The Department for Combating Economic Crimes under the General Prosecutor's Office has exposed a large-scale corruption scheme within the Plant Quarantine and Protection Agency, implicating senior officials. The agency's press service reported the development.
Investigative operations revealed that a group of agency employees had established unofficial tariffs for processing import documentation for business entities. The scheme allegedly involved systematic extortion of bribes in exchange for expedited or favorable treatment.
During an event on protecting entrepreneurs' rights, citizen G.U. was caught red-handed receiving $1,000 for promising to include a Turkish company, Y.T., in the register of foreign exporters through his contacts at the agency. The arrest was made with material evidence.
Further pre-trial investigation uncovered additional details. G.U. and chief specialist M.G. allegedly conspired to fraudulently obtain 2.9 million soums ($230) for issuing import quarantine permits to LLC S.S. for importing timber from Russia and tomatoes from Turkmenistan.
A total of 10.9 billion soums ($870,000) was deposited into two bank cards of intermediary G.U. via P2P transfers from citizens. Of this, he reportedly directed 1.6 billion soums to payments, cashed out 6.1 billion soums and passed them to responsible agency employees, while using the remaining 3.1 billion soums for personal expenses.
Analysis of 91.7 billion soums ($7.3 million) flowing through treasury accounts of the agency and its subsidiaries revealed that payments totaling 14.9 billion soums were processed through plastic cards of 759 citizens. Further tracing showed that 174 of these cardholders were agency employees, and 34 were their close relatives.
Criminal proceedings have been initiated under Articles 168 (Fraud) and 211 (Bribery) of the Criminal Code. Investigative actions are ongoing.
Earlier, the department uncovered an organized group of former officials from the Migration Agency and employment agencies. In one instance, suspects allegedly received $90 million illegally for sending workers to South Korea. Over 800 victim complaints are currently under review.
Source: www.gazeta.uz