Uzbek ruler's daughter Gulnara Karimova in graft scandal
Gulnara Karimova is accused of belonging to a faction that stole assets worth about $HK501m
A vicious feud playing out within Uzbekistan's ruling family took a new twist when prosecutors announced that the clan's most flamboyant member faces charges of involvement in mafia-style corruption.
The news cements the precipitous downfall of Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's ageing autocrat, Islam Karimov. Until recently she was a businesswoman, a designer with her own line of jewellery, a diplomat representing her country at the UN, and an aspiring pop star courting international celebrities.
Now she faces a lengthy spell behind bars in one of Uzbekistan's notorious jails.
Karimova stands accused of belonging to a mafia faction that plundered assets worth about £40 million (HK$501 million), Uzbek prosecutors said on Monday. The announcement is the latest development in a year of feuding that - due to Karimova's trigger-happy Twitter finger - has played out in public.
In a series of scandalous tweets, Karimova accused her mother, Tatyana Karimova, and estranged younger sister, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, of plotting to turn her father against her - once even accusing them of dabbling in black magic. Both deny her allegations.
Karimova's social media antics so enraged her dictatorial father, who has ruled Uzbekistan with an iron fist for more than two decades, that he cut off contact with his daughter.
For the last six months, Karimova has been under unofficial house arrest in Tashkent, with all communication with the outside world severed - except for occasional messages smuggled out to journalists. Her UK-based son, Islam Karimov Jr, told the in July that he had not spoken to his mother since March, and that when he attempted to approach his grandfather, Karimov, he was turned away by armed men.
In recordings that emerged in August, she complained that she and her 16-year-old daughter, Iman, who is being held with her, were living in conditions "worse than dogs".
A trial in Tashkent may have become the least uncomfortable option for the Uzbek authorities: Karimova is also embroiled in international corruption inquiries into bribery and money-laundering that have become a source of acute embarrassment to the family - and to the country as a whole.
In March Karimova was named as a formal suspect in a money-laundering investigation in Switzerland.
She is also linked to a graft inquiry under way in Sweden, centring on shadowy payments made by the Nordic telecoms group TeliaSonera - which denies wrongdoing - to gain a footing in the lucrative Uzbek mobile phone market.
Domestic politics also played a role in Karimova's fall from grace. She has made little secret of harbouring political ambitions and, with her inept attempts to position herself as her father's successor, she made powerful enemies within Uzbekistan's security establishment.
With rivals jostling for position before a presidential election due next spring, they may have moved to neutralise her.
With Karimova facing the imminent prospect of a trial in Tashkent, her plight is likely to elicit little sympathy among ordinary people in Uzbekistan, where her flamboyant lifestyle and ruthless business practices have failed to endear her to the public.
A WikiLeaks cable once summed up the public mood towards the president's eldest daughter: she was, it claimed, "the single most hated person in the country".
