The elder daughter of Uzbekistan’s late President Islam Karimov was questioned recently over money-laundering accusations by Swiss prosecutors while under house arrest in Tashkent, according to a lawyer who attended the meetings.
The fate of Gulnara Karimova has been shrouded in mystery since she was detained in her country in February 2014. More questions arose about her whereabouts and condition in September, when she didn’t attend the funeral of her father.
On Dec. 9 and 10, however, two Swiss prosecutors were allowed to meet with Karimova for a combined 23-hour interrogation in the Uzbek capital, according to Grégoire Mangeat, a court-appointed lawyer and chairman of the Geneva Bar who is representing her in the Swiss probe.
“She was in relative good health but her security is not at all guaranteed. She is confined to a small annex at her former house in the center of Tashkent. She’s banned from communicating with the outside world, be it her children or her own lawyers,” the Wall Street Journal cited he as saying.
“But the conditions under which she is held, make it extremely hard, even impossible, for her to defend herself,” Mangeat added.
Mangeat said Karimova told him that she was never prosecuted in accordance with any formal procedure in Uzbekistan.
