Uzbek professor of international relations and critical minerals scholar Iqboljon Karabaev has been arrested and charged with espionage in Kazakhstan, according to a report from BBC Uzbek.

The 46-year-old, originally from Andijan, was teaching at Maksut Narikbaev University in Astana.

"On July 3, several people in civilian clothes came to his house in Astana and took him away, saying that he was accused of espionage," said a relative of Karabaev who spoke anonymously to the BBC.

The British public broadcaster said it contacted, but did not receive a response from, several official offices of the Uzbek government, in particular, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Consulate of Uzbekistan in Kazakhstan.

Maksut Narikbaev University also did not respond to the BBC’s questions.

A relative of the scholar, who lived in Astana with his wife and three children, told the BBC that when the security personnel were taking Karabaev from his home, they indicated that he was allegedly providing information to an employee of the Uzbek consulate in Astana, and Karabaev managed to tell his wife about their words.

The BBC said it managed to see the last scientific work of Korabaev, written in April and not yet published. It is called "Comparative legal, political and strategic narratives around important minerals in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan." It said a colleague of Karabaev stated that all information in the scientific work was taken from open sources.

In October 2024, Korabaev presented research entitled "Important raw resources as a new pillar of the geo-economic centrality of Central Asia". He wrote about the rise of China, supply chains that have become important due to the impact of pandemics and the increased international interest in Central Asia's critical raw materials (CRMs), including rare earth elements (REEs), in the context of the war in Ukraine.

Looking at rivalry between China and the West, the author says: “Describing Central Asia in the Western press as a counter force to China and as a part of Western economic strategies aimed at countering Chinese hegemony can lead to unrealistic expectations. As Vakulchuk (2021) has already stated, China has already become a part of the ecosystem of important raw materials that is being formed in Central Asia. China dominates the production of important raw materials in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, is Kazakhstan's main trading partner for these resources, and is expanding its participation in Uzbekistan."