United Cement Group

Floor Speech

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Mr. HUNT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to inquire about a possible and deliberate violation of U.S. imposed sanctions due to Russian aggression.

As the war in Ukraine carries on and as Russian sanctions are imposed, I worry that our focus on Russian assets and agents in Europe has overlooked assets and agents in former Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

I would like to draw specific attention to various companies registered in Cyprus which operate in these former Soviet republics. One such example is a Cyprus-registered company which operates in Uzbekistan and Russia called United Cement Group (UCG).

UCG acquired the Uzbekistan government's stake in one of the country's largest cement factories in early 2022 in what has been described as an ``opaque'' transaction with no formal tender and a significant discount on the sale price. This acquisition by UCG has positioned the company to now control about 50 percent of Uzbekistan's cement capacity.

We are seeing monopolization under the guise of privatization, to the benefit of Russia.

This is just one example of a bad actor in these relatively overlooked countries that are taking advantage of the international focus on Ukraine. I will be sending a letter to Treasury Secretary Yellen imploring her to further investigate these apparently corrupt improprieties and potential sanctions violations that continue to transpire in this region of the world.

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