Bunyodkor, Barcelona and the Dictator’s Daughter
Doesn’t that badge to the right look familiar? That shape. . .Yes, is that the badge of Barcelona or Bunyodkor?
It of course belongs to the latter, Uzbeki champions Bunyodkor, who obviously modelled their badge after the Spanish giants. And the connections do not end there.
As reported in a brilliant article in today’s Observer by Kevin O’Flynn, Bunyodkor were the team behind last summer’s audacious attempt to woo Eto’o by offering him $25m to play for a couple of months and who ended up with former Barca-star Rivaldo instead.
Beyond these surface dealings, the connections between this murkily financed new Super Club in Uzbekistan and Barcelona appear to be substantial, and cast a shadow on Barcelona’s global reputation for unusual integrity.
As O’Flynn explains,
Four years ago Bunyodkor did not exist. They won promotion from the amateur second division at the first attempt, finished runners-up in cup and league next time out, and in their third season won the double, with a run to the semi-finals of the Asian Champions League to boot. They have a former World Cup winner in the team, alongside the Asian footballer of the year. Now they are getting serious.
Bunyodkor are building a new $150m stadium, despite the fact that their current 15,000-capacity home, built in a few months, is less than a year old. A friendly against Barcelona, whose president, Joan Laporta, flew in to lay the first brick last August, will mark the official opening of their new home this summer.
Barcelona have a formal “cooperation contract” with Bunyodkor, and that friendly in Uzbekistan is apparently going to be worth $5M to the Spanish club.
Yet disturbingly, it seems that that Bunyodkor’s purpose in life is to be the PR vehicle for dictator Ismail Karimov’s daughter Gulnara and her serious political ambitions to succeed her father, who has ruled Uzbekistan for over two decades with a bloody fist. The money Barcelona are taking has an ugly origin.
Given the well-known evidence of human rights abuse in Uzbekistan under Karimov (a UN visit in 2002 concluded torture was “systemic”), it seems a little unwise that a team so closely linked to Unicef such as Barcelona would also want to be connected to Bunyodkor.
As Britain’s former Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray told O’Flynn, “It would be like linking up with Adolf Hitler to promote a Berlin team in the 1930s – it really is astonishing even in the money-mad world of football to be quite that blind to morality.”
Further digging reveals even closer connections between Bunyodkor and Barcelona. It has been reported that Gulnara Karimova’s company Zeromax (owners of Bunyodkor) are in talks to purchase Mallorca FC, with Barcelona’s President “an intermediary in these talks.”
You might be surprised that we haven’t yet had a mention of the best known Uzbeki powerbroker in football, the obese oligrach Alisher Usmanov (“thug, criminal, racketeer, heroin trafficker and alleged rapist”) who once threatened to sue this blog and is still strengthening his takeover attempt at Arsenal through Red and White holdings. Rye concludes (apparently based on a question asked at an art opening) that Usmanov is not behind the club, and does not know who his — unlike everybody else.
Alisher Usmanov
Of course, Usmanov was being characteristically disingenuous, given his known closeness to the Karimovs. It was Usmanov and Gulnara Karimova who, according to Murray in his book Murder In Samarkland, negotiated Uzbekistan’s historically huge oil and gas development contract, awarded in 2005 to Usmanov’s Russian company Gazprom and which tilted the country away from the U.S. and back to Russia and Usmanov’s friend Vladimir Putin. The deal was sealed by a bribe to Gulnara worth at least $88M to her, the book explains.
Karimova’s company Zeromax and Usmanov’s trading in commodities have also been linked since then. And Usmanov, according to Murray, is the preferred alternate candidate to succeed Karimov if his daughter does not win enough approval. One would be very surprised if his finger was not also in Bunyodkor’s pie or at least aware of its backers.
Gulnara is no innocent in the regime’s repression, as Murray reaffirmed again last year: “The cruel and rapacious Karimov family strengthen still further their grip on Uzbekistan’s command economy, and continue to siphon off the money of their people. Karimov’s daughter. Gulnara, is the family’s principal bagman.”
The backing of Bunyodkor by this despicable regime is blatant enough that Barcelona, a member-owned social club hailed in 2006 by investigative journalist David Conn as “embodying a more inspirational identity for a football club than being a private company owned by businessmen or an oligarch’s toy” should be ashamed of themselves.
Unicef’s association with Barcelona, who gave up space on their shirt to promote the charity, is based on this reputation and they are thus also tarnished when Barcelona parade for cash in Uzbekistan at a stadium built at the behest of a bloody regime’s leaders.
In a bizarre continuation of this murky simulacrum, Bunyodkur’s slogan on their English website is “Bunyodkur plays for the sake of FANS”. Just like Barcelona, right?
About the Author
Tom Dunmore is the founder and editor of Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
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I wrote today about how people expressed outrage over free spending Manchester City, and how City is out to “ruin football” but few people are talking about Bunyodkor. Hopefully the recent Guardian piece put them in the spot light because what goes on there is sinister and scandalous. Bunyodkor says it “plays for the sake of fans”, I just have one question: Where did Bunyodkor’s fans come from? Pakhtakor has always been the top club for Tashkent, and indeed Uzbekistan as a whole. Were all these fans just people disillusioned with Pakhtakor’s dominance or is there some serious string pulling at work here?
And shame, shame on Barca for their involvement with this mess.
Great post! Having read the Norwegian book about football traficking (review in english, otherwise only in Norwegian: http://www.playthegame.org/knowledge-bank/articles/review-of-den-forsvunne-diamanten-the-lost-diamond.html) this is the second time in a year Barcelonas reputation is questioned.
