After running last week a list of the
worst-behaved sons of world leaders, "Foreign Policy" magazine
this week looks at the daughters.
Leading the way is Uzbek president's daughter
Gulnara Karimova, who was also appointed as the country's ambassador to the UN in Geneva:
[B]ack home, Karimova is likely being groomed as successor to her brutal dictator father and has used his influence to amass her own formidable financial holdings.
The consequences of crossing Karimova became clear in 2001 when she divorced her husband, an Afghan-American businessman with extensive holdings in Uzbekistan, and took their children out of the United States in violation of a court order. The unfortunate ex-husband’s Coca-Cola bottling factory in Uzbekistan was promptly shut down, three of his relatives were imprisoned, and 24 were deported at gunpoint to Afghanistan. In 2006, Karimova, whose business interests include most of Uzbekistan’s tea industry, reportedly sent hooded men with machine guns to shut down a rival company and liquidate their holdings.
She also has a
burgeoning music career.
-- Luke Allnutt