Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

A major scandal has erupted around the Uzbek-U.S. carmaking joint venture GM Uzbekistan.

RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, known locally as Ozodlik, reports that GM Uzbekistan General Director Tohirjon Jalilov was detained on April 29 along with several other members of the company's management and finance department.

Prosecutors investigating alleged fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement by the leadership of the GM Uzbekistan car factory have extended their investigation to all business partners of GM Uzbekistan that delivered spare parts or provided other services to the company. Ulughbek Rozikulov, an Uzbek deputy prime minister who also chairs a domestic automobile-industry association, was also questioned by prosecutors, and a number of senior GM Uzbekistan executives (including the GM Uzbekistan director-general) remain in detention. The factory has suspended production while the investigation continues.

Ozodlik learned that Jalilov is suspected of participation in an alleged scam in which GM Uzbekistan vehicles meant for export to Russia never made it farther than Shymkent, Kazakhstan, just across the border from Uzbekistan. Investigators believe the vehicles reportedly sat idle for some time before being "re-exported" back to Uzbekistan. According to the website Eltuz.com, there are some 10,000 GM Uzbekistan vehicles in Shymkent parking lots.

GM Uzbekistan sells vehicles to Russia at less than half the price the cars and trucks sell for in Uzbekistan -- about $6,400 in Russia but as high as $18,000 in Uzbekistan.

The accusation is that the automobiles were returned to Uzbekistan, where they were sold at the Uzbekistan price, with executives pocketing the difference in price.

The scheme was said to have been uncovered by Uzbek President Islam Karimov. Ozodlik reported that Karimov made an official visit to Russia on April 25-26 and, during his time there, he discovered there were delays in the shipment of GM Uzbekistan vehicles to Russia. After his return to Uzbekistan, Ozodlik reported, Karimov couldn't get satisfactory answers about proceeds from auto exports to Russia and therefore ordered an investigation.

Among more than 10 people detained since Jalilov was taken into custody are Jalilov’s son, two directors of the GM Uzbekistan finance department, and several people involved in the export of GM Uzbekistan cars to Voronezh, Russia. There are warrants out for the arrest of two members of Uzbekistan’s National Security Service who are suspected of having helped cover up the illegal business.

There is also the matter of who else might be involved in Uzavtosanoat, the company that controls Uzbekistan’s 75 percent stake in GM Uzbekistan. Besides Jalilov, other chairmen of Uzavtosanoat are Finance Minister Rustam Azimov and Deputy Prime Minister Ruzikulov, the latter of whom oversees vehicle construction in Uzbekistan.

GM Uzbekistan was formed in 2008, taking over the operations of UzDaewooAvto, a South Korean-Uzbek venture. U.S. carmaking giant GM controls 25 percent of GM Uzbekistan, and Uzavtosanoat controls the remaining 75 percent.

Based on material from RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service

A sound not heard for many years just came across Uzbekistan's southern border -- the sound of rocket fire from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's Ariana TV reported that the Taliban attacked an Afghan border post in the Kaldor district of Balkh Province during the night of May 2. Ariana showed General Mir Hayma Haidari saying the attack was beaten back and there were no casualties among Afghan government troops.

That probably won't be much consolation for Uzbek President Islam Karimov. He knows where Kaldor district is located: just east of Uzbekistan's southernmost city of Termez, the gateway to Afghanistan.

Rockets from fighting in Afghanistan hit Termez in September 1997. When the Taliban captured the Afghan border town of Hairaton, in Kaldor district, in August 1998, it sparked panic in the Uzbek capital. Hairaton is on the other side of the river that divides Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, the Amu-Darya. Karimov personally went to Termez just days after Hairaton's capture to assess the situation.

Uzbekistan and President Karimov had to live with the Taliban at the doorstep for three years. Karimov was among the happiest of people when the United States started its military campaign in Afghanistan in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 and chased the Taliban from the area.

But in the last few years the Taliban has made its way back and spread out across northern Afghanistan. Afghan fighting has reached the borders of both Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan's Central Asian neighbors, in recent months.

Uzbekistan had been spared because there was relative calm in Balkh Province. Until this year. Since March, government forces in Balkh have been busy clearing districts of Taliban fighters. But as of May 2, the Taliban was clearly still present in the district of Kaldor.

Balkh Governor Atta Mohammad Nur said in March that there were not only Taliban militants in his province but fighters loyal to the extremist group Islamic State. These latter militants might be remnants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, sent to northwestern areas of Afghanistan by their leader, Usman Ghazi, after he swore allegiance to Islamic State and before Ghazi was killed in November 2015.

Uzbekistan has another complication to consider. There is a long-standing rivalry for power in Balkh between Governor Nur and Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum. For much of the last 30 years, the provincial capital -- Mazar-e Sharif -- was Dostum's stronghold.

Dostum has come to personally lead operations against the Taliban in provinces to the west of Balkh (Baghdis and Faryab) four times since the summer of 2015, an effort on which the two former warlords have professed unity. However, competing rallies by supporters of Nur and Dostum in Mazar-e Sharif in late March raised tensions in the city and worried officials in Kabul. So there is the danger of infighting between Nur and Dostum that would leave the border with Uzbekistan vulnerable on the Afghan side.

This already happened once, in 1997, when Abdul Malik, one of Dostum's commanders, rebelled and chased Dostum from the region. Malik then announced he was siding with the Taliban and invited the militants into Mazar-e Sharif, where Malik then switched sides again and massacred large numbers of Taliban fighters.

Dostum eventually ousted Malik and regained control, but his greatly weakened forces were no match for the Taliban, who returned in August 1998 and had little trouble capturing Mazar-e Sharif.

Further complicating the situation for President Karimov is that during the 1990s Uzbekistan supported Dostum, providing Mazar-e Sharif with free electricity, and possibly much more. Tashkent saw Dostum as the guardian of the gates to Uzbekistan.

One couldn't blame Nur for wondering not only about Dostum's intentions, but Tashkent's as well.

Uzbekistan's side of the border has been fortified and refortified over the course of two decades. Reportedly, Uzbekistan just sent more forces to the border with Afghanistan in April after Uzbek border guards were involved in shootouts that left three Afghan nationals dead. There is no possibility of any force making a successful incursion across the Amu-Darya into Uzbekistan.

But the May 2 rocket attack on an Afghan border post could very well feed the Uzbek government's paranoia about its own population and potential enemy sympathizers. Uzbekistan's citizens know what that means; many remember well the mass arrests of the late 1990s when the Taliban last made its way to the Uzbek border.

With contributions from RFE/RL Uzbek Service Director Alisher Sidik