The Karimova Case: A Trial Without the Defendant

On 27 April, the long-awaited trial in a major international corruption case opens at the Federal Criminal Court in the Swiss city of Bellinzona. At its center is Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzbekistan's first president Islam Karimov (1938–2016), and the Swiss banking sector's entanglement with her affairs. A detailed account of the case was published on Saturday by the authoritative Swiss financial and markets outlet Finews.com.

ℹ️ It is worth recalling at the outset that Karimova has been convicted multiple times in Uzbekistan and will remain in custody or prison until at least 2033. In 2015, while her father was still alive, Gulnara was sentenced to five years of restricted liberty; in 2017, she received ten years of imprisonment. In 2018, the custodial sentence in the second case was commuted to five years of restricted liberty, but in March 2020 she received a new sentence of 13 years and 4 months of imprisonment. According to her lawyer, the trials were conducted under opaque conditions — in some instances on the kitchen floor of her apartment — and defense counsel was barred from entering the country.

The story goes back almost twenty years, as Finews.com notes . According to the Swiss Office of the Attorney General (OAG), as early as 2008 Karimova had built a far-reaching network — known as the «Office» — that extorted bribes from international telecommunications companies seeking access to the Uzbek market. This is why Swiss federal prosecutors opened criminal proceedings against Karimova and her business partner as far back as 2012, on charges of corruption, participation in a criminal organization, and money laundering.

In 2015, a former employee of the Geneva private bank Lombard Odier came under investigation . According to prosecutors, between 2008 and 2012 he opened and managed bank accounts for individuals connected to the «Office», thereby helping to conceal the origin of the funds, the Swiss outlet reports. The bank itself is not accused of actively participating in money laundering — the question at issue is whether the institution took all necessary organizational measures to prevent such conduct by its employee. This is the legal concept of corporate criminal liability, under which several banks in Switzerland have already been sanctioned, including Banque Pictet & Cie, Credit Suisse, and Bank J. Safra Sarasin. Lombard Odier proactively reported the matter to the Money Laundering Reporting Office (MROS) in 2012 and cooperated fully with the authorities throughout.

The course of the proceedings has proved as convoluted as the underlying facts. For years, the two related cases were conducted in parallel by different prosecutors. It was only in May 2025 — more than a decade after the investigation began — that the Federal Criminal Court decided, contrary to the OAG's position, to consolidate them, since they rest on the same factual foundation.

The proceedings have been marked by several unprecedented steps. The charge of participation in a criminal organization was brought against Karimova and her partner only approximately ten years after the investigation commenced.

Most strikingly: for the first time in Swiss criminal justice history, the Federal Criminal Court traveled abroad to conduct hearings. In early 2026, the court held questioning sessions with Karimova in Tashkent — where she has been held in custody since 2014 — for the second time.

☝️ Those hearings, however, were conducted under severely restricted conditions, which constitutes a serious procedural complication, Finews.com reports.

Swiss judges were unable to put questions to Karimova directly; all questions were transmitted exclusively through the Uzbek Prosecutor General's Office. In addition, all participants were subjected to unusually strict confidentiality requirements under threat of criminal sanctions, which led defense lawyers to refuse to attend. This has given rise to serious doubts as to whether the statements obtained meet Swiss evidentiary standards and whether they will withstand judicial scrutiny.

The conditions of Karimova's detention in Uzbekistan also raise concerns that extend beyond the case itself, the outlet emphasizes . A UN human rights working group has previously classified the «Uzbek princess's» imprisonment as arbitrary and documented a number of violations of international procedural norms. Legal experts are now debating what impact this may have on the assessment and admissibility of the evidence gathered in the Swiss proceedings.

The physical presence of the defendants in Bellinzona also remains in question. Due to her imprisonment, Karimova is considered unlikely to appear in court in person, while the whereabouts of her co-defendant are unknown. This places the court before fundamental procedural dilemmas: whether the trial can proceed in absentia, or whether parts of the case will have to be separated once again.

Notably, cases of this kind seldom reach trial in Switzerland . In similar situations — including in other cases connected to Karimova's circle — defendants were typically convicted by means of penal orders issued directly by the OAG. This is only possible when the relevant facts are largely undisputed and the evidence is clear. In the present case, that does not appear to be so, and the OAG has been compelled to bring the matter before a court — where the investigation and all the accumulated irregularities may now be subjected to public scrutiny.

Predicting the outcome of the trial is extremely difficult, Finews.com write. Too many factors remain uncertain, and too many irregularities have accumulated over the years of investigation. It is unclear not only who will ultimately appear in the courtroom, but also which pieces of evidence will be deemed admissible, what weight they will be afforded, and how the protracted length of the proceedings and the numerous procedural complications will influence the final legal determination.