Rustam Azimov was once seen as a potential future president of Uzbekistan but after several months of being made a scapegoat for the country's economic problems, he has reportedly been removed from his post as deputy prime minister.
Uzbek media broke the news of Azimov's dismissal on June 6, roughly six months after former Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev was elected president.
After longtime President Islam Karimov's death was announced at the start of September 2016, there was much debate over who would succeed the only president Uzbekistan had ever known as an independent country.
Mirziyaev and Azimov were seen as possible successors, with the head of the National Security Service (SNB), Rustam Inoyatov, acting as kingmaker.
In the period between Karimov's death and the December 4 presidential election, it appeared all three men worked together to preserve an image of stability in Uzbekistan.
Mirziyaev was sworn into office on December 14 and relieved Azimov of the post of finance minister the next day, but Azimov remained a deputy prime minister in charge of macroeconomic development, structural reform, management of foreign investment, education, and science.
In January, Mirziyaev criticized Azimov for the failure of the bank-card payment system in Uzbekistan, whereby salaries, pensions, and other payments are deposited directly into banks and people are expected to withdraw money from automatic teller machines. State media reported on a pensioners' protest in the southern city of Denau, where elderly people complained they could not access their pensions reliably using the bank cards they had been given.
It was a rare event in a country where protests are broken up quickly and organizers taken away by police, and another indication Azimov's days in government were probably numbered.
At a special government meeting on investment on May 29, Mirziyaev lashed out at the country's ineffective banking system and bankers, questioning why a promised $2 billion investment from Turkey had failed to materialize.
Mirziyaev laid the blame on Azimov. "If Azimov, working in Tashkent, had controlled these matters from top to bottom, this wouldn't have happened," Mirziyaev said.
Mirziyaev's choice of words show his reputed disdain for urbane bureaucrats who work in offices; as prime minister, he was known for traveling around Uzbekistan, visiting factories and farms.
After the dressing-down on May 29, Azimov requested that he be released from his post, saying he was tired of taking the blame for all of Uzbekistan's financial woes.
The Gazeta.uz website reported that Azimov was put in charge of the state export-import insurance company Uzbekinvest.
The post of chairman of the Central Bank remains vacant following the May 23 death of longtime head Fayzulla Mullajonov, but it appears unlikely Azimov will be named as his replacement.
Azimov had been in the Uzbek government since 1998 -- always involved in finance, and including two stints as finance minister -- after spending the first years after Uzbekistan's independence as the country's point man dealing with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
His replacement as deputy prime minister is Jamshid Kuchkarov, who was serving as deputy finance minister.
