On October 26, an arbitral tribunal of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) issued its decision in an international arbitration case brought against Uzbekistan by Turkish national Mehmet Zeki Obuz and other claimants. According to the Ministry of Justice, the tribunal rejected all claims filed against the state, ending proceedings that lasted more than five years. The dispute concerned a food-industry enterprise, and the claimants relied on the 1992 bilateral agreement between Uzbekistan and Turkey on the mutual promotion and protection of investments.
Key Takeaways: The ICSID tribunal rejected all claims by Mehmet Zeki Obuz, Sevde Yilmaz, Xyuriye Obuz and the Turkish company Obuzlar Gıda, which is being wound up, against Uzbekistan. The tribunal was constituted in February 2022, and hearings on the merits were held in Washington from July 1 to July 10, 2024. The decision is final for the disputing parties.
The legal and economic background centres on investment protection: the claimants invoked the 1992 treaty and took a dispute involving a food-industry enterprise to international arbitration. Open sources do not specify which measures by Uzbekistan were challenged or how much compensation the claimants sought. Uzbekistan’s interests were represented by the Ministry of Justice and the international law firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle (Curtis); Gazeta previously reported that Curtis opened an office in Tashkent in November 2025.
According to the Ministry of Justice, the tribunal found all claims against the state unfounded. The ICSID registry records the case as concluded, but the decision includes a separate opinion by one of the arbitrators appointed by the claimant. The texts of the decision and the separate opinion could not be found in open sources. In 2007, the Xalq so‘zi newspaper reported that Mehmet Zeki Obuz had been sentenced in Uzbekistan to 16 years in prison on charges including evasion of customs payments, VAT and excise tax, as well as embezzlement and misappropriation of budget funds; the publication also reported that he arrived in Uzbekistan in 1995, was one of the founders of the Sundus joint venture and became its director general in 1998.
Although the full text of the decision has not yet been made publicly available, the ICSID arbitral tribunal’s decision is final for the disputing parties. Further attention is expected to focus on publication of the decision and separate opinion, and on how the outcome may affect Uzbekistan’s approach to investor-state disputes. According to official information, the state’s interests were fully defended in the international arbitration.
Source: www.gazeta.uz