The book show that they are heavily involved in bringing young (really young!) talents to talent camps, and using Samuel Eto´s influence in Camerun to get all the talended 8-12 year old kids to be connected to Barca.
The case you are writing about is a even more evident example of how they put money above everything, and I can’t understand it differently than that they are using Unicef to build their brand – but not acting according to Unicef’s best interests. A shame!
I wrote today about how people expressed outrage over free spending Manchester City, and how City is out to “ruin football” but few people are talking about Bunyodkor. Hopefully the recent Guardian piece put them in the spot light because what goes on there is sinister and scandalous. Bunyodkor says it “plays for the sake of fans”, I just have one question: Where did Bunyodkor’s fans come from? Pakhtakor has always been the top club for Tashkent, and indeed Uzbekistan as a whole. Were all these fans just people disillusioned with Pakhtakor’s dominance or is there some serious string pulling at work here?
Pimapen – I totally agree with you that Man city is going to destroy football, at least EPL football. The only plus to the new owners is that they may be able to bring more starts to england.
Yet disturbingly, it seems that that Bunyodkor’s purpose in life is to be the PR vehicle for dictator Ismail Karimov’s daughter Gulnara and her serious political ambitions to succeed her father, who has ruled Uzbekistan for over two decades with a bloody fist. The money Barcelona are taking has an ugly origin. I think that she looks lovely.
You dont know anything about uzbekistan, just it is prapaganda of some haters of uzbek football, bunyodkor does not belong to Gulnoza, even it does, no matter, she is just making new top team for us, that is good enough
One more thing, it is nor Uzbaki, It is O’zbek, or uzbek, we are not pakistani or israili which u can add +i to end of uzbek
I began to love the football played in the stadiums in Uzbekistan as there we can see top games where the players from Brazil headed by Rivaldo are showing their good football. It is because of professional football club Bunyodkor . Thanks for Everyone who are engaged in supporting and developing football in Bunyodkor and in Uzbekistan as a whole. We are fans are not loosing anything from this but watching good football.
I’m sure there’s nothing clean in there, but the article is written in such a ‘Communist’ manner. A real propaganda.
Yep Turkish_The_Warlord, the reality is so that due to the lack of knowledge when people see a country name that ends with ’stan they directly think of Afghanistan or Pakistan
I was also surprised that my nation is now called Kyrgyzstani people 
They change someone’s name as they wish. Well Empires may act as they wish, it’s just funny that people claim that they’re civilized and respect the others.
people expressed outrage over free spending Manchester City, and how City is out to “ruin football” but few people are talking about Bunyodkor. Hopefully the recent Guardian piece put them in the spot light because what goes on there is sinister and scandalous. Bunyodkor says it “plays for the sake of fans”, I just have one question: Where did Bunyodkor’s fans come from?
Bunyodkor and its creators just want to create grant club and propogand the uzbek football and it is ot bad idea. they are improving uzbek and asian football . Thanx to Bunyodkor creators.
Actually I thought this article was written for the purpose of discredetation of Islam Karimov`s regime. But in fact the situation is almost the same as written in this article. I am living in Uzbekistan and can see how Zeromax (officially according to the Incorporation documents it is company registered in Switzerland, in fact every people and child know in Uzbekistan that it belongs to Gulnara Karimova (of course with approval of her father President Islam Karimov)) has its interests in every oil-gaz and construction projects in Uzbekistan. One can say “why not”, she is Dauther of President and at the end of day she has right to make business in Uzbekistan. However, it is not so, because, as I said before, Zeromax has interest in every oil-gaz and construction projects, which should be done by State companies (national income) or at least should be done on the basis of bitting.
About bloody money – probably it is not directly true, but in some regard, it is. At the time when almost 3-4 million people of Uzbekistan are looking for their and their families feeding abroad somewhere in Siberia or Moscow, or chemical companies in South Korea as a slave or in Duabai as a prostitues, family of President or his dauthers are making money by decreasing amount of state budget (200-300 million USD each year).
My question is how far they will go? How much money each man needs to be happy? or at least, How can muslim make money by that way?
One of the most amusing pieces of rubbish I have seen in a few days. Building specious arguments based on purely circumstantial evidence, and most of this is no evidence at all, is puerile at best, blatantly dishonest at worst. The modeling of the badge was particularly risible as an opening parley, as if the Barcelona organization has any control over badge design by other clubs. This does not provide any smoking gun any more than saying that the use of the swastika by Hitler is some sort of proof that he was pro Hindu, given the origin of that particular symbol.
The atrocities in the country and dictatorship are real, and indeed Barcelona players (who do deserve some examination for such stupid decisions) should tread carefully when dealing with ANY club in the area. But to use innuendo and suspicion, colored by your complete lack of objectivity, in order to make an actual accusation is a joke. Are you a joke, Mr. Dunmore? Stop wasting your time, and ours. If Uzbekistan is in such dire straits, why are you using your efforts to attack an organization that has no real bearing on the situation. I know that Barcelona have had some good press, and perhaps it is fun to play the rebel, but that is all you are doing. Playing.
The point about the money being taken by Barcelona is the real issue. Why so little about that? A few paltry innuendos are tiresome. Please do put some actual substance into this
This just means that football, which has always considered itself unpolitical, will have to deal with a new reality where big time mafioso and robber barons are buying clubs. In this new reality, clubs like Barca will have to do some background checking on the people they deal with, especially if they offer them huge amounts of cash.
There’s already ethics rules for club owners in England, and these will have to be extended to cooperations or any other contracts that involve large sums of money.
Not Ismail, but ISLAM Karimov
Turkcell Süper Lig’in gelecek dört sezon için TV yayın hakları ihalesini Digitürk kazandı.
I think you hit a nerve with some people, TD….