US seeks to seize Russian criminal group’s real estate
US prosecutors are looking to seize New York property used by a Russian criminal organisation to launder funds derived from an elaborate $230m tax fraud, according to a complaint filed in a Manhattan court.
The civil action also seeks to impose money-laundering penalties on the companies set up by the organisation, whose members allegedly included corrupt Russian government officials, US Attorney Preet Bharara said.
“Today’s forfeiture action is a significant step towards uncovering and unwinding a complex money laundering scheme arising from a notorious foreign fraud,” Mr Bharara said on Tuesday in a statement.
“As alleged, a Russian criminal enterprise sought to launder some of its billions in ill-gotten roubles through the purchase of pricey Manhattan real estate. While New York is a world financial capital, it is not a safe haven for criminals seeking to hide their loot, no matter how and where their fraud took place.”
The $230m fraud was first uncovered by the late Sergei Magnitsky, a respected Russian lawyer who died in pre-trial detention in Moscow in 2009 shortly after making his whistleblowing allegations.
Prosecutors claim that members of the organisation stole the corporate identities of portfolio companies of the Hermitage Fund, a foreign investment fund operating in Russia, which were then used to make fraudulent claims for tax refunds through sham lawsuits. Officials at two Russian tax offices who were members of the organisation approved the disbursements.
Through a complex series of transfers through shell companies, $230m was laundered into numerous bank accounts in Russia and elsewhere, according to the civil complaint. A portion of the funds stolen from the Russian Treasury passed through a Cyprus-based property company Prevezon Holdings, which laundered the proceeds into Manhattan property including four luxury apartments and two high end commercial spaces, it is alleged.
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U.S. Seeks Forfeiture of Manhattan Real Estate Tied to Fraud
Federal authorities announced on Tuesday that they were seeking forfeiture of expensive Manhattan real estate tied to a fraud that they say was uncovered by a whistle-blowing Russian lawyer before he died behind bars.
A civil forfeiture complaint filed against the assets of a Cyprus-based real estate corporation and other holding companies contends that some of the proceeds from a $230 million tax fraud in Russia were laundered through the purchase of four luxury condominiums in a Wall Street doorman building, where apartments can sell for more than $3 million, and two commercial spaces in prime locations in Midtown and Chelsea.
“Today’s forfeiture action is a significant step toward uncovering and unwinding a complex money-laundering scheme arising from a notorious foreign fraud,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement. “While New York is a world financial capital, it is not a safe haven for criminals seeking to hide their loot, no matter how and where their fraud took place.”
The whistle-blower, Sergei Magnitsky, was a lawyer for the British investor William Browder, who was born in the United States. Mr. Magnitsky said in 2008 that organized criminals colluded with corrupt Russian Interior Ministry officials to fraudulently claim a $230 million tax rebate after illegally seizing subsidiaries of Mr. Browder’s Hermitage Capital investment company.
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Obama Gets an Earful on Syria From Russian Human-Rights Activists
Daily Beast
Only a handful of Russian activists bothered to show up to meet the president in St. Petersburg, and those who did gave him an earful on Syria and Snowdon.
President Obama must have been disappointed to see the group of activists at St. Petersburg’s Crown Plaza hotel. Only nine showed up.
Some of Russia’s top human-rights defenders, it seemed, realized the American leader had failed to reset relations not only with Russian authorities but Russian society as well, and turned down their invitations to meet on Friday afternoon. Activists said they doubted that a president who accepted the convictions and pursuit of whistleblowers in his own country would be an influential advocate for the issues they face in Russia.
One of the nine, opposition leader Yevgenia Chirikova, admitted that she felt she needed to talk to Obama about his own challenges. “I came to criticize Obama, to make him realize that impeachment, which he might face soon, is a trifle compared to the blood he would always have on his hands if he bombs Syria now,” Chirikova, the winner of the 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize, told The Daily Beast. But she added that sitting down to talk was still important, even if the chances for any positive changes were low.
At the meeting, Chirikova urged Obama to consider the Magnitsky Act, the 2011 law that punishes the Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky by banning their entry to U.S. Russians paid a high price for that law, including new anti-U.S. adoption measures last winter, the activist said. “I wonder how to add more names to Magnitsky list. For instance, the mayor of Khimki town, who is responsible in the death of his critic, journalist Mikhail Beketov. But Obama did not answer my question,” said Chirikova, who’s been jailed numerous times for her activities and officials have threatened to take away her two children if she did not stop her activism.
The scene was different back in 2009, during Obama’s first visit to Russia. Dozens of civil activists and human-rights defenders met with the newly elected president, hopeful that his “reset” ideas would bring more political freedom to Russia. Unlike today, the U.S. and Russian presidents were meeting at a summit; at one such meeting, the president mentioned the physical assault on activist Lev Ponomarev, the founder of All-Russian Movement for Human Rights. Ponomarev was among those who skipped the meeting with Obama this year.
