May 192010
 
El Pais’s article on Laporta and Karimova

Torture In Uzbek Prisons.

This letter was secretly passed from strict penal colony No. 64/33 (near the city of Karshi in the Kashkadarya region) in July or August 2009
and received by the group Human Rights in Central Asia in December 2009:

From Colony No. 64/33 we write, those who were imprisoned on false charges
and sentenced according to Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the
Republic of Uzbekistan.

There are 121 prisoners here imprisoned
according to Article 159. We all ended up here in different years. We
are all different people. Our characters are also different, but our
destiny is the same. Our destiny has been pleased to see what man could
never have imagined.

Looking at these masters and jailers it is
hard to believe that they were born to women. Born a human being should
remain a human being. And they are wild creatures and inhuman monsters.
The pain they caused us is impossible to describe. They rape us with a
club (stick), enema syringe with a red pepper; and beat on the heels
till they bleed.

These are the methods of violence they like.
This all seems not enough to them, and they come up with various new
methods of torture. They rape with sticks those who suffer from AIDS,
and use those same sticks to rape other prisoners. They laugh and say
with a jeer: “You all pray, call each other ‘brothers,’ and aren’t you
ashamed to infect each other with AIDS?”

In the medical unit for healthy people, they use syringes that were previously used for
patients with AIDS. A prisoner called Holmirza, who expressed
indignation, was forcibly given the blood of a prisoner with AIDS. Then
Holmirza was transported to another colony, and it’s still not known to
which one.

Dear friends! Mothers! Fathers!

Our torments
are increasing, not diminishing. The torturers threw aside all
restraints and became violent. They know that they will not answer for
this under the law, but do not know that they will have to give an
answer before God and his judgment. For certain reasons known to you, we do not write our names. Consider that the letter was signed by 121
prisoners.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Five_Years_After_Andijon_Events_Key_Questions_Remain_Unanswered_/2039096.html

at the right side of page,below multimedia.11.05.10 19:27

Spanish paper examines Barcelona FC’s links to Uzbek dictator
Uznews.net – Spain’s major El Pais newspaper has published an article entitled “Laporta’s Uzbek diva” which exposes financial and personal relations between the president of Barcelona FC, Joan Laporta, and the Uzbek president’s daughter Gulnara Karimova.

Here is the translation of the article, which is a bombshell for Gulnara Karimova, who is Uzbekistan’s ambassador to Spain and the UN Office at Geneva and her partner from Barcelona Joan Laporta.

El Pais, 9 May 2010

Laporta’s Uzbek diva

By John Carlin

It was difficult for Joan Laporta, the president of the FC Barcelona to believe that the gentleman sitting next to him at the table was speaking seriously. A Turkish acquaintance of his, Bayram Tutumlu, had spoken to him about the man a few days earlier in the theatre box of Camp Nou, the stadium of Barcelona. Tutumlu, an agent for football players, had said to him that the gentleman, of Uzbek nationality, represented a powerful company that wanted to carry on business with Barcelona.

Laporta was interested, and Tutumlu organised a meal at Route Veneto, a luxurious restaurant in the upmarket district of the Catalan capital. According to Tutumlu, the first reaction of Laporta when he saw the businessman from Central Asia, dressed in a slightly elegant way and with colours that were out of tune, was scepticism. “But: is it true that this uncle has pasta?” he murmured in Tutumlu’s ear in Spanish, a language that the Uzbek, Mirjali Jalalov, did not know.

The pleasant surprise for Laporta was to discover later that yes, he had money. Jalalov was the straw man for the most fascinating, attractive and rich Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan from 1990, and proprietor of a conglomerate called Zeromax, registered in Switzerland, whose companies operate in almost all the economic spheres of his country, from mining, to transport, to agriculture. Zeromax also controlled the strongest football club in Uzbekistan, FC Bunyodkor known by Uzbek fans as “the team of the daughter of the president”.

The meal at Route Veneto was on 16 May 2008. In the second week of August of the same year Laporta made his first trip to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, where he was received with honours of a head of state. In this and later visits later to the Asian country, his hostess was Gulnara Karimova, self-proclaimed “princess of the Uzbeks”, a woman with an extraordinarily broad curriculum vitae. Part Princess Diana, part Sarah Palin, part Bond girl, part Cruella de Vil. She is 37 years old, possesses a doctorate in Political Sciences and a masters from Harvard; she designs jewellery for the Swiss house Chopard; she has her own mark of fashion and of design, called Guli; she takes part in charitable projects charitable to develop woman and young people; she is a singer of pop, a role into which she changes her name into that of GooGoosha (on her web page, www.gulnarakarimova.com, it is possible to access her version of Besa me Mucho with Julio Iglesias), stories have been published on her in Vogue, Harper’s and Hello!, she has been photographed along with some of the most famous persons of the world (including Elton John and the ex-president of the United States, Bill Clinton). At the end of last year, Karimova, the business woman (Zeromax is the most diversified and biggest company in her country), was nominated by a magazine of Geneva as one of the 10 richest women of Switzerland, a country where she is an ambassador of Uzbekistan to the UN, with a fortune estimated in more (some of them say that much more) than five hundred million euros. In April of this year she presented her credentials to the king of Spain as ambassador of her country in Madrid.

