Letters obtained by The Diplomat detail a failed effort to manipulate the U.S. sanctions system that has roots in the opaque political waters of Uzbekistan. The turbulence bubbled over into public view following the attempted assassination in October 2024 of former government official Komil Allamjonov.
The alleged jostling between rival camps is a twisty tale that stretches from Uzbekistan to Cyprus, to Dubai, and all the way to Texas.
A December 30 report from RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, Ozodlik, claimed that Ulugbek Shadmanov – the “cement king” of Uzbekistan – had been detained in Dubai earlier in the month. Shadmanov’s lawyers denied at the time that their client had been arrested.
On January 9, the London-based organization Detained in Dubai, which tracks and advocates for foreigners detained in Dubai, reported that Shadmanov, holder of a “golden visa,” had been “unlawfully extradited” from the UAE to Uzbekistan. Detained in Dubai characterized Shadmanov as a “successful businessman” and alleged that “[t]he Uzbek players who were targeting Shadmanov had paid substantial sums to U.S. lobbyists,” without citing a source.
Letters dated months before Shadmanov’s detention in Dubai, obtained by The Diplomat, however, paint a very different picture; a picture in which Shadmanov isn’t the victim being targeted, he’s a player in an ultimately failed effort to manipulate the U.S. sanctions system into punishing Uzbek officials belonging to a rival camp in the country’s internecine political conflict.
The Businessmen: Shadmanov and Mkrtchyan
Shadmanov is reportedly the 100 percent owner of the Cyprus-registered United Cement Group (UCG), Uzbekistan’s – and Central Asia’s – largest cement producer. His name does not appear on their website.
He is also often referred to as being close to Otabek Umarov. Married to Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s youngest daughter, Shakhnoza Mirziyoyeva, Umarov has spent several years as deputy head of the Uzbek State Security Service.
A high-ranking Uzbek source who spoke to The Diplomat claimed that Shadmanov is the “nominal owner of all assets and business of Otabek Umarov.”
According to remarks entered into the U.S. Congressional Record in March 15, 2024 by Texas Representative Wesley Hunt, “UCG acquired the Uzbekistan government’s stake in one of the country’s largest cement factories in early 2022 in what has been described as an ‘opaque’ transaction with no formal tender and a significant discount on the sale price. This acquisition by UCG has positioned the company to now control about 50 percent of Uzbekistan’s cement capacity.”
Hunt went on to allege that in this case, “We are seeing monopolization under the guise of privatization, to the benefit of Russia.” Hunt’s remarks did not mention Shadmanov directly, nor did they detail the alleged connection to Russia.
In the course of explaining just who Shadmanov is in their December 30 report, Ozodlik also reported that earlier in December a businessman named Ovik Mkrtchyan had filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office of Uzbekistan alleging that he had been illegally detained and tortured by the State Security Service at the behest of Shadmanov and his business partner, Stanislav Tsatskin.
According to Ozodlik’s source in the authorities, Mkrtchyan wrote in his statement that:
Shadmanov and Tsatskin, together with their accomplices from the State Security Service, held and tortured him for 85 days and demanded $70 million from him. In addition, Shadmanov and Tsatskin demanded that Mkrtchyan help collect dirt on Komil Allamjonov and Dmitry Li (director of the Agency for Prospective Projects under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan), including organizing the introduction of U.S. sanctions against these two individuals.
Mkrtchyan, among other business dealings, is the founder of Gor Investment Limited, an investment firm with offices in London and Tashkent, which counts among its Advisory Board prominent U.S. figures such as former Secretary of State and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of Energy and Governor of Texas Rick Perry, and former U.S. diplomat Thomas A. Shannon, Jr.
Filings with the British government’s Companies House, an executive agency that maintains a public register of companies, suggest that Mkrtchyan resigned as director of Gor Logistics Limited (which shares an address with Gor Investment and is named as one of its projects on the company’s website) in May 2010. In 2017, however, Gor Investment filed a “notice of individual person with significant control” naming Mkrtchyan, with Cypriot nationality at the time. An October 2021 filing noted a change of details for Mkrtchyan, listing his new nationality as Uzbek, and a November 2022 filing again updated his nationality to Armenian.
Ovik Mkrtchyan is not named publicly on the company’s website as of reporting, although two others with the same last name – Ornella and Ruben Mkrtchyan – are named as project managers.
The Letters: A Failed Plot
Letters obtained by The Diplomat in early November 2024 and reported on for the first time here alleged that Shadmanov had requested that Mkrtchyan leverage his connections, via Gor Investment, to Pompeo and others in the United States to get Allamjonov and Li added to the OFAC sanctions lists.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) administers and enforces U.S. economic and trade sanctions.
Allamjonov, until the end of September 2024, had been head of the Information Policy Department in Uzbekistan’s Presidential Administration, following several prominent posts in and adjacent to government, largely dealing with media. Allamjonov often worked alongside Saida Mirziyoyeva, the president’s eldest daughter. Li was tapped to head the National Agency for Prospective Projects in 2019.
Over the course of 2024, Allamjonov had been subject to an online smear campaign, including rumors that he’d been fired and had fled abroad. There were also several unsourced negative reports about Li. Months later, Allamjonov’s car was shot at in Tashkent – suggesting that when earlier attempts to discredit or punish him did not work, more extreme measures were employed.
