Following three months of hearings, Judge Sanjar Kuchkarov of the Yunusabad District Criminal Court delivered a 352-page verdict in the case of the notorious Glamour Gold construction pyramid.

However, this trial has raised far more questions regarding the Uzbek justice system than about the fraudsters themselves.

The primary and most controversial outcome of the trial is that the court excluded the aggravating factor of an organized crime group from the charges, and entirely removed the count of embezzlement or misappropriation on an especially large scale. With this decision, Judge Kuchkarov effectively rewrote the legal evaluation of the multi-billion-soum scam and radically mitigated the position of the defendants. The degree of public danger posed by the syndicate, which had been built over years by the father-and-son duo Adrian and Dmitry Kan, was deliberately and artificially reduced. Consequently, a legitimate question arises: on what legal grounds did Judge Kuchkarov exclude the qualifying feature of a crime committed by an organized group, effectively ignoring the systemic nature of the fraudulent scheme?

Far from all the individuals involved in organizing this scheme ended up in the dock. Khurshid Zukhurov and David Oganesyan, who were at the very origin of the construction pyramid, completely escaped criminal liability.

The situation surrounding Oganesyan appears particularly controversial: not only did he remain outside the scope of criminal prosecution, but he also retained his status as an active attorney.

As a result, an individual whose actions within this case warrant a rigorous criminal law assessment continues to utilize an official legal status, including for the defense of defendants in similar cases. Such judicial precedents do not only harm the specific victims; they create systemic risks for the investment climate, sending a negative signal to international investors regarding the level of actual protection of property rights and the efficiency of justice in Uzbekistan.

Despite the exclusion of the organized crime group qualification, the defendants were sentenced to real prison terms. The main figure in the case, Dmitry Kan, was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment. Sentences of 9 years and 6 months in prison were handed down to Sanjar Usmanov, Khasan Akhmetov, and Sergey Kaleta. Artur Gafarov was sentenced to 8 years and 6 months, while Vladimir Pak received 5 years and 1 month of imprisonment. The court sentenced former chief accountant Elvira Salimova to 5 years and 6 months in prison, with the execution of the sentence suspended until her child reaches the age of three. Dmitry Solod was sentenced to a fine of 300 BRVs (73.5 million soums). One of the key participants in the scheme, Adrian Kan, received the most lenient measure from the court—4 years, 5 months, and 27 days of restriction of liberty.

Simultaneously, the court verdict determined the fate of the construction company’s seized assets. To ensure payouts to hundreds of affected families, the defendants’ property—consisting of motor vehicles and non-residential premises with a total appraised value of over 51 billion soums—will be put up for public auction. The unfinished construction project—the ECO DREAM residential complex, located in the TashGRES area—is also subject to sale. The appraisal of this long-delayed property will be conducted by state executors of the Yunusabad District Department of the Bureau of Mandatory Enforcement under the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The funds generated from the sale of these assets will be directed toward compensating the material damages of the victims, strictly in proportion to the amounts they invested.

At the same time, an objective analysis of the situation shows that the homebuyers are effectively deprived of any possibility of receiving their residential properties. A significant portion of the raised funds was transferred by Dmitry Kan to offshore accounts abroad. The ECO DREAM residential complex itself was constructed with gross violations of building codes, shows clear signs of structural instability, and is subject to demolition. Furthermore, there are no prospects for the construction of the company’s second planned project, as building it under the previous business model would require attracting funds from new investors. Consequently, within the framework of this case, the focus is exclusively on the partial recovery of material damages from the value of the developer’s remaining assets.

Under these circumstances, the issue of obtaining the actual housing is completely closed, and the key objective shifts to the volume of the actual recovery of the lost funds. To minimize financial losses, the affected citizens must act in a consolidated manner, demanding absolute transparency of the public auctions and exercising strict public oversight over the actions of the state executors.

And while citizens are attempting to recover their savings, the key questions regarding the Glamour Gold company case remain open. Chief among them are: on what legal grounds was a multi-billion-soum scheme that functioned for years stripped by the court of its status as a crime committed by an organized group, and for what reason do the individuals who participated directly in the coordination and legal support of these machinations still remain at large?