Uzbekistan has asked the Irish authorities to freeze $200mn of assets controlled by Gulnara Karimova, the disgraced daughter of the late Uzbek autocrat Islam Karimov, the Business Post reported on September 9.

In total, the Uzbek Prosecutor-General's Office has said it is seeking to freeze $1.5bn worth of Karimova’s assets in 12 countries. It has already asked the Russian authorities to freeze her real estate assets.

Little information about Karimova's status and health condition has been released by the Uzbek authorities since July 28 when the prosecutor’s office revealed she had been sentenced in 2015 to five years of “restricted freedom” for embezzlement, extortion and tax evasion.

In total, the Uzbek authorities claim Karimova and her associates have stolen $1.6bn, €26mn, and UZS1.27tn ($311mn), which roughly adds up to $2bn. The amounts were the focus of an international probe that involves Nordic telecom group TeliaSonera, and Russia’s VimpelCom and MTS.

The companies were accused of bribing entities connected to Karimova to win licences to operate 3G and 4G services on the Uzbek mobile market. VimpelCom was fined $795mn by the US and Dutch authorities for the bribes it paid in Uzbekistan and Telia agreed on a $1bn settlement.

Karimova’s son, also named Islam Karimov, has claimed that his mother has only remained 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 could explain rumours from last year that Karimova had been killed by poisoning and buried in a cemetery near Tashkent and chimes with her lawyer Gregoire Mangeat’s insistence that her security is not guaranteed, despite her being in good health currently.