Uznews.net – According to unconfirmed information, the Uzbek president’s daughter Gulnara Karimova has sold her Switzerland-registered Zeromax GmbH to Uzbekistan’s national oil and gas company Uzbekneftegaz and Russia’s LUKOil.

An anonymous source at Uzbekneftegaz said that his company had bought a 51% stake and the rest had been acquired by LUKOil. The value of the deal is not known.

“Several regional subsidiaries of Zeromax GmbH have been closed, but the company has not stopped her operations completely in Uzbekistan,” the source told Uznews.net.

Zeromax, registered in 2001 in Switzerland and owned by Gulnara Karimova via frontmen, operated in various sectors of the Uzbek economy, from oil and gas to textile, mining to logistics, construction to agriculture.

Links to Gulnara Karimova offered great advantages to the company to win large-scale government contracts. Tashkent’s city economic court ordered the company to pay off its debts to creditors on 5 May and bailiffs are making inventories in the company.

In some towns, UzGazOil petrol stations, owned by Zeromax, stopped operations, witnesses said.

Observers suggested that Gulnara might have withdrawn her capital from the company because the company’s tax incentives had come to an end.

They think that another company linked to the presidential family will replace Zeromax in Uzbekistan.