Uzbek president’s daughter accused of looting museum

Dissident who obtained key and took pictures says Karimova used nation’s art to furnish her palatial home in Switzerland

The daughter of the president of Uzbekistan has been accused of looting treasures from the country’s national museum to furnish her palatial home in Switzerland. Gulnara Karimova, 41, had been based on the banks of Lake Geneva as her country’s ambassador to the United Nations.

But Sefer Bekjan, a 53- year- old Uz- bek dissident, accessed the house with a key he claims was given to him by housekeepers and spent a week living there and documenting its contents — some of which he claims were stolen.

Among the items photographed and published on Bekjan’s blog are gold and silver jewellery, ornate oriental rugs, a Mercedes, a Bentley, and an 18th century, jewel- encrusted Quran.

He also claimed to have uncovered more than 60 museum artworks, in- cluding rare paintings by celebrated Uzbek artists. Bekjan took photographs of himself in the villa, holding Pomegranate, a still life by Lev Reznikov, who died in 2003. Reznikov’s son Igor said the painting had been sold to the Uzbekistan Art Museum in 1990. “It’s a museum item,” he said. “It should be in a museum.”

As a fashion designer, diplomat, pop singer and businesswoman, Karimova was one of Uzbekistan’s most promi- nent individuals, but she now believes her mother and sister are part of a plot to discredit her. She took to Twitter to vent her fury in November after Uzbek TV and radio stations imposed a media blackout, and accused unspecified enemies of trying to poison her.

She has accused her 75- year- old dictator father’s feared security service of giving Bekjan the key, in an effort to further smear her name.