Karimova also has been described by the magazine Foreign Policy, of the United States, as “one of the worst daughters of the world”. In an article about her published in this magazine, an analyst of Central Asia explained: “Zeromax is essentially one of the facades behind which Gulnara Karimova keeps on consolidating her control of all the sources of income in her country in any way that she considers to be necessary”.

Her father’s regime is considered by the principal international human rights organisations as one of the worst in the world. Apart from torture, murder and the use of intimidation as institutional means of persuasion designed to perpetuate the power and the wealth of the governing elite, what distinguishes Uzbekistan is the systematic abuse of the children, millions of whom have been forced to work as slaves in cotton fields, principal source of income of the “atrocious” “criminal state” of Uzbekistan, according to the last report on the country by Human Rights Watch.

President Laporta, who did not want to answer El Pais’s questions, seemingly did not take these considerations into account at the time Barcelona signed millions –worth agreements between the FC and Gulnara Karimova’s football team Bunyodkor. She has not answered questions from this newspaper either. The Catalan club sponsored by the agency of United Nations for the defence of the children (UNICEF), sealed an agreement of brotherhood with Bunyodkor during Laporta’s visit to Tashkent in August, 2008. But the money goes in the right direction. Bunyodkor, financed by Zeromax, has paid five million euros to Barcelona in exchange for two friendly games, one of which was played in January, 2009 in Barcelona; the return match, in Tashkent, it is still in the future. Three million euros more deposited to Barcelona after visits to Uzbekistan by three players of the club: Messi, Puyol and Iniesta, who took part in camps with young players of Bunyodkor.

Barcelona is the only foreign club that has commercial ties with the team of Karimova, but players of other important European clubs also have received large sums of money in exchange for blessing with Bunyodkor with their presence, including Cesc Fábregas of Arsenal of London and Cristiano Ronaldo (in December of last year) of Real Madrid. Rivaldo, the Brazilian player who played five years in the Barcelona, at present plays for Bunyodkor.

Among other famous

Gulnara is described as Islam Karimov\’s right hand

people who have been unable to resist the economic temptations of Karimova are the singers Julio Iglesias, Rod Stewart, and Sting. There was a fuss in the British press when it became known at the end of last year that Sting, known – as is Barcelona – for his affiliation with humanitarian causes, had accepted between one and two million pounds sterling to sing in Tashkent. “Why is Sting accepting money from a dictator, through the daughter of the dictator?” The Guardian asked, perplexed as Sting had suggested that the gig had been sponsored by UNICEF, which UNICEF denies roundly.

How is the Uzbek dictatorship? Veronika Szente Goldston, expert in Central Asia at Human Rights Watch, declares: “We classify Uzbekistan as among the most repressive governments of the world. Almost at the same level as Burma or North Korea. It is a hell for human rights”.

Especially well-known was the case of the city of Andijan, in 2005, when a motorized unit of the army opened fire against demonstrators and killed hundreds of men, women and children. The international community has called for an independent international investigation, but to today the Government has denied the request and done nothing to clarify the facts.

An investigation that did come to fruition in 2002, was a forensic analysis of two victims of the regime requested by the British embassy. The conclusion was that the two had been boiled alive. More systematic is the practice of torture. Surat Ikramov, who heads the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists of Uzbekistan, says that the operativniki, the colloquial name for the state police, “see torture as a normal part of their work in a system designed to extract confessions and to create fear among the population”.

The United Nations and Amnesty International condemned in reports published last year “the persistent deterioration” of the human rights situation in Uzbekistan. The US State Department, whose military use Uzbekistan as a logistics bridge for operations in Afghanistan with the cooperation of the company of Gulnara Karimova, could not avoid joining the general condemnation of the Uzbek regime. In its most recent report on human rights, the Department of State was sorry about the situation in Central Asia in general, and in Uzbekistan in particular, laying special emphasis on the state system of forced labour by children in the cotton industry.

A thorough report (one of many) by the Environmental Justice Foundation entitled Slave Nation states that at least a million children, the youngest 10 years old, are annually taken out of school in September by the police and bound to be employed, as were slaves in the south of the United States in the 19th century, in cotton fields. It is very hard work and every child must fulfil a daily quota in kilos. Many of them live far from their homes during the harvest, installed in squalid camps. There is malnutrition, many fall ill. The fields belong to the State, whose chiefs take fat profits.

