The court settlement against VimpelCom is one of the largest settlements linked to bribery in US corporate history.

VimpelCom is majority owned by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman but is headquatered in Amsterdam and is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Telenor, the Norwegian telecoms company, also owns a 33% stake in VimpelCom.

Officials in the US and the Netherlands opened investigations against VimpelCom in 2014 for bribing Uzbek public officials to obtain a licence. The description of the corrupt official in the US court’s proceedings fits the profile of Gulnara Karimova, the president’s daughter, although her name is not explicitly mentioned.

The court said that, between 2006 and 2012, Unitel, VimpelCom’s subsidiary in Uzbekistan, paid $114m in bribes to operate in the country and to obtain 3G and 4G licences.

Two days before the settlement, VimpelCom released a report where it effectively admitted its guilt.

VimpelCom said it “would, among other things, acknowledge certain violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and relevant Dutch laws and pay fines.”

Following the settlement Jean Yves Charlier, the VipelCom CEO, said: “The wrongdoing, which we deeply regret, is unacceptable.”

VimpelCom uses the Beeline brand. In Central Asia, Beeline also operates in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

But VimpelCom is not alone in bribing its way into Uzbekistan’s mobile network. Swedish-Finnish telecoms company TeliaSonera has also admitted bribe paying in 2008 for access to Uzbekistan’s market.

For Uzbekistan, the telecoms corruption cases have confirmed widely perceived views that bribe paying is rampant and that, previously, major companies wanting to do business there had to deal with Ms Karimova. She was once thought of as a future president but has been under house arrest in Tashkent for two years.