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A prominent Uzbek businessman with documented ties to the family of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is facing civil and criminal proceedings in Turkey over allegations that he acquired a luxury Bodrum hotel complex through a fraudulent transaction following the suspicious death of its owner — claims that generated sustained negative coverage in the Turkish press during the week of 16 June 2021.
The Allegations at the Centre of the Case
The businessman at the heart of the controversy is Batyr Ikramjanovich Rakhimov, 55, formerly the owner of Tashkent’s Paxtakor football club and the Uzbekiston hotel, and the controlling figure behind Kapital Holding, which encompasses Kapitalbank, an insurance company and a non-ferrous metals mining operation. Rakhimov is also known across CIS countries as “Botir Alyuminiy” (Botir Aluminium) for his early-2000s involvement in aluminium trading and his ownership of a tungsten mine in Jizzakh.
The allegations were brought to public attention primarily through Victoria Yasemin Uras, a US citizen and daughter of the late Atilla Uras, the former owner of the Paramount Hotel — a luxury resort complex in the Bodrum region. In an interview with Turkey’s Zanka TV, conducted by journalist Ferit Atay and subsequently republished by dozens of outlets, Victoria Uras stated that her father had leased the Paramount Hotel to Rakhimov while he was still alive. She alleges that in the summer of 2018, shortly after her father’s death under circumstances she describes as suspicious, Rakhimov’s associate Jihon Eksikoglu occupied the hotel premises “with a Turkish army tank.” She further alleges that the property then passed into Rakhimov’s control.
The mechanism of the alleged acquisition, as described by Victoria Uras, involved Rakhimov’s Russian-speaking driver, identified only as Andrey, who she claims signed a cheque for $47 million on the day of Atilla Uras’s death and registered the hotel as a gift to Rakhimov. When the cheque was subsequently examined, she says, it proved impossible to clear. Victoria Uras told Turkish media she is pursuing the case with three lawyers and has also filed a complaint with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A second complaint before the Bodrum Criminal Court, also attributed to Victoria Uras, alleges that Rakhimov — who had been managing the hotel’s operations — removed company documents and valuables from a safe in Atilla Uras’s office after the owner’s death in 2018.
Turkish media also reported Victoria Uras’s claim that Rakhimov formalised Turkish citizenship under the name “Bakhtiyor Ikromoglu.” Ozodlik, the RFE/RL Uzbek service that published the original report, notes that no final judicial ruling had been issued on any of these allegations at the time of publication.
The Sedat Peker Connection and Broader Turkish Coverage
The renewed attention to Rakhimov in Turkey coincided with a series of explosive video disclosures by Sedat Peker, a 51-year-old Turkish organised crime figure who had fled the country and was giving interviews from abroad about criminal networks. Peker’s statements brought Rakhimov’s name into broader circulation in the Turkish press, where he was described as an “Uzbek businessman” and as someone “close to the Mirziyoyev court.” The Turkish outlet Karar.com noted a 2017 event at the Paramount Hotel attended by Hollywood actress Nicole Kidman, publishing a photograph of Kidman alongside Rakhimov and Diyora Usmonova. The same outlet lamented that Turkey’s Bodrum region, once regarded as a model of transparent business, had become a venue for money laundering by criminal figures — a characterisation that, in context, was directed at the situation surrounding the Paramount Hotel.
In her interview, Victoria Uras also named Russian-Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov as a business partner of Rakhimov. Ozodlik does not independently verify this claim, and it is presented here solely as an allegation made by the claimant.
Political Proximity and Business Background
The accountability dimension of the case is sharpened by Rakhimov’s documented proximity to Uzbekistan’s political establishment. His wife, Diyora Usmonova — whose first husband, Bobur Usmanov, a nephew of Alisher Usmanov, died in a Tashkent road accident in 2013 — is a niece of First Lady Ziroatkhon Mirziyoyeva. The couple announced the birth of a son in 2017. In October 2020, both attended the Tashkent premiere of the film Mendirman Jaloliddin, presented by the president’s eldest daughter Saida Mirziyoyeva. Ozodlik also states it holds a photograph of Rakhimov together with Oybek Tursunov, the president’s son-in-law.
An anonymous source who told Ozodlik they had met Rakhimov at a Tashkent wedding in April 2021 said he was living in Tashkent with his family and that a “green light” had been given to his business activities — a claim Ozodlik attributes to the source without independent verification.
Rakhimov spent much of the preceding decade living in the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. His earlier career included ownership of Kapitalbank, which by June 2009 held assets of $205 million and was ranked ninth among Uzbek banks in 2001. His brother Bakhtiyor Rakhimov, whom Batyr described in a 2006 interview with the Russian-Uzbek magazine Elita Obshchestva as his primary and most trusted business partner, was reportedly detained during the 2010 campaign against wealthy businessmen that followed President Islam Karimov’s public declaration that Uzbekistan would have no oligarchs.
A separate documented episode: Swedish prosecutorial records cited by Ozodlik indicate that in February 2012, Rustam Kopaysinov, then general director of the Paxtakor football club of which Rakhimov was president, wrote an official letter of support to help a Yuriy Zhukovsky obtain a Schengen visa. Zhukovsky was subsequently charged in the Swedish town of Strömsund with shooting an Uzbek imam.
What Remains Unresolved
The Turkish court proceedings were ongoing at the time of Ozodlik’s report, and no verdict or formal finding of liability had been issued against Rakhimov. The allegations of fraudulent acquisition, occupation of the hotel, removal of documents and Turkish citizenship under an assumed name are claims advanced by the claimant and reported by Turkish media; they have not been adjudicated. No response from Rakhimov or his representatives to any of these allegations is recorded in the source material. The precise current status of the Paramount Hotel and of the Turkish proceedings is not established by the available reporting.