The Uzbek President’s Son-In-Law Secretly Acquired a UAE Passport While Serving as a Top Security Chief
Leaked records show the Uzbek leader’s son-in-law, Otabek Umarov, covertly acquired Emirati citizenship – an explicit legal breach of his position at the time as deputy head of presidential security. He then went on to obtain millions in luxury Dubai real estate.
Leaked documents show the Uzbek president’s son-in-law, Otabek Umarov, obtained Emirati citizenship in April 2023 while serving as deputy presidential security chief – a direct violation of a ban on second passports for officials in that position.
Leaked property records reveal Umarov, who left his post in 2024 to be made a top Uzbek Olympic official, later acquired 13 luxury Dubai apartments valued at around $7 million in early 2025 – a portfolio previously owned by his tycoon brother.
Uzbek officials are not required to disclose their income declarations to the public, so the Dubai real estate portfolio represents the first luxury assets that reporters have confirmed Umarov holds in his own name.
At the 2023 UN climate change conference in Dubai Otabek Umarov watched in the wings as his boss, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, met with his United Arab Emirates (UAE) counterpart.
Sporting a crisp navy suit and tie, Umarov at the time was the second most important official charged with protecting the Uzbek president. Perhaps more importantly, he was –– and remains –– married to Mirziyoyev’s youngest daughter, and is widely seen as an influential behind-the-scenes power broker.
But on that December day in Dubai, Umarov carried a potentially career-ending secret: seven months earlier, he had covertly obtained an Emirati passport requiring his sworn fealty to the state led by the man his father-in-law was talking to, President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Under UAE law, foreigners can only obtain citizenship through a nomination by a royal court or senior official, and requires swearing an oath of allegiance to the Emirates.
Uzbek military law governing the security post Umarov occupied at the time prohibited his second citizenship, and would have served as possible grounds for discharge from active duty.
Nonetheless, Umarov remained in his post for 18 months after obtaining his UAE passport.
He was relieved of his position in November 2024 — officially “in connection with his transfer to another position” — and immediately appointed to serve under his father-in-law as first vice president of the Uzbek National Olympic Committee.
And Umarov’s ties to the UAE extend beyond dual nationality.
Dubai land records obtained by reporters from OCCRP and RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service show that Umarov owns around $7 million worth of Dubai real estate.
The 13-property portfolio that Umarov acquired was previously owned by his tycoon younger brother, Oybek Umarov, according to leaked Dubai land records from previous years. Oybek Umarov has kept a low public profile while building a fortune across a range of sectors during Mirziyoyev’s time as prime minister and, later, president.
Uzbek officials are not required to disclose their income declarations to the public, making the Dubai real estate holdings the first luxury assets that reporters can confirm in Otabek Umarov’s own name.
It is not clear if Otabek Umarov bought the properties or his brother gifted them to him. Neither responded to requests for comment.
Otabek Umarov has publicly displayed opulent tastes, including luxury watches like a limited edition Richard Mille timepiece valued at up to $1.9 million, though he has never publicly explained his access to such wealth. Public commercial registries show no record of him owning private companies during his time as deputy presidential security chief.
However, Uzbek and international outlets including OCCRP have reported that Umarov did far more than guard the president, describing him as a “gray cardinal,” or a behind-the-scenes deal maker, who has wielded broad influence across the country’s affairs.
Multiple sources previously told OCCRP and RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service that while Umarov was still a top presidential security officer, he was also a hidden partner on lucrative Uzbek projects with the Abdukadyr family, who built a trading monopoly in Central Asia on what a former associate alleged was a vast bribery and smuggling operation
While Umarov’s name did not appear on any of the paperwork related to the Abdukadyr family, reporters independently corroborated his personal connection to individuals the sources described as proxy owners of companies involved in these projects.
Leila Seiitbek, a human rights advocate and campaigner who researches corruption in Central Asia, told OCCRP that both Umarov’s UAE passport and real estate portfolio raise security concerns.
