Two British companies that officially declared themselves dormant to UK regulators won more than $35 million in procurement contracts from Uzbekistan’s state-owned Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Complex (AMMC), part of a broader pattern in which ten foreign firms collected over $200 million in AMMC tenders over three years — all potentially connected to a single individual, according to an investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
The AMMC, one of Uzbekistan’s largest industrial enterprises and a strategic state asset that was slated for a partial initial public offering in late 2025, awarded the contracts to companies registered across the United Kingdom, Georgia, Singapore and elsewhere. Despite their geographic spread, OCCRP’s investigation suggests the firms may all trace back to Grigory Khvan, identified as a former Vice-President of the Uzbekistan Table Tennis Federation.
Dormant on Paper, Active in Practice
Two UK-registered entities sit at the centre of the findings. Lemixton Solutions won at least 56 AMMC tenders worth $22.5 million since 2022, yet lists a single employee, has no official website and maintains no physical office in Uzbekistan. Golders Business secured contracts totalling $13 million and made more than 100 deliveries to the complex, while consistently filing financial reports with British authorities as a non-trading entity. Under UK law, dormant companies are barred from engaging in commercial activity or financial transactions without a valid justification.
The combined value of contracts awarded to these two companies alone reached approximately $35.5 million — a figure difficult to reconcile with their declared status.
Registry Changes and Forged Signatures
When OCCRP journalists began making inquiries in December 2025, records at UK Companies House underwent what the investigation describes as “urgent and strange” backdated amendments. Both firms, initially shown as owned by British nominees, were updated to list Khvan as the person with significant control — backdated to 2018. Within weeks, by January 2026, the records changed again, this time transferring ownership to Felipe Guerrero, a Colombian citizen, also backdated to 2018.
The investigation further found that electronic signatures belonging to employees of MoreGroup, a UK accounting firm, appeared on at least 13 AMMC contracts. Wendy Mary Ann Conroy, whose facsimile signature appears on Lemixton contracts worth $6.2 million, was removed as a controlling person just days before the most recent contract bearing her name was signed.
Perhaps the most striking allegation involves Ruairi Laughlin-McCann, a former MoreGroup employee, who discovered his signature on Golders Business contracts worth $1.4 million. He told OCCRP he had had no involvement with the firm for five years and had “absolutely not signed” the documents. He has since reported the matter to the City of London Police and the UK Serious Fraud Office.
The findings raise acute questions about the integrity of procurement at an enterprise whose partial privatisation was intended to attract international investors and signal Uzbekistan’s commitment to transparent governance of its state-owned sector. The AMMC’s contracting practices, the use of shell-like foreign entities, and the apparent manipulation of corporate registry records all point to systemic vulnerabilities that regulators in both Uzbekistan and the United Kingdom will face pressure to address.