Uzbekistan is the third largest cotton exporter of the world and it takes in a billion euros per year by selling this product, principally to Asia. (Several big Western companies have boycotted Uzbek cotton).

Andrew Stroehlein, an expert on Uzbekistan at the respected think tank International Crisis Group, based in Brussels, says that this speaks of “a massive system of corruption, almost surely the biggest example of systematic abuse of children, directed by a state, in the world”. Zeromax, according to Stroehlein, is one of the companies that prosper from cotton, the source of more income for the Uzbek regime.

Interviews with persons in the United States, United Kingdom and Belgium who know at first hand the commercial operations of the Uzbek regime, including exiles that fled the country being afraid for their lives, indicate they treat the president Islam Karímov as the head of a mafia consisting of approximately twenty families whose target is to steal everything that exists to steal in this country of 28 million inhabitants.

Craig Murray, the British ex-ambassador who arranged the post mortem examination of two boiled alive persons and author of the book “Murder in Samarkand”, points to Karimova as the regime’s manager for extracting the money that “the cruel and greedy family of Karimovs squeezes from the people”.

Gulnara Karimova is the right arm of his father. “Her control of Zeromax depends completely on the support of the state apparatus, all agencies of which are at her orders,” said an Uzbek exile who knows closely the deals of the conglomerate with Joan Laporta and FC Barcelona.

Also, according to an Uzbek person that knows her very well, she is “chaotic, temperamental and capricious: a bad-mannered girl who becomes mad if things do not go exactly as she wants”. The fury of Karimova has its price. Scott Horton, an American lawyer who has been employed for the World Bank at Uzbekistan, says that the consequences of not succumbing to her acquisitive caprices can be pernicious. “If she goes so far as to perceive you as an enemy, the consequence is that you are declared a criminal, they imprison you, torture and they even kill”.

In the opinion of some foreign analysts, the target of Karimova is to succeed her father in the presidency. An Uzbek who knows her very well differs: “Her plan is to extract all the money that she can from Uzbekistan and to live a life of glamour in London, Hollywood, Geneva, Madrid and Barcelona.”

Part of the offer of glamour consists of associating

with the most glamorous football club in the country, FC Barcelona, whose president did not want to speak to El Pais about his relation with her, but, according to sources near him in Barcelona, they have the “closest” connection. On the one hand, they have been seen often in, among other places, Tashkent, Barcelona, Geneva and Milan, where they came together at Fashion Week last October. On the other, there is the financial benefit that has obtained to Barcelona and Laporta from his approach to the dubious company that she controls, Zeromax.

The law firm Laporta and Arbós acted on behalf of Zeromax last year in its attempt to buy the Real Sports Club Majorca at the beginning of 2009. Laporta tried to receive a commission that, in case the operation had been carried out, would have brought him approximately four million euros. The mediation of Laporta in this case was harshly criticized in the media, which led to the resignation of several managers of Barcelona, due to the perception that he had taken advantage of his charge as president of Barcelona with the goal of enriching himself.

Bayram Tutumlu, who met Laporta years ago and a few weeks ago withdrew a judicial complaint against him for failing to make a payment, said of the president of Barcelona: “He is obsessed with money. Where he sees it, even if it is inside a swimming pool full of sharks, he throws himself.”

The most serious problem that several former managers of Barcelona see, some of them associated in their day with Laporta, is that he has thrown the club to the sharks; he has done a serious damage to the image of the club by having associated it brotherly and commercially with Bunyodkor, the soccer expression of the mafia state and children’s bully over which the family Karímov exercises iron control.

FC Barcelona is admired in the whole world not only because of its football, but also for having disdained the offers of big multinationals and to have chosen to show on its T-shirt the name of Unicef, “the agency of United Nations that takes as a target to guarantee the fulfilment of the rights of children”, as it is defined officially.

On the web page of FC Barcelona identical feelings to those of UNICEF are expressed. “FC Barcelona is more than a club for many persons of the rest of the Spanish state; they see in Barca a firm defender of rights and democratic freedoms…”

Thanks to the connection between Laporta and Karimova, the extension of the united and humanitarian globalization of Barcelona to a regime that is in the first line of the rapists of human rights of the world has provoked the anger of all those that fight so that the situation of Uzbekistan will be more known in the world, and that international pressure gets to the Karímov regime.

Craig Murray, the British ex-ambassador in Uzbekistan, expressed it this way: “I am absolutely horror-stricken. It is like having collaborated with Adolf Hitler to promote a football team in Berlin during the thirties. Really it is amazing, even in the money crazy world of football, which has its eyes so closed to morality”.

