Corruption schemes and offshores: How the family of President Mirziyoyev uses Octobank to launder Russian funds

Corruption schemes and offshores: How the family of President Mirziyoyev uses Octobank to launder Russian funds

Although the owner of the Uzbek Octobank is formally listed as the bank’s chairman of the board, Iskandar Tursunov, who owns 99.16% of the shares, in fact, the beneficiaries of Octobank are the family of the country’s current president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

This is his daughter Saida Mirziyoyeva and son-in-law Oybek Tursunov. Both of them occupy a very high position in the state power of the country - Saida Mirziyoyeva is the first assistant to the President of Uzbekistan, that is, her father, and Oybek Tursunov works as the first deputy head of the Administration of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, that is, his father-in-law. All this gives the presidential family the opportunity to concentrate both political and economic power in the country in their hands, eliminating the dissatisfied with the help of the power bloc of Uzbekistan.

Octobank

Until August 2023, Octobank was called Ravnaq-bank, and its main beneficiary was Sarvar Fayziev, who sold his stake to Iskandar Tursunov. It is known about Fayziev that he is the owner of the Intran Service company, which trades fuel from Russian oil refineries in Uzbekistan. In addition, it should be noted that at the time of the sale of Ravnaq-bank, 212 billion, or 80.5%, of the entire loan portfolio of 263 billion soums were listed as problematic. Immediately after the change of owners and name, Octobank simply wrote off these loans. Also, according to the results of 2022, the bank had losses of 8.54 billion soums, 2023 was also unprofitable.

As of the end of August, the bank’s ownership structure is as follows.

The new shareholder of the bank, Iskandar Tursunov, is a very closed person. It is not even known whether he is a relative of Oybek Tursunov, the president’s son-in-law, or whether they just have the same last name. His professional portfolio includes work in the British Kreative Kafe Limited, which he headed. The company’s field of activity is information technology, liquidated on July 9, 2024. Iskandar Tursunov was its director, which indicates that he is a resident of the UK. Judging by the latest report, the company did not shine with any special financial indicators.

After changing its name and owner (owners), Octobank has increasingly become involved in scandals involving servicing Russian money. In particular, this concerns the laundering of Russian capital and its removal from sanctions through the bank’s cooperation with online casinos, payment services, and dubious cryptocurrency exchanges.

Oybek Tursunov and Alisher Usmanov

In this regard, it is worth mentioning that the person who is called the real beneficiary of Octobank – Oybek Tursunov – is associated with the Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov.

In 2019, Promadik Invest, in which Tursunov’s share was 93.4%, acquired 35% of Kapitalbank’s shares. In November 2021, Tursunov increased his stake in the bank’s authorized capital to 50%.

Promadik Invest is a company registered in 2007. The authorized capital is 399 million soums. The main activity is indicated as rent and leasing of agricultural machinery and equipment. 95% of the company’s shares belong to Tursunov Oybek Batyrovich, the remaining 5% - to Muradov Ismail Fazilovich, indicated as the head of the company.

In January 2022, Tursunov sold part of his shares in Kapitalbank to Telecominvest, a subsidiary of a conglomerate owned by Alisher Usmanov. Tursunov was then removed from the list of Kapitalbank affiliates.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Usmanov was included in the sanctions lists of Western countries. In March 2022, he sold his shares in Telecominvest and Finance TCI to long-time associates and former top managers of his holding, Irina Lupicheva and Boris Dobrodeev. Dobrodeev is creating a marketplace service (delivery, online store, etc.) Uzum in Uzbekistan, the main one of which is a company from the UAE.

Officially, at the end of 2022, Tursunov sold Kapitalbank shares on the stock exchange through the TCI Finance. According to the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, as of February 1, 2023, Kapitalbank was the largest private bank in the country by assets and the seventh by assets among all banks in Uzbekistan.

Business of Oybek Tursunov

After Mirziyoyev came to power, Tursunov founded at least nine companies involved in banking and real estate. One of the most famous is the Uzcard payment system.

In May 2020, Oybek Tursunov acquired 75% of the shares of the Unified All-Republican Processing Center, which manages the Uzcard interbank payment system, while the remaining 25% of the shares remain with the company itself. Uzcard is the national payment system of Uzbekistan. As of 2019, it serviced about 17 million Uzcard bank cards and provided acquiring services for 29 banks in Uzbekistan and 40 payment aggregators. The purchase of Tursunov’s shares coincided with the government’s decision to transfer pension contributions from the Humo payment system of the People’s Bank of Uzbekistan to Uzcard cards.

A few months later in 2020, Tursunov transferred his stake to five national banks of Uzbekistan (Uzmillibank (51%), Asakabank (6%), Ipotekabank (6%), Uzsanoatkvarilishbank (6%), Alokabank (6%)), which soon transferred their Uzcard shares to the State Assets Management Agency (UzGAMA).

In October 2022, UzGAMA sold the entire package for 210.1 billion soums to four individuals. Three of them contributed shares to the new legal entity IMC-Capital. The sole founder of IMC-Capital is Berill Holding Company Limited, registered in the United Arab Emirates with an authorized capital of $ 1,000. IMC-Capital LLC was registered in Tashkent on August 31, 2022. The current authorized capital is 212.7 billion soums. The scope of activity is non-specialized wholesale trade.

It is also known that Oybek Tursunov was the head of two companies in the UK: O&B TRADING LTD (the company was liquidated in 2011) and Dav Invest Ltd (liquidated in 2010)

Oybek Tursunov also owns one of the country’s largest wholesale markets, Abu Sahiy, which was previously controlled by the son-in-law of the previous president, Islam Karimov, Timur Tillyaev.

Oybek Tursunov: family

In addition to being the son-in-law of Uzbek President Shavat Mirziyoyev and married to his daughter, Oybek Tursunov also has a number of other influential relatives.

Oybek Tursunov’s father, Batyr Tursunov, comes from the Interior Ministry, where he headed the counterterrorism department. After brief troubles under Mirziyoyev’s predecessor, Karimov, Batyr Tursunov quickly rose through the new president’s security bloc.

After the National Security Service was reorganized as part of Mirziyoyev’s reforms, Batyr Tursunov became deputy head of the new National Guard, which the president gave many functions. In 2020, Tursunov became first deputy head of the State Security Service. Oybek Tursunov’s brother, Ulugbek, also holds an influential position today, serving as first deputy chief of the Tashkent police.

Oybek Tursunov’s wife, Saida, as already mentioned, is the eldest daughter of the President of Uzbekistan and actually holds the second position in the state, being her father’s personal assistant. Saida Mirziyoyeva is compared in the independent press to the daughter of the former President of Uzbekistan, Gulnara Karimova, who was arrested due to illegal schemes and the transfer of funds abroad.

Octobank, cryptocurrency exchanges, payment systems and Russian casinos

Octobank appears in connection with the withdrawal of Russian money in several investigations. In particular, this concerns payments from Russian Promsvyazbank, Gazprombank, VTB, MTS Bank, MIN Bank (in 2023 merged with the state-owned Promsvyazbank) and Russian Standard Bank. According to the message from the TG channel "Payment Shield", this concerns money passing through the VAVADA casino. The main money traffic is from Russia, Octobank is used to write off money from Russian issuers.

In addition, Octobank is used to withdraw funds from the UzNext crypto exchange, which is controlled by Dmitriy Lee, who is the “overseer” of the country’s cryptocurrency market and the payment systems through which movement occurs, including cryptocurrencies.