“For the man [then] responsible for the president’s personal security, it’s also a loyalty and counterintelligence problem – precisely why most states, including Uzbekistan’s own military law, treat foreign citizenship in this category of position as disqualifying,” Seiitbek said.
OCCRP sent requests for comment to Umarov and the Uzbek presidential administration about his UAE citizenship and Dubai properties but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Oybek Umarov, the Uzbek presidential security service, and the UAE government did not respond to requests for comment.
Family Connections
Umarov married Mirziyoyev’s youngest daughter, Shakhnoza Mirziyoyeva, in 2007, when the future Uzbek president was serving as prime minister under the autocratic regime of Islam Karimov.
Mirziyoyev took power following Karimov’s death in 2016, pledging greater transparency and rule of law compared to his predecessor’s dictatorial rule.
To the outside world, Mirziyoyev presents himself as a reformer who has transformed what was one of the region’s most isolated nations into a country open for business on the international stage.
But at home, he has continued the country’s tradition of concentrating power in the hands of insiders and relatives, including his elder daughter, Saida Mirziyoyeva, who now heads her father’s administration.
Among those was Umarov, who for a majority of Mirziyoyev’s tenure had served as deputy head of the presidential security service, a body responsible for the safety of the president and his family.
His tenure ended in late 2024 amid a high-level reshuffle within the security service several weeks after a shooting rocked the highest levels of the government.
In the early hours of October 26, 2024, two gunmen opened fire on a Range Rover on the outskirts of the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.
Inside the vehicle was Komil Allamjonov, former information-policy chief to the president and a close advisor to Saida Mirziyoyeva. Allamjonov and his driver were unhurt.
While prosecutors never implicated Umarov in Allamjonov’s shooting, regional analysts and media have reported a behind-the-scenes rivalry between the two men.
On November 25, 2024, amid a wider purge in the security apparatus, Umarov was formally relieved of his position in the presidential security service and appointed first vice president of the Uzbek National Olympic Committee under his father-in-law, one of several official sporting executive positions he holds to this day.
Following a closed-door trial, a military court in February 2025 convicted 10 men over the plot, sentencing several of them to two decades or more in prison – including a former head of internal security in the presidential security service.
An Oath to the Sheikhs?
Over the years, Umarov has built close ties with ruling elites in the UAE, traveling frequently in the country for international sporting events or informal meetings with members of the ruling royal families.
A 2019 instagram post shows him posing with a line of gold-robed Emiratis at the wedding of Crown Prince of Dubai Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Later that year, images show Umarov hosting the prince for lunch during a falconry trip to Uzbekistan.
Whether friendships such as these may have helped pave the way for Umarov’s UAE citizenship is not known. But such passports are a rare and exclusive commodity which money alone can’t buy: Candidates can’t apply for the navy blue document adorned with a golden falcon, they must be nominated by senior UAE officials or rulers.
Reporters were unable to establish who nominated Umarov for UAE citizenship. But copies of Umarov’s UAE passport and residence permit obtained by reporters show that he was granted citizenship in April 2023, while he was still serving as Mirziyoyev’s deputy head of presidential security.
Nominees are subject to general requirements, such as “taking the oath of allegiance and loyalty to the UAE” and committing to “abide by the UAE’s laws,” according to the country’s citizenship and passport law.
These nominations are submitted for certain categories of foreigners, including “investors, doctors, scientists, specialists, inventors, intellectuals, talents and artists (and their families), [and] individuals with creative talents.”
It’s not clear under which category Umarov was nominated.
OCCRP independently confirmed the authenticity of Umarov’s citizenship records.
OCCRP sent inquiries about Umarov’s to both the UAE Foreign Ministry and UAE Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security but did not receive responses in time for publication.
While Umarov was barred from holding a second citizenship under Uzbek military law governing his presidential security post, having a foreign passport does not automatically trigger criminal penalties or fines.
But Uzbek law does list “voluntarily acquiring a passport of a foreign state” as possible grounds for revocation of one’s citizenship. The government does not recognize dual citizenship of its nationals.
