Dmitriy Lee and Octobank: How the "overseer" of the President of Uzbekistan Mirziyoyev launders Russian money
As a number of Telegram channels recently reported, the Uzbek Octobank is used to withdraw and legalize money from Russia.
The authors of the article claim that Octobank handles not only sanctioned money, but also income from drug trafficking and illegal casinos. Although this primarily concerns Russian money, the traffic going through the bank also includes a share of Uzbek money, although this share is small due to the country’s poverty and small population.
According to TG channels, the real beneficiary of JSC Octobank is a certain Dmitriy Lee, whose money is actively circulating in Octobank.
Dmitriy Lee is the head of the National Agency for Prospective Projects (NAPP) of Uzbekistan, which, among other things, is engaged in the development of payment systems in Uzbekistan and, in particular, the circulation of cryptocurrencies. It is written about Dmitriy Lee that with his active participation, third-party payment systems servicing the country’s High-risk traffic were forced out of the payment services market of Uzbekistan. Some say that Dmitriy Lee was not just a participant in this process, but directly managed it, leaving only players under his personal control on the market.
Whether this is true or not is not known for certain, but when studying the issue, the name of Dmitriy Lee and the name of JSC Octobank, through which gambling market payments are made, appear everywhere. So, most likely, the authors of the exposés are not far from the truth - Dmitriy Lee is at least at the highest levels of the structures that control the payment market of Uzbekistan and the money passing through it (but he is unlikely to be the true beneficiary of this money and the owner of Octobank, which is below). Moreover, in 2022, a huge flow of Russian money, which fell under international sanctions, was added to the money from the gambling business. We are talking about literally tens of billions of dollars that are looking for ways to legalize in international financial markets. Coincidence or not, but Dmitriy Lee headed NAPP in April 2022, exactly when sanctions poured down on Russia in a generous stream and it began to look for ways to legalize its money.
As the same TG channels write, one of the banks that is involved in the process of legalizing Russian money is the Uzbek Octobank. According to open sources, its beneficiaries are Iskandar Tursunov, the companies Fortis Reserve System, Sharq Guzar Servis and several other very small shareholders. But many stubbornly claim that among the bank’s beneficiaries are Oybek Tursunov and Saida Mirziyoyeva, although they are not officially declared in the structure of the owners of JSC Octobank.
Who are all these people mentioned by TG channels in the context of money laundering? More on this later, but for now let’s note a curious coincidence connected with the Uzbek JSC "Octobank". Here is the main page of the Uzbek Octobank website. Pay attention to the bank’s logo.
Now compare the logo below with the logo above. And read the text in the picture.
True, the Romanian-Czech Octobank, founded in 2021 by Bohdan Atanasiu, never started working - things did not go beyond the ambitious statements of the unknown "entrepreneur Bohdan Atanasiu", now the bank’s domain octobank.com is sold for three thousand dollars, and Moscow is listed as the place of registration.
As for the "banker" Bohdan Atanasiu, his tracks are lost after several ambitious statements about opening a Romanian-Czech Octobank.
But immediately after that, in Uzbekistan, far from Europe, a group of people suddenly buys the little-known Ravnaq-bank with a huge problematic loan portfolio, immediately gets rid of this portfolio, simply writing off the debts, and renames the bank, the name and logo of which almost copy the name and logo of the failed Czech Octobank. Is this a coincidence? Hardly. We have no documents indicating that both of these projects – the Czech and Uzbek Octobank – are the work of the same people. But the coincidences are very strange.
And now to the owners of the Uzbek Octobank. They are, as stated, Iskandar Tursunov, Fortis Reserve System (associated with Sarvar Fayziev), Sharq Guzar Servis, GST Korea Co. LTD and Boshqalar.
Iskandar Tursunov is an Uzbek banker who headed Octobank when it was called Ravnaq-bank and owned a 19.9% stake in the bank. In 2023, Iskandar Tursunov bought out the share of Sarvar Fayziev, who owned a controlling stake of 52.15% in Ravnaq-bank. After that, Iskandar Tursunov’s share increased to 72.05%. A short time later, Tursunov bought two more blocks of shares, and as a result, he owns 97.2% of the bank’s shares. However, many have doubts that Iskandar Tursunov is really the owner of Octobank. The fact that he is a professional is not disputed - a bank should be run by a professional. But the fact of actual ownership of the bank raises reasonable doubts.