Singer Sting repented, after the press was against him, of his Uzbek connection and admitted that president Karímov had a “horrifying” reputation in the field of human rights, a declaration that provoked the fury of his friend Karimova and drove to the prohibition on playing his songs on Uzbek radio.

Joan Laporta keeps silence on his friendship and his commercial relations with the clan Karímov. What keeps on realizing well is the role of his club as banner of the best human values. In an interview with El Mundo last January, 16 months after the Uzbek regime first received him with great pomp and gratitude, Laporta, who has political aspirations, declared, without the most minimal irony: “Barca personifies the idea that it guides to the freedom to the oppressed people.”

http://uznews.net/news_single.php?lng=en&sub=usual&cid=31&nid=13688

The son of «metallurgical baron» Fattakh Shodiev had grand wedding in Monaco

19.05.2010 12:42 msk

Ferghana.Ru

Fattakh  Shodiev

Fattakh Shodiev – the member of Eurasian Bank Board of Directors, co-owner of ENRC PLC (Eurasian Natural Resource Corporation) and IMR (International Mineral Resources), the member of MSIIA Board of Trustees. He was born and grew up in Uzbekistan.

On May 7-9 Monaco hosted the grand wedding of the son of Fattakh Shodiev, the richest metallurgical baron. Despite the fact that it has been over one week, Ferghana.Ru feels responsible to report about this grand event.Mr. Shodiev – says Gazeta.Ru – is the richest Russian citizen, billionaire; according to Forbes, his wealth is estimated at 2 billion US dollars. Allegedly, the business of Mr. Shodiev is linked with Kazakhstan. Many people mistakenly believe he is Kazakh although Patokh Shodiev is Uzbek. On the other hand, the relations between Shodiev and Uzbekistan, its leader Karimov and crown princess Gulnara, are tense. Therefore, Mr. Shodiev prefers not to visit Uzbekistan.

The closest friends and partners of Patokh Shodiev are Alexander Mashkevich, the President of Eurasian Jewish Congress and Alidjan Ibragimov, the board member of Eurasian industrial association. The alliance of Shodiev-Mashkevich-Ibragimov is referred as “Eurasian three” and periodically suspected in many things. Independent on Sunday newspaper reported that “Kazakh government de facto belongs to them; they own land and many enterprises”. The Prosecutor’s office in Brussels unsuccessfully tried to find Mr. Shodiev guilty in money laundering – Gazeta.Ru continues.

According to Gazeta.Ru, Sabir Shodiev lives in London, Chelsea and few years ago the police issued him speed ticket for driving 140 miles per hour at Hampshire highway.

The wedding of Sabir Shodiev was held in Sporting – the recreation and trade center in Monaco, including famous Jimmy’z night club, few restaurants and big concert hall. The walls were decorated by over million (1 200 000) roses as the gift for the bride. The cost of the flowers were 250 000 Euro.

Wealthy people usually marry women from their own circle, especially in the East. According to Gazeta.Ru, the bride of Sabir Shodiev is also Uzbek and the daughter of businessman Anvar Gulyamov, based in Moscow. The family is very noble: the forefather of Anvar Gulyamov is famous Uzbek writer Gafur Gulyam.

The wedding was also attended by wealthy Russians: Alidjan Ibragimov and Alexander Mashkevich, brothers Mikhail and Boris Zingarevich (co-owners of Ilim Palp), Gavriil Yushvaev, Grigory Surkis (the President of Ukrainian football federation) and disgraced billionaire Telman Ismailov. The list of guests also included lawyer Pavel Astakhov, actor Gennady Khazanov, and composer Igor Krutoi, also living in Monaco.

Maxim Galkin and Nikolay Baskov were the masters of the ceremony. The main star of the night was Jenifer Lopez. Some guests affirm she received $2 million as honorarium while other people say it was only $1 million. Jenifer Lopez was singing for about 40 minutes and later she was replaced by American singer David.

The best moment of the night was the speech by 90-year old father of Mr. Shodiev. He said he had 64 grandchildren. Few moments later the cousins of groom Sabir sang a song for the newlyweds. The guests one more time evidenced the unity of this clan, Gazeta.Ru reports.

According to Uzbek traditions, the day after the wedding is followed by “the day of the bride”. The guests gathered for wedding lunch at the Empire hall of Hotel de Pari. It was discovered that national traditions of Uzbekistan are very hospitable. The musicians dedicated national Uzbek song to every single guest – something like “dear Anatoly Vasilievich has come…” (Anatoly Vasilievich Torkunov, the President of MSIIA, was also there).

On the following day few private planes headed to Moscow where Alexander Mashkevich organized reception in the honor of President of Israel.

Ferghana.Ru source indicate that the wedding was attended by over 600 people from Uzbekistan only.

http://enews.ferghana.ru/news.php?id=1706&mode=snews

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