Uzbekistan’s Customs Committee has announced a temporary suspension of customs clearance for imported mobile phones at Tashkent International Airport.
The committee’s press service said the pause was necessary to clarify “certain issues related to the identification of IMEI numbers and confirmation of the legality of imports”. The decision follows reports that phones brought in by passengers arriving from abroad were being temporarily seized for examination for up to 30 days.
According to reports on social media, passengers were allegedly offered the option of having their phones cleared within one day without an examination in exchange for an additional fee.
The committee said there had been an increase in attempts to import phones exceeding the duty-free allowance through “sophisticated illegal schemes”. These included:
- falsifying IMEI codes when bringing devices across the border;
- using identifiers assigned to other devices;
- legalising several devices using the details of a phone that had already been registered.
Over the first 10 months of this year, the Tashkent-AERO customs complex uncovered 185 cases of illegal mobile phone imports, the press service said. A total of 1,185 devices worth 8.8 billion soums were seized.
The committee stressed that checking IMEI codes “requires specialised knowledge and expertise”. This includes verifying that multiple codes (IMEI1 and IMEI2) belong to a single device and identifying codes that have previously been involved in a “network incident”.
The customs authorities said coordination with relevant agencies was needed to ensure that IMEI-related issues were handled correctly and consistently, and to prevent future violations. Measures to verify IMEI codes and clarify registration procedures have been agreed with these agencies.
The committee pledged to clarify the situation “as soon as possible”. Once this has been done, customs clearance of mobile phones will be resumed under the established procedures.
“We urge passengers not to trust unverified reports circulating on social media and to rely only on information published through official sources,” the statement said.
The press service also advised anyone who encounters corruption during the customs clearance of imported phones to report it via the 1108 hotline, which operates around the clock.
The English version of this material was generated with the assistance of AI translation tools and may differ slightly from the original text.