“If they told me they needed to save a person, I would have immediately come,” Ponomarev explained. “We recently met with John Kerry without any results—these meetings with the U.S. leaders make no sense. But they are a nice tradition. We complain to them and they tell us that we are great,” he added.
Svetlana Gannushkina, chairwoman of the human-rights group Civil Support Committee, also declined the invitation, instead sending her appeal in writing. She complimented America’s leadership for feeling responsible for the world’s fate, but warned President Obama in her letter: “Military operations leading to the death of new victims among the civilian population are not the best expression of this responsibility.” Of Obama, she said “we can see that he is ready to send whistleblowers to jail and bomb other states—this is a horrible example for Russian authorities and a disillusioning one for Russian youth.” займы онлайн на карту срочно займ онлайн на карту без отказа female wrestling https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php https://zp-pdl.com займы на карту
PACE Committee urges full investigation of Magnitsky’s death
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s (PACE) Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights has urged Russian authorities to fully investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Hermitage Capital Fund auditor Sergei Magnitsky, PACE announced Wednesday.
The committee approved a report Wednesday entitled, “Refusing impunity for the killers of Sergei Magnitsky.”
PACE announced that Rapporteur Andreas Gross, who prepared the report approved by the Committee Wednesday, said he would propose that the report should be debated by the Plenary Assembly in January 2014.
Measures reminiscent of those enshrined in the controversial US Magnitsky Act were noted in the report’s draft resolutions.
On Dec. 6, 2012, the US Senate approved the Magnitsky Act, to severe criticism from the Russian State Duma, stipulating visa sanctions for Russians who are believed by US authorities to have been involved in human rights violations. The Magnitsky List, which was published in part on April 12, includes the names of 18 Russian officials who are barred from travelling to the United States.
The report stated in a draft resolution: “Regarding the imposition by the United States of targeted sanctions against individuals (visa bans and account freezes, cf. paragraph 11), as well as corresponding European Parliament Resolutions and the above-mentioned law adopted by the Russian State Duma, the Assembly considers these as a means of last resort.”
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How London turned into Richistan
The city with more super-rich than anywhere else proves Putin had a point when he taunted PM about losing his capital to oligarchs.
It is 3am on a warm Tuesday in Cadogan Square, Belgravia, and a £200,000 orange Maserati screeches to a halt.
The driver revs the engine for several minutes, and the car – with Arab script on its registration plate – roars off into the night. By the time the sleepless residents reach their windows to peer out, the car has long gone.
For the next month the streets of the capital will be dominated by Ferraris and Maybachs in often garish colours, driven by the over-indulged sons of the Emirates aristocracy.
Sometimes the cars come straight from the Park Lane showroom. Sometimes the playboy owners fly their favourite vehicles – heavily customised, from gold-plated interiors to velvet-covered bodywork – more than 3,000 miles for a few weeks of fun in the London traffic.
It is an annual sojourn, delayed this year by Ramadan. With temperatures reaching 110F in Kuwait, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, the ruling families have flocked to the temperate if polluted air of Knightsbridge for shopping and leisure.
And for the younger men – nights of boozing and ostentatiously bad behaviour impossible back home.
Welcome to super-rich London, the city with the highest number of multi-millionaires in the world, according to the respected Wealth Insight analysis – more than 4,000 individuals with more than £20 million per head, placing London ahead of Tokyo, Singapore and New York.
Last week, speaking at the G20 Summit, Vladimir Putin described Britain as ‘a small island’. Nobody, said his spokesman, pays attention to it – except of course the Russian ‘oligarchs who have bought Chelsea’.
To that list he might have added the Khazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Malaysians, Chinese, Indians and even Greeks and Italians who are all scrambling to buy up London in ever greater numbers.
The tide of foreign wealth seems unstoppable. ‘Super-prime’ homes, usually defined as the top 5 per cent of the most valuable properties, are being sold to international buyers at a rate of almost 85 per cent, while 60 per cent of newly built property in London is bought by overseas investors, mainly from the Far East.
Greek and Italian investors are said to be buying £500 million of British property a year.
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Andy McSmith’s Diary: How Tory right wing makes Britain an unlikely bedfellow of Putin’s party
David Cameron heads off to Russia on Thursday for the G20 summit of world leaders, promising that he is not going to shy away from tackling Vladimir Putin, pictured, about a couple of very serious differences between Russia’s regime and ours.
While Syria is the bigger and more urgent, the Foreign Office has said that the Prime Minister will also raise the question of the law that the Russian parliament passed in June, banning the “promotion of non-traditional sexual relations”.
