The Uzbek Prosecutor-General's Office has denied a report that Gulnara Karimova, the disgraced daughter of the late autocrat Islam Karimov, checked into a luxury hotel in Dubai after being released from Uzbek state custody. The office told RFE/RL on October 3 that she "is serving her sentence in Uzbekistan according to the law".

The news server reported on the same day that a person giving the name Gulnara Karimova who turned up with an entourage and security guards booked rooms in a Dubai hotel. Its report was based on an image of data on the hotel’s internal guest-information system sent by an anonymous source. RFE/RL even attempted to contact Karimova by calling her room - a woman answered the phone and hung up when asked if she was Gulnara.

The report followed an unconfirmed Instagram account supposedly belonging to Karimova’s daughter, Iman Karimova, which carried a message that “Mom is home”. Iman Karimova is currently residing in London.

Karimova was for years seen as her father’s heir until she was found to be the central figure in international corruption investigations. Court documents compiled by Swedish prosecutors asserted last year that Karimova used tactics of intimidation to wrest control of a major telecoms operator and turn it into a cash cow that she could draw on at her whim.

Four years ago, shortly after the bribery probe was launched, Karimova disappeared from the public eye and was placed under house arrest.

In September last year, the Uzbek Prosecutor-General's Office said it was seeking to freeze $1.5bn worth of Karimova’s assets in 12 countries. In total, the Uzbek authorities claim Karimova and her associates have stolen amounts of $1.6bn, €26mn, and UZS1.27tn ($311mn), which roughly adds up to $2bn.

In December, Karimova was added by the US to a list of 52 government-linked people from ex-Soviet countries subject to financial and travel restrictions that fall under Washington’s Magnitsky Act.

Little information about Karimova's status and health condition has been released by the Uzbek authorities since July 2017 when the prosecutor’s office revealed she had been sentenced in 2015 to five years of “restricted freedom” for embezzlement, extortion and tax evasion. She is said to be detained in a prison located outside Uzbek capital Tashkent.

Her, son, Islam Karimov Jr. has claimed that his mother only remains alive thanks to computer files she removed from Uzbekistan prior to her detention that hold compromising materials on senior members of the government. That allegation chimes with her lawyer Gregoire Mangeat’s insistence in June this year that her security was not guaranteed, despite her being in good health.