Amsterdam & Partners Files $100 Million+ ICSID Arbitration Against Uzbekistan; Seeks Urgent Measures for Detained Company Director

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amsterdam & Partners LLP this week announced that it filed a Request for Arbitration against the Republic of Uzbekistan with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) on behalf of its clients Solfy RUS LLC and its shareholder Maksim Poletaev. The claim, laid out in a press conference on 1 September, is brought under the ICSID Additional Facility Rules pursuant to the Russia-Uzbekistan Bilateral Investment Treaty and seeks compensation in excess of USD 100 million.

Robert Amsterdam, Founder and Managing Partner of Amsterdam & Partners, states:

“Uzbekistan has once again turned the criminal machinery of the State against a foreign investor. A commercial disagreement with a State-owned bank has been converted into a criminal prosecution, and the director of the foreign-owned business has been put in jail. This is a pattern. A number of earlier treaty claims against Uzbekistan involved criminal proceedings, prosecutions or convictions against the management of foreign-owned companies, and where tribunals reached the merits of such claims, Uzbekistan lost or settled. The case announced this week is the latest instance, and one the most serious.

This is not a commercial dispute. A State-owned bank recruited a foreign investor, took his technology, demanded his company for nothing, and when he refused turned the police, prosecutors, courts and tax authorities on him and his staff. The same criminal machinery has now held Uktam Khasanov, the director of the company, for five months in pre-trial detention in appalling conditions, without trial and in violation of his basic human rights. We seek his urgent release. Uzbekistan tells the world it is open for business. This arbitration will test that claim before an international tribunal."

In 2019, the leadership of National Bank of Uzbekistan, the country's largest wholly State-owned bank, invited Mr. Poletaev to bring his instalment-card technology to Uzbekistan through a joint venture, SOLFY CA LLC, with the Bank's investment arm. The claimants invested millions in capital and BNPL technology in Uzbekistan.

The Request explains how the State destroyed the claimants' investment. In 2024, the Bank demanded that 70 per cent of the company be transferred to the Uzbek side without compensation. When the claimants refused, the power of the State was turned against the investment and the people who ran it. What had been a commercial disagreement between joint-venture partners was taken into the criminal domain: proceedings were opened against the company's management at the Bank's request, and they remain ongoing notwithstanding a State-ordered audit that found no violations. The director of the claimants' Uzbek company has been held in pre-trial detention for the last five months without trial. The claimants' efforts to resolve the matter amicably, including a letter invoking the Treaty sent to the President of Uzbekistan in December 2025, went unanswered.

The firm points to five breaches by Uzbekistan of provisions of the Treaty: fair and equitable treatment (Article 3(1)); unlawful expropriation (Article 4); full protection of investments (Article 2(2)); free transfer of payments (Article 6); and treatment no less favourable than that accorded to Uzbek investors (Article 3(2)).

The Request includes an application for provisional measures under Rule 57 of the Additional Facility Arbitration Rules, to be decided on a priority basis once the Tribunal is constituted. The claimants ask the Tribunal to order Uzbekistan to suspend the criminal case and refrain from related coercive measures; to secure Mr Khasanov's release from pre-trial detention and his confidential access to counsel; to refrain from interfering with witnesses; to stop relying on the criminal case to stall the insolvency; and to preserve all relevant records. A petition on Mr Khasanov's behalf, filed by the firm on 18 June 2026, is pending before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

The claimants are represented by Robert Amsterdam, Liliya Aubakirova, William Burke-White, Israr Khan and Simeon Birch of Amsterdam & Partners, Washington, DC and London, and by Sergey Alekhin of ELWI, Moscow. Omnistrat Group, Washington, DC, is providing tactical and PR support.

Amsterdam & Partners LLP is an international law firm specialised in political advocacy and human rights. For more information, please visit www.amsterdamandpartners.com.