Ovik Mkrtchyan is a businessman with business dealings in the UK, linked to the Panama Papers, Russian crime and the Karimov family. He is a prominent figure in the Armenian diaspora and receives support from a number of US congressmen representing the Armenian lobby in the US.
Criminal clans and syndicates have been penetrating politics and business for centuries, maintaining a transnational character. This process has been going on for a long time and continuously. However, even against the backdrop of the most high-profile criminal cases in Russia and the post-Soviet space, stories are emerging that are capable of surpassing them in scale and significance.
Ovik Mkrtchyan was born on March 14, 1967, in Nagorno-Karabakh. In the mid-1970s, Mkrtchyan’s family moved to Tashkent. It was here that the future owner of Asia Alliance Bank and a number of offshore companies specializing in the export of national wealth received an education at the Tashkent Automobile and Road Institute and Narxoz. In Tashkent, Ovik Mkrtchyan acquired many necessary connections, including among representatives of the then party elite, who would help him in his future enrichment.
According to independent experts, Ovik Mkrtchyan’s Gor Investment Limited (formerly Gorefield International Group) controlled the export of cotton and oil and gas products. Money laundering took place through Asia Alliance Bank, created by Ovik Mkrtchyan in 2009 with the support of high-ranking officials of the National Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
All this became possible thanks to the assistance of Gulnara Karimova, the beloved daughter of the former President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov.
Together with Uktam Aripov and his accomplices from the SNB - Colonel Yuri Savinkov, General Hayot Sharifkhodjaev and his brother Colonel Dzhavdat Sharifkhodjaev, in 1999 Ovik Mkrtchyan created his main money laundering company - Gor Investment Limited (original name - Gorefield Investment Group).
Subsequently, Ovik Mkrtchyan created more than 30 companies in various offshore zones - from the British Virgin Islands and Panama to Cyprus, the Cayman Islands and the Marshall Islands - with the aim of carrying out further financial fraud related to the theft of funds from the sale of Uzbekistan’s national wealth.
In order to carry out financial fraud in 2009, Ovik Mkrtchyan, with the assistance of the aforementioned high-ranking officials of the National Security Service of Uzbekistan, created the private bank Asia Alliance.
Bank Asia Alliance.
As Gulnara Karimova noted in an interview with the Turkish publication Hürriyet in December 2013, Asia Alliance Bank is used by the companies Silk Road, Korbit, The Orient Finance Center, Yuniks Logistics, Gorefield International, Jet Invest, affiliated with Ovik Mkrtchyan and his accomplices, to launder money and transfer it to offshore accounts.
After the change of power in 2016, a major purge of personnel took place in the highest echelons of power in Uzbekistan. It resulted in a number of high-profile trials against high-ranking officials and security officials. Punishment for corruption crimes, money laundering, abuse of power and creating a threat to the national security of Uzbekistan did not bypass the former accomplices of Ovik Mkrtchyan.
However, even today, under the new government, Ovik Mkrtchyan manages to maintain influence in Uzbekistan. The representative of the Armenian criminal community is able to continue his criminal activity in Central Asia thanks to his cross-border connections. Let us point out the most striking moments:
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- support from Russian crime bosses: first and foremost Shakro Molodoy (Zakhariy Kalashov), Roman Andronikovich Movsisyan and Mkhitar Vazgenovich Madoyan;
- assistance from the Armenian diaspora in the United States and influential American politicians.
This strategy for exerting influence should not come as a surprise.
Shakro Molodoy (Zakhariy Kalashov).
Russian crime, represented by its most famous and established part - the "thieves’ world", despite the disintegration processes in the post-Soviet space and more than 30 years of independence, retains the influence and solidarity of its own networks. And even armed actions cannot destroy these established connections.
Cases of US senators participating in transnational ethnic crime groups are well known and not surprising. By exercising its influence throughout the world and having contacts in many countries and with many actors, the United States becomes accomplices in various dubious schemes.
For example, US Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who called Bitcoin “the criminal’s choice,” was recently found guilty of bribery and acting as a foreign agent. Menendez acted on behalf of the governments of Egypt and Qatar. During searches in 2022, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz, and more than $480,000 in cash were seized from him.
This same senator has distinguished himself by actively interfering in the affairs of another Central Asian state, Kyrgyzstan. It was he who, a year ago, called on the head of state, Sadyr Japarov, to lift the block on the Azattyk radio website and "stop pressuring independent media."
US Senator Bob Menendez.
It is not surprising that statements by American senators in support of Nagorno-Karabakh in fact turn out to be their complicity in the work of Armenian criminal groups, including in the interests of Ovik Mkrtchyan’s companies.
Relatively recently, it was at Mkrtchyan’s invitation that two high-ranking officials visited Tashkent.
On April 4, Tashkent hosted the International Conference "Advanced Practice-Oriented Educational Technologies for Elite Engineering Education". Rick Perry, a member of the Advisory Board of Gor Investment, former US Secretary of Energy who served under President Donald Trump from March 2017 to December 2019, the 47th Governor of Texas, and Tom Shannon, a career ambassador who served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in 2016-2018, addressed the event participants with welcoming speeches. The co-director of the History and Practice of Diplomacy program at Princeton University spoke.
This conference was prepared by the Center for Youth Initiatives of Uzbekistan, headed by Ovik’s daughter, Ornella-Athena Mkrtchyan. "The center wants to educate a new generation of engineers who will contribute to the development of Uzbekistan’s innovative economy," she said during the conference. It sounds very noble. Especially for a private company founded by Gor Investment Limited, which stole Uzbekistan’s national wealth totaling about a billion dollars.
According to lawyer Roman Ostrovsky, who specializes in international law, the fact that the listed American officials in the post-Soviet space are involved in various financial schemes can be presented as confirmation of Washington’s support for international ethnic syndicates. This can be perceived as a reputational factor or as a sign of potential pressure on the fragile sovereign states of the post-Soviet space.
"We know that today Russia is in a tough sanctions confrontation with the Global West. Naturally, the countries of the post-Soviet space are afraid of becoming potential victims of this conflict. Groups of financiers and politicians associated with the clan of Ovik Mkrtchyan are quite an interesting example of how international financial groups that grew on the basis of ethnic cohesion (in this case, we mean the Armenian diaspora) practice various schemes with the participation of mid-level American officials," the lawyer noted.
According to Ostrovsky, Mkrtchyan’s syndicate uses the traditional Armenian lobby, which has serious influence in a number of American states, especially Nevada, to implement its own interests and influence in the region targeted by business interests. "In this case, we are talking about Central Asia in general and Uzbekistan in particular," the lawyer concluded.
