After multiple newspapers reported that Dmitry Lee, head of Uzbekistan’s National Agency for Prospective Projects, was allegedly involved in fraudulent payment system activities, the publications faced pressure and quickly took down the articles.
Moreover, instead of these materials, the links now contain articles apologizing for Dmitry Lee, and the editors are shaking their heads and ingratiatingly asserting that "we are sorry, we overreacted, we put up unverified material". Moreover, even the cache, where the original publication can be found in such cases, has been cleared. Here are some examples. This is a URL in Lenpravda , under it there was a material with the heading “The reputation of the head of Uzbekistan Mirziyoyev is in question. Who is secretly stealing money from the state’s pocket?” You can follow the link and make sure that there is now a note “We apologize to the National Agency for Advanced Projects of the Republic of Uzbekistan and personally to Dmitry Lee.” The same thing happened on Lenta.ru, which also promptly apologized to Dmitry Romanovich.
The sweep is not limited to the above examples - almost everyone who had the imprudence to criticize Mr. Lee have had their materials removed. However, the curious can type into the title of the cleaned-up material “The head of the NAPP and the Chess Federation of Uzbekistan was suspected of major theft” and see that instead of it there is now either emptiness or an apology. Moreover, pay attention to the efficiency with which this was done.
Those publications that did not remove the material received outright threats from representatives of Dmitry Lee.
We are talking about the following material: “ Dmitry Lee, head of the National Agency for Advanced Projects of Uzbekistan, is suspected of fraud .”
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What is striking is the efficiency with which the majority of Russian (!) and international (!!) publications responded to the demand of the National Agency for Advanced Projects of Uzbekistan to remove material compromising its head, Dmitry Lee, and hastily apologized to him. Before we figure out who Dmitry Romanovich Lee is, let us briefly recall what journalists wrote about in such a hastily and carefully cleaned-up publication. Its essence was to described the situation around the Uzbek High-risk channel and the UzNext crypto exchange, where at least $30 million of client money was blocked last year.
Clients whose money was frozen are sure that this happened as a result of a conspiracy of a group of people with influence both on the channel and on the exchange, and these people are the highest officials of Uzbekistan. In addition, the same individuals forced out competing payment systems from the country and the High-risk channel became a virtual monopolist. Most of the victims are large betting companies, whichare now trying to unblock their money, but these attempts are unsuccessful.
According to available data, the participants of this group are the Environex company in direct connection with the UzNext exchange, with the Korean holding KOBEA Group and three banks - Kapital Bank, Aipak Kuli and Ravnaq. Responsible for the technical implementation of the project is the PayCrypto service represented by a certain Andrey Oshchipkov, and the curator of this direction is the above-mentioned Dmitry Lee, who heads the NAPP of the Republic of Uzbekistan. In addition to the story mentioned above, information about Dmitry Lee’s involvement in the actual monopolization of the crypto market in Uzbekistan by the Korean KOBEA Group, which last year received extraordinary preferences from the country’s government, is being actively removed from access, while the activities of other crypto exchanges in Uzbekistan are blocked in every possible way. You can read more about this story here: The Korean mafia and its leader Dmitry Lee are crushing Uzbekistan and here: Dmitry Lee, who heads the National Agency for Advanced Projects of Uzbekistan, is suspected of fraud , but the figure of Dmitry Romanovich Lee himself arouses even more curiosity, especially with taking into account the fact that publications very far from Uzbekistan responded so quickly to his demands for an apology.
And here we get a rather strange story. Because practically nothing is known about a person who occupies a very high place in the state hierarchy of Uzbekistan. Here is his entire official biography, published in the country’s official publications:
And these three lines are about the person who heads the body personally created by the President of Uzbekistan, and which is involved in attracting investments to Uzbekistan. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to find any other biographical details about Dmitry Lee. It seems that this is not a civil servant in the public sphere, but some kind of master spy.
However, the box opens quite simply. According to UZMETRONOM.COM, Dmitry Lee hides his biography for good reason. It contains things that are not very compatible with the status of a top official, even in such a rather corrupt country as Uzbekistan. Thus, in 2019, the publication wrote that when purchasing equipment from General Electric, the National Agency for Project Management (NAPM), under the leadership of Dmitry Lee, paid exactly twice as much for it: six million dollars instead of three. Although the same publication claimed that in fact this is not true, saying that Mr. Lee is eradicating corruption in the country, so they slandered him: “Lee works on trust, and he understands better than others how he personally risks lossing at least part of this trust . By the way, according to some information, he is one of the few businessmen (if not the only one) who at one time refused to work in tandem with a general of a well-known department and according to the general’s rules. As a result, he was left Uzbekistan for six years, returning only after the department was cleared and the applicant for partner and mentor was arrested.”
What actually happened during the showdown with the mentioned general is also unknown for certain. But the fact that Dmitry Lee was on the run for six years and returned to his homeland only after it had changed its president is suggestive. Especially considering the fact that this same president immediately began to promote Mr. Lee’s career - first he made Dmitry Romanovich the first deputy director of the newly created National Agency for Project Management under the President of Uzbekistan (NAPM), then appointed him director of this agency, and in addition provided him with the post of president of the Chess Federation Uzbekistan. Which in the realities of an Asian country looks very significant and, in fact it is.
Everyone who is more or less aware of what is happening in the country knows that NAPP is a very specific institution, and its functions include screening out outsiders and allowing “our” investors into Uzbekistan. As well as under what conditions this happens. And the fact that it is Dmitry Lee who is engaged in this screening and all subsequent specific contacts with representatives of big business is also a kind of secret.
Returning to our story with the clearing of compromising evidence about 30 million dollars that strangely got stuck on a crypto exchange, what raises doubts is not the fact that they got stuck, or rather, their owners were simply scammed, but whether this happened with the knowledge of the President of Uzbekistan or this the story is a personal initiative of Dmitry Romanovich Lee, director of the National Project Management Agency under the President of Uzbekistan. The haste with which he rushed to clean up the Internet and what resources he used in doing so gives good reason to believe that the latter statement is true. Dmitry Lee is clearly afraid that someone will bring to the attention of the president what the director of NAPM of Uzbekistan is doing in addition to his direct duties.