Letters provided to The Diplomat by its source attest to an underhanded effort on the part of well-connected Uzbek individuals to manipulate the U.S. sanctions system in the course of pursuing a personal feud. This effort apparently failed, but that it was attempted reveals uncomfortable realities about the influence games and politics playing out in both Uzbekistan and the United States.
In a letter dated January 18, 2024 addressed to Mirziyoyev, a member of Gor Investment’s Advisory Board inquired about the January 17 detention of “GOR founder Ovik Mkrtchyan.” After commending Uzbekistan on the adoption of its new constitution – which had occurring the previous year following a referendum that lacked genuine debate – the author wrote, “I hope to see the same due process and rule of law be afforded to our associates in Uzbekistan.”
The letter, it appears, was ignored or never delivered.
The Diplomat attempted to contact Gor Investment but did not receive a reply as of publication.
More than three months later, in a letter dated April 2 on the letterhead of a prominent Washington, D.C.-based white shoe law firm, two more American individuals weighed in with their own missive to Mirziyoyev in regard to Mkrtchyan.
“We are… concerned that Mr. Mkrtchyan has been detained for over two months without formal charges,” the letter stated. The letter noted that one of the authors is a member of Gor Investment’s Advisory Board and also that the firm represented both the company and Mkrtchyan.
The Diplomat attempted to contact the letter’s authors but did not receive a reply as of publication.
In a much more detailed letter dated April 10 and also addressed to Mirziyoyev, a board member of Gor Investment and head of a Texas-based government relations firm referenced the other letters The Diplomat has seen.
“We are forced to contact you for the second time in regard to the situation involving our partner Mr. Ovik Mkrtchyan,” the letter began, after a statement of respect and congratulations on the Eid holiday and the conclusion of Ramadan.
The April 10 letter goes into great detail outlining the alleged detention in January 2024 of Mkrtchyan, and his daughter, by State Security Service officers on charges related to a matter that the letter said had been settled back in 2018.
“The true reason behind this issue is a conflict between Mr. Ovik Mkrtchyan on one hand, and two Uzbek businessmen Mr. Shadmanov Ulugbek [sic] and Stanislav Tsatskin on the other. The reason behind the conflict lies in the fact that Mr. Mkrtchyan did not comply with a request made by Mr. Ulugbek Shadmanov,” the letter writers claimed.
The April 10 letter continued with a summary of the conflict, stating that Shadmanov and Tsatskin had “demanded” that Mkrtchyan ask Pompeo and Shannon – as noted above, both members of Gor Investment’s Advisory Board and notable former officials in the U.S. government – “to assist in including two Uzbek nationals into the OFAC lists, and to commence their criminal prosecution.” The letter named the two Uzbek nationals as Allamjonov and Li (spelled Lee in the letter).
“After denying this request, Mr. Ovik Mkrtchyan found himself in a situation where all his projects started stalling and were basically put on hold,” the letter stated. In November 2023, the letter says that Tsatskin visited a business associate of Mkrtchyan’s and told him that “Mr. Shadmanov will personally destroy” Mkrtchyan’s projects.
“As a result we currently observe a critical situation that does not have any governmental nor legal status – a businessman is attempting to employ channels to destroy high government officials of the Republic of Uzbekistan, by contacting foreign institutions that have an ability to provide sanctions pressure, while placing his own interests above interests of the government; furthermore he is discrediting the government and intelligence agencies by utilizing short-sighted [State Security Service] officers,” the April 10 letter to Mirziyoyev concluded. “This ultimately discredits all success and progress that Uzbekistan has achieved under your command in the last years.”
If Mkrtchyan was detained on January 17 and held for 85 days, he would have been released on April 11 – the day after the April 10 letter was sent.
The Diplomat does not know what, if any, responses the letter-writers may have received from the Uzbek government.
A Victim of “the Office”
The Diplomat’s source, in sharing the letters in early November, characterized Mkrtchyan as a “victim of the office.”
“The office” refers to an alleged deep state-like organization in Uzbekistan that exerts pressure on businessmen and officials through various means, including manipulating Uzbekistan’s wild west blogosphere to carry out smear campaigns. The Diplomat’s source described it as a “state within a state” and alleged that it expropriated businesses via intimidation.
Umarov is rumored to be at the head of “the office.” In addition to being the president’s son-in-law, Umarov has been the deputy head of the State Security Service for several years. In a November 26 report, Ozodlik stated that “on the evening of November 25, it became known that Otabek Umarov had been dismissed from the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Presidential Security Service.” There has been no official comment on that report. Ozodlik’s earlier reporting suggested that Umarov, in his role at the State Security Service, “made extensive use of paid bloggers.”
In July, Ozodlik reported on rumors of a “war” between Allamjonov and Umarov, and cited a source claiming that Allamjonov had “had a hand” in exposing “the office” internally in the spring – after which a number of individuals connected to Umarov allegedly “fled to Dubai.”
Like Ozodlik, The Diplomat does not have any documents that directly link Umarov or Shadmanov to “the office,” or that prove its existence. But that’s the problem with conspiracies: there aren’t typically documents neatly laying out the details of the scheme.
What documents The Diplomat has seen, however, point to an alleged effort on the part of an Uzbek businessman – Shadmanov – to pressure another businessman – Mkrtchyan – into leveraging his American connections to punish a pair of Uzbek officials.
That the effort failed does not mean that it was never attempted or that it won’t be attempted again.