IMEI case: Police officer sold personal data of about 40,000 citizens

After the conflict that arose in Uzbekistan in 2020, it was revealed that several criminal groups were engaged in illegally recording the IMEI codes of mobile devices under the passports of other citizens.

Gazeta.uz provided information on how the courts considered these criminal cases. It was reported that one of these criminal cases was considered in the Andijan first instance and appeal courts in 2021.

The first sentence was issued by the Andijan city court on criminal proceedings on March 2, 2021. Defendants in this case: A. Akhmedov (born in 1991) – a resident of Andijan city, engaged in the sale and purchase of telephones, R. Mirkhaydarov (1992) – head of the ITC and information protection department of the Andijan regional DIA, U. Mirzayev (1991) – an entrepreneur from Andijan, N. Ashurov (1990) – an operator in a local enterprise, B. Kamoldinov – former school teacher.

According to court documents, in January 2020, these persons, under the leadership of businessman Akhmedov, formed a criminal conspiracy to bypass customs control and register the IMEI codes of a large number of mobile phones entering Uzbekistan.

As it turned out, Mirkhaydarov and Mirzayev (with the help of Ashurov and Kamoldinov) registered the information of citizens who left and returned to Uzbekistan through the system operator – SUE “Republican Center for Management of Telecommunication Networks of Uzbekistan”.

Mirkhaydarov, who worked as the head of the ICT department of the Andijan regional DIA, abused his official power – he illegally collected, used and disclosed personal data of individuals for the benefit of an organized group.

The personal data of citizens who went abroad are available in the database of the regional DIA Anti-Terrorism Department, and Mirkhaydarov, knowing the database password, secretly collected them for four months and sent them to Akhmedov via Telegram with the help of Mirzayev.

According to reports, Akhmedov gave Mirzayev $13,800 for his “service”, $12,000 of which was used to buy a Nexia-3 car for Mirkhaydarov, and Mirzayev spent the remaining $1,800.

According to the case materials, the criminal group colluded with other unknown persons and helped to register the IMEI-code of 3,618 phones with a total value of 6.4 billion soums illegally imported into Uzbekistan under the passports of third parties. As a result of illegal import, customs fees in the amount of 1 billion 630 million soums were not paid.

Allegedly, they used the information of the DIA e-database “Persons who have left for a long time”. The personal data of about 40,000 people was sent to the Telegram account of two other group members in a password-protected Excel file.

They took 0.5-2 US dollars to register an IMEI code of one phone. The money was transferred to the plastic cards opened under the names of convicts.

In general, in January-September 2020, the personal data of 3,578 people was illegally used, which is a violation of the constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens.

It should be recalled that in January 2021, the head of the MIA Cybersecurity Department, Bakhtiyor Sulaymanov, announced that about 7,000 such violations were officially recorded in the quarantine zones of Uzbekistan. But no other information about the fate of these criminals was provided.

At the same time, conflicts related to UzIMEI are still not on the agenda in Uzbekistan. Those who are in charge of this issue are simply ignoring criticisms from the mass media and social networks.