Russian investors behind a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) platform have started international arbitration against Uzbekistan, arguing that a commercial joint venture with a state-owned bank collapsed into coercion, expropriation and the detention of a local executive.
Counsel for Solfy RUS LLC and its shareholder Maksim Poletaev say they have filed a request for arbitration at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes under the ICSID Additional Facility Rules.
The case is brought under the Russia–Uzbekistan bilateral investment treaty and seeks more than US$100 million.
Because Russia is not a party to the ICSID Convention, the Additional Facility is the available institutional route.
According to the claimants, Uzbekistan’s largest wholly state-owned bank invited Poletaev in 2019 to introduce instalment-card technology through a joint venture, SOLFY CA LLC, with the bank’s investment arm.
They say they put millions of dollars and proprietary BNPL systems into the project.
The dispute, they allege, turned in 2024 when the bank demanded an uncompensated transfer of 70 percent of the company to the Uzbek side.
After that demand was refused, criminal proceedings were opened against company management at the bank’s request, even though a state-ordered audit later found no violations.
The most serious allegation concerns Uktam Khasanov (also spelled Xasanov), director of the Uzbek operating company.
Claimants say he has spent about five months in pre-trial detention without trial, in conditions they describe as harsh, and that criminal process is being used as leverage in a civil disagreement.
A petition challenging the detention was submitted in June 2026 to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and remains pending.
The treaty claims allege five breaches: failure to provide fair and equitable treatment; unlawful expropriation; failure to give full protection and security; restrictions on the free transfer of payments; and less favourable treatment than that given to domestic investors.
Together with the request for arbitration, the investors have applied for urgent provisional measures.
They want a future tribunal to suspend the criminal case, order Khasanov’s release and confidential access to counsel, bar interference with witnesses, stop use of the prosecution to stall insolvency steps, and preserve evidence.
Robert Amsterdam, whose firm is leading the case with Moscow counsel Sergey Alekhin of ELWI, has framed the filing as a test of Uzbekistan’s public claim that it is open to foreign capital.
He argues the pattern of converting commercial conflict with state entities into criminal pressure on managers is familiar from earlier investor-state cases against the country.
Uzbek outlets have presented a different picture, describing the matter as a contractual fight that claimants have amplified through media pressure around major investment events.
Those reports also note Poletaev’s former senior role at Sberbank.
The arbitration itself will turn on treaty standards and the documentary record, not on competing press narratives.
No tribunal has yet been constituted, and Uzbekistan has not issued a detailed public legal response to the ICSID filing in the materials available.
The case sits at the intersection of Central Asian fintech expansion, state-bank partnerships and investor-state dispute settlement. Whatever the merits, it will be watched closely by foreign investors assessing legal risk in Uzbekistan’s rapidly growing digital finance sector.