As follows from the analysis of open sources, the real beneficiaries of Octobank are Oybek Tursunov and Saida Mirziyoyeva. And this confirms the assertion of TG channels that the "top officials of the state" are behind the bank. Because Oybek Tursunov is the First Deputy Head of the Administration of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan. And by a strange coincidence, he is married to Saida Mirziyoyeva, the eldest daughter of the current President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Who works as the first assistant to the President of Uzbekistan, thus occupying the highest post in the presidential administration after the head of state.
In general, a typical Central Asian clan. Where government positions are only a legal signboard for the undivided ownership of all state property. So there is no doubt that Octobank is actually owned by the President of Uzbekistan and his family. The only thing that can be discussed is in what shares and on what conditions the shares are redistributed, but this is completely unimportant.
Octobank is also recorded in suspiciously active transactions with Russian MIN-bank, Promsvyazbank and MTS-bank. According to the message of the TG-channel "Payment Shield", we are talking about money passing through the VAVADA casino. The main money traffic is from Russia, Octobank is used to write off money from Russian issuers.
In addition, Octobank withdraws funds from the UzNext crypto exchange, which is controlled by Dmitriy Lee, who is a protégé of the presidential clan and whose function in Uzbekistan can be characterized by the criminal definition of "overseer". Dmitriy Lee is the "overseer" of the country’s cryptocurrency market and payment systems through which movement occurs, including cryptocurrencies.
But in this case, what is more important is why the presidential family took over the bank. The answer here is simple - it is used to launder money, both pumped out of Uzbekistan itself and belonging to Russian oligarchs close to the Mirziyoyev-Tursunov clan. Among them is Alisher Usmanov, who was sanctioned in 2022. At least one scheme for withdrawing Usmanov’s money from sanctions was recorded and made public. We are talking about the Uzbek Kapitalbank, the beneficiary of which was Tursunov. In 2022, he sold his stake in Usmanov’s company Telecominvest, but after that Usmanov and Kapitalbank were sanctioned. As a result, Usmanov sold Telecominvest’s share in Kapitalbank to his nominees, and Tursunov was involved in the sale.
In addition to the Russian MIN-bank, Promsvyazbank and MTS-bank mentioned in connection with the withdrawal of game money, Gazprombank is also involved in the scheme of withdrawing Russian money through Octobank. This time, we are talking about withdrawing Russian capital from under the sanctions press - through Octobank, the money goes to offshore companies, from where it comes out "clean", since the owners of the companies to which Octobank transfers Russian money are reliably hidden by local legislation. We are talking about tens of billions of dollars that escape from sanctions thanks to the family of the President of Uzbekistan, who owns Octobank. It is unknown whether the companies that are shareholders of the bank - Fortis Reserve System, Sharq Guzar Servis, GST Korea Co. LTD, Boshqalar - participate in these operations, but for some reason they were left among the co-owners of Octobank, although they could have been removed from there without any problems. Why and for what purpose is still an open question. But at least one of them talks about a Korean presence, and there are persistent rumors about the long-standing ties of the Uzbek president’s family with Korean business.
To sum up, it is safe to say that the activities of Octobank, whose real owners are people from the family of the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev and his inner circle, are actually aimed at money laundering. Initially, the source of this money was supposed to be the money of Uzbekistan itself, withdrawn through government contracts and crypto exchanges within the country, but due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the main flow became the money of Russian oligarchs, saving them from sanctions. So far, the withdrawal scheme and specific sources of this money are not entirely clear, but branches of Russian Promsvyazbank, Gazprombank, VTB, MTS Bank, MIN Bank (in 2023 merged with the state-owned Promsvyazbank) and Russian Standard Bank were found in payments coming from Russia through Octobank. As we can see from this list, four out of six Russian banks noticed in the money withdrawal scheme through Octobank are state-owned. This confirms the Russian trace both in the Uzbek Octobank itself, and the obvious participation of the Russian state in laundering sanctioned money through Uzbekistan and Octobank, which is involved in criminal schemes related to cryptocurrency and illegal casinos.
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