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Abstract

This paper aims to present the results of an ongoing socio-legal historical investigation of the institutional development of the Soviet prosecutorial model, specifically focusing on Uzbekistan, by analyzing the role of the modern prosecutorial model in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CFT). Although Uzbekistan officially dismantled the Soviet "prokuratura" model after gaining independence in 1991 and adopted international AML/CFT standards under the frameworks of FATF, EAG, and the UN Convention, the organizational logic, supervisory culture, and formal competencies of the prokuratura show a notable persistence in the current legal system, which is most visible in countries AML/CFT system. This persistence prompts a fundamental socio-legal inquiry: when international standards are introduced into post-authoritarian legal systems, do they replace the existing institutional structures, or do they simply overlay the organizational remnants from the Soviet era?

Drawing on Sacco's legal formants theory and Wang's (2025) socio-legal historical approach to legal transplantation, this research reconstructs the institutional genealogy of Uzbekistan's Prosecutorial body across three historical moments: starting from its Soviet formation (1924–1991), and analyzing the independence-era reform period (1992–2010), and the post-2017 modernization wave aligned with FATF mutual evaluation requirements. The empirical basis of the study combines archival analysis of legislative texts and documents, with qualitative semi-structured interviews with prosecutors who served across both Soviet and post-Soviet periods and legal academics. This analysis complemented by content analysis of court decisions from AML/CFT prosecutions (2015–2024), which serve as documentary evidence of how prosecutorial reasoning operates in practice beneath formal legislative reform.

Preliminary findings suggest that what appears in legislation as institutional transformation is, in practice, a form of "authoritarian archiving", where Soviet supervisory logic is not discarded but reclassified, renamed, and repackaged within internationally legible frameworks. The paper contributes to socio-legal debates on legal transplantation in post-Soviet Eurasia and the limits of international standard-setting.