What with that and the suspicious deaths of the Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, and the defector, Alexander Litvinenko, you might think that the British Conservatives are not exactly soulmates with Putin’s United Russia party.
But here is a strange thing: whenever the parliamentarians who make up the Council or Europe meet, almost all the leading European centre-right parties – including Germany’s Christian Democrats, whose leader is Angela Merkel, and France’s Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, founded in 2002 by Jacques Chirac – go into one room, while the Tories walk wistfully by and into another room, to commune with the delegates from United Russia.
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What’s at stake for Russia in Syria
The gridlock at the UN Security Council between the U.S.and Russia is dragging on, due to a gamut of competing interests in Syria.
The Russia-Syria axis is rooted in a strong political and economic relationship that has been cultivated since the late 1950s. The bond has a deep cultural element: many Syrians go to Russia to study, while Russians go to Syria as holidaymakers, advisors or investors. Over the years, Russia has also played an essential role in restructuring the Syrian economy, and wrote off roughly 70 percent of Syria’s $13.4 billion debt in 2005.
While reliable numbers are hard to come by, The Moscow Times estimated Russian investments in Syria at $19.4 billion in 2009, covering infrastructure, energy and tourism. But with outstanding projects ranging from a nuclear power plant to oil and gas exploration, the number today may be considerably higher.
Either way, Russia’s trade with Syria is fairly insubstantial. According to Daniel Treisman, professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, Russian exports to Syria amounted to$1.93 billion in 2011, or only 0.4 percent of Russia’s total exports. That’s less than its trade with Tunisia and Estonia.
Still, what stands out is that Russia-Syria trade is concentrated in the defense and energy industries. “The vast majority of Russian exports to Syria are armaments, which makes Syria relatively more important as an export destination for the Russian defense industry,” Connolly said.
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U.S.-Russian Ties Still Fall Short of ‘Reset’ Goal
Just days before Vladimir V. Putin reassumed the presidency of Russia last year, President Obama dispatched his national security adviser to Moscow. Mr. Obama had made considerable progress with Dmitri A. Medvedev, the caretaker president, and wanted to preserve the momentum.
Any hopes of that, however, were quickly dashed when Mr. Putin sat down with the visiting American adviser, Tom Donilon, at the lavish presidential residence outside Moscow. Rather than talk of cooperation, Mr. Putin opened the meeting with a sharp challenge underscoring his deep suspicion of American ambitions:
“When,” he asked pointedly, “are you going to start bombing Syria?”
At the time, Mr. Obama had no plans for military involvement in the civil war raging in the heart of the Middle East, but Mr. Putin did not believe that. In Mr. Putin’s view, the United States wanted only to meddle in places where it had no business, fomenting revolutions to install governments friendly to Washington.
The meeting 16 months ago set the stage for a tense new chapter in Russian-American relations, one that will play out publicly this week when Mr. Obama travels to St. Petersburg for a Group of 20 summit meeting hosted by Mr. Putin. Although Mr. Obama had no intention of bombing Syria last year, on Saturday he said he now favored military action against Syrian forces, not to depose the government of Bashar al-Assad, a Russian ally, but in retaliation for gassing its own citizens — an assertion Mr. Putin denounced as “utter nonsense” to justify American intervention.
While it was the Kremlin’s decision last month to shelter Edward J. Snowden, the National Security Agency leaker, that finally prompted Mr. Obama to call off a separate one-on-one meeting he had scheduled with Mr. Putin while in Russia, the core of the schism is not so much that case as the radically different worldviews revealed by the Syria dispute. Where Mr. Obama feels compelled to take action to curb the use of unconventional weapons, Mr. Putin sees American imperialism at work again.
The story of the administration’s “reset” policy toward Russia is a case study in how the heady idealism of Mr. Obama’s first term has given way to the disillusionment of his second. Critics say he was naïve to think he could really make common cause with Moscow. Aides say it was better to try than not, and it did yield tangible successes in arms control, trade and military cooperation before souring.
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European rights body to debate Magnitsky report
The Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog, will on Wednesday (4 September) in Paris debate a damning resolution on the Magnitsky affair, with Russian delegates pledging to attack the text.
The resolution, drafted by Swiss centre-left MP Andrea Gross in June, accuses Russian authorities of orchestrating the death in pre-trial detention, of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian auditor, who exposed a mafia-related scam to embezzle the Russian taxman.
“There is no doubt that some of the causes of Mr Magnitsky’s death were created deliberately, by identifiable persons,” his report says.
It calls for the council’s 47 member states to impose “intelligent sanctions” on Russian officials implicated in his death.
It also urges Moscow to help Europol and financial sleuths from six EU states to investigate the money laundering trail linked to the scam.
Russian MPs on the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) have indicated they will try to water down the text before it is officially adopted, however.
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To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