Uzbek Military Law on Second Passports
Serving in the Uzbek Presidential Security Service is classified as active military duty, and Article 29 of Uzbekistan’s law on military service lists 11 criteria that represent grounds for discharge from active duty. The acquisition of citizenship of another country is the last one on that list.
A senior Uzbek Interior Ministry official told reporters in 2021 that if authorities confirm an Uzbek national’s second passport, a warning is issued to renounce their foreign citizenship within a certain window of time.
“If a person does not renounce their foreign citizenship within the given period, their Uzbek citizenship will be terminated by presidential decree,” the official, Dilshodbek Murodbekov, said, while adding that the individual would not face criminal or civil penalties.
Brother’s Dubai Buying Spree
Known for financial secrecy and low taxes, Dubai is where many of the world’s rich and powerful go to buy what they cannot explain at home.
The 2024 Dubai Unlocked investigation by OCCRP and partners mapped some 800,000 Dubai properties and found them studded with sanctioned politicians, alleged criminals, and “politically exposed persons” (PEPs) — public officials or their family members or associates.
Dubai property records and recent service-charge bills reveal that Umarov is among those with substantial real estate holdings in the UAE.
The 13-property portfolio that Umarov acquired had previously been owned by his brother, though reporters could not establish exactly when and how it came into Umarov’s ownership. The properties are split between two of Dubai’s showpiece developments.
Eleven of these apartments are located in Jadeel, a low-rise cluster inside Madinat Jumeirah Living, a resort district of palm tree-lined walkways and Arabesque facades that faces the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab skyscraper across the water.
Umarov’s apartments in the complex are adjacent to one another, in effect occupying an entire floor.
Two other apartments that Umarov owns in his name are located in Emaar’s Fountain Views towers in Downtown Dubai, steps from the Dubai Mall, with the Burj Khalifa and its fountain below.
His brother Oybek Umarov, 40, initially acquired them in a string of purchases made between 2021 and 2022.
He bought the two Downtown Dubai apartments in late 2021, and seven of the Jadeel units on a single day in June 2022, according to leaked Dubai real estate data obtained by OCCRP. He bought the remaining four Jadeel units weeks later.
At some point in 2025, Umarov became the listed owner of each of these properties, land registry records and recent service-charge bills confirm.
As a former senior official, Umarov falls under the UAE’s official definition of a PEP, and under UAE laws, any property or bank transactions he is involved in should be subject to scrutiny by real estate agents and financial institutions linked to these dealings, anti-money laundering experts told OCCRP.
A transfer of ownership, however, would not require the involvement of a bank or real estate agent or necessarily trigger checks on the origins of a PEP’s wealth, they said.
A Brother’s Wealth
Oybek Umarov became an early shareholder in Orient Finans Bank, one of Uzbekistan’s largest private banks, in 2010 when he was 24 years old. He also became a shareholder of Orient Group, a conglomerate with major investments across multiple sectors in Uzbekistan that has also received lucrative government contracts.
Corporate records have tied Oybek to numerous other Uzbek companies, from cement and metalwork to a Tashkent five-star hotel and a run of food ventures and gyms under the brand name OU7, which is widely associated with Otabek Umarov.
Neither Otabek Umarov nor Oybek Umarov responded to requests for comment about the Dubai real estate portfolio.
Whatever Umarov’s reasons for accepting Emirati citizenship, his secret second passport doesn’t appear to have dimmed his patriotism.
The president’s son-in-law was the country’s most prominent official when Uzbekistan’s soccer team took to the pitch in the United States this past summer.
“As the first country from Central Asia to reach the World Cup, this was a monumental milestone for our entire nation,” Umarov, 42, wrote in an op-ed, adding that Uzbekistan “is taking its rightful place among the world’s leading sporting nations.”
The team crashed out of the tournament after losing all three group stage games, but not before Abbosbek Fayzullaev had scored Uzbekistan’s first-ever World Cup goal.
When Umarov posed for a photograph with his wife at the tournament final between Spain and Argentina, Uzbek bloggers noticed something expensive fastened to his wrist: another special edition Richard Mille timepiece, this time worth a modest $370,000.