An obscure company linked to the Uzbek president's family secured more than $100 million in secretive state contracts, including for delivery of overpriced natural gas to the country's largest cement producer, an RFE/RL investigation has found.
The lucrative government contracts secured by the shadowy firm, Ultimo Group Limited, highlights how political insiders -- including relatives of President Shavkat Mirziyoev -- and their associates profit from what critics call endemic cronyism at the highest levels of the Uzbek government.
The investigation by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service has found that associates of Mirziyoev's son-in-law are linked to Ultimo Group, a virtually unknown company that was awarded a government contract to sell at least $36 million in overpriced natural gas to Uzbek cement giant Qizilqumsement -- state-owned at the time -- despite having no business record.
Documents obtained by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service also show that Ultimo Group received more than $66 million from the state gas-transit monopoly Uztransgaz and that the company imported nearly 1 billion cubic meters of gas from Turkmenistan.
The investigation found that Ultimo Group is connected to a byzantine network of companies operated by associates of Mirziyoev's son-in-law, Otabek Umarov, a sports executive and Mirziyoev's deputy security chief. Umarov is married to Mirziyoev's daughter, Shahnoza.
A central figure in this network is Azizjon Kamilov, a confidant of Umarov who serves as head of the Uzbek Judo Federation and deputy head of the country's Olympic committee.
Umarov is also widely seen as a behind-the-scenes power broker among political and economic elites in Uzbekistan.
Despite its sudden and lucrative emergence, Ultimo Group remains a corporate phantom. It has no functioning website or public profile and is co-owned by a pensioner with no evident business experience.
RFE/RL sought comment from Umarov and multiple Uzbek government agencies but none responded in time for publication. Mirziyoev's office also did not respond to queries.
A Secretive Gas Deal
Ultimo Group was incorporated in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, in March 2021 and officially registered at a residential apartment.
Its founding shareholders were Dilyor Kayumov, who had been a member of a group of expatriate Uzbek supporters of the president, and Tuhfat Anvarkhujaev, whose father served in Uzbekistan's state security service.
About one month after it was founded, Ultimo Group signed a state procurement contract with Qizilqumsement, which was 86 percent owned by the government at the time, though reporters could find no record of other bids for the contract.
An RFE/RL analysis of the contract found it was worth at least $36 million in gas deliveries and that Qizilqumsement, which has since been privatized, may have paid a 50 percent premium above the rate it could have received from the state.
Why Qizilqumsement would overpay to acquire gas from a middleman remains unclear, especially considering a 2019 government decree making Uztransgaz the sole direct supplier of natural gas to key consumers.
Written inquiries to Qizilqumsement and Uztransgaz went unanswered as of publication. Anvarkujaev said information about Ultimo Group's profits constituted a "commercial secret."
Uztransgaz also made at least eight wire transfers totaling $66.6 million to Ultimo Group from January-September 2022, bank records show, under a commission agreement whose details remain shielded from the public.
Including the more than 955 million cubic meters of natural gas that Ultimo Group imported from neighboring Turkmenistan, the company was involved in natural gas transactions totaling nearly $200 million, an RFE/RL analysis found.
The Vanishing
There is no evidence that Ultimo Group has conducted any business on the Uzbek gas market over the past 18 months after its initial lucrative state contracts.
Founding shareholder Kayumov, who did not respond to a written inquiry sent to his Instagram account, has transferred his 50 percent stake in the company to his 67-year-old mother, who has no prior business record.
The other founding shareholder, Anvarkhujaev, who was photographed together with Kamilov, has kept his 50 percent stake in Ultimo Group.
He declined to be interviewed by RFE/RL but said in e-mailed comments that he had no relationship to Umarov while describing his relationship with Kamilov as "friendly." He said Umarov and Kamilov have "nothing to do" with Ultimo Group.
Ultimo Group is currently "engaged in investment projects in the oil and gas sector" but is no longer importing gas, Anvarkhujaev said.
Ultimo Group Limited's website, meanwhile, remains under construction more than three years after it was founded.
