoosha.
She has released a pop duet with French actor Gerard Depardieu, who has also agreed to star in a historic serial penned by Karimova.
However, since last year, her name has been mentioned in a massive money laundering probe against Swedish-Finnish telecoms giant TeliaSonera.
Swiss public broadcaster RTS has said it received information indicating that a probe into the matter by the Swiss public prosecutor’s office implicates Karimova directly, although she has yet to be notified officially of any charges.
Four people close to her are meanwhile already officially under investigation and Bern has to date frozen about 800 million Swiss francs (US$845 million) in assets in connection with the case, RTS reported.
Karimova has lashed out several times at Western media reports criticising her as a money-grabbing tyrant or as the wannabe pop star daughter of a dictator, accusing them of using her for “target practice.”
DISPUTED WATERS: The Philippines accused China of building an artificial island on Sabina Shoal, while Beijing said Manila was trying to mislead the global community The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) is committed to sustaining a presence in a disputed area of the South China Sea to ensure Beijing does not carry out reclamation activities at Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Reef), its spokesperson said yesterday. The PCG on Saturday said it had deployed a ship to Sabina Shoal, where it accused China of building an artificial island, amid an escalating maritime row, adding two other vessels were in rotational deployment in the area. Since the ship’s deployment in the middle of last month, the PCG said it had discovered piles of dead and crushed coral that had been dumped
Experts have long warned about the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI) going rogue, but a new research paper suggests it is already happening. AI systems, designed to be honest, have developed a troubling skill for deception, from tricking human players in online games of world conquest to hiring humans to solve “prove-you’re-not-a-robot” tests, a team of researchers said in the journal Patterns on Friday. While such examples might appear trivial, the underlying issues they expose could soon carry serious real-world consequences, said first author Peter Park, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specializing in AI existential safety. “These
The most powerful solar storm in more than two decades struck Earth on Friday, triggering spectacular celestial light shows from Tasmania to the UK — and threatening possible disruptions to satellites and power grids as it persists into the weekend. The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun — came just after 4pm GMT, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. It was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm — the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged
Using virtual-reality (VR) headsets, students at a Hong Kong university travel to a pavilion above the clouds to watch an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated Albert Einstein explain game theory. The students are part of a course at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) that is testing the use of “AI lecturers” as the AI revolution hits campuses around the world. The mass availability of tools such as ChatGPT has sparked optimism about new leaps in productivity and teaching, but also fears over cheating, plagiarism and the replacement of human instructors. Pan Hui (許彬), a professor of computer science who is leading