Two EU countries shut down money laundering probes
Austria and Finland have said their companies did no wrong in a case of suspected Russia-EU money laundering. But victims of the crime disagree.
The sums involved are not so big – $150,000 in Austria and $199,500 in Finland.
But according to documents obtained by the UK-based investment firm Hermitage Capital, the money is part of the largest white collar crime in Russian history, a money laundering operation involving six EU countries and a plot to murder its Russian accountant, Sergei Magnitsky.
Bank statements sent by Hermitage to Austrian authorities show that in 2008 a Moldovan firm wired $150,000 to Austrian company Colop, which makes rubber stamps.
Documents sent by Hermitage to Finland show that the same year a second Moldovan firm made a payment to Finnish fur supplier, Saga Furs.
The money originated in the embezzlement of $230 million from Russian tax authorities by an organised crime group, the so-called Kluyev group, and went through a maze of Russian and Moldovan banks before coming to the EU.
When Magnitsky exposed the fraud, he was jailed and died in suspicious circumstances while in custody.
But for his part, Christian Hubmer, a spokesman for the local prosecutor in Linz, Austria, the home of Colop, says his people can find no record of the dodgy payment.
Read More →
Putin proposes ban on foreign accounts for officials
President Vladimir Putin has sent to the State Duma a bill proposing to ban senior officials and their relatives from having accounts in foreign banks and holding securities issued by foreign bodies.
The text of the bill was published on the legislative activity portal of the lower parliament chamber on Tuesday.
The ban should apply to members of federal and regional parliaments and governments, board members of the Central Bank, judges, officials working in government-run companies and foundations, as well as other officials appointed by the president, government or prosecutor general, the bill said.
It will also apply to officials’ spouses and children, but it will not affect diplomats, it said.
After the bill becomes effective, officials will have to choose between closing their accounts and selling securities within three months or a voluntary or forced resignation.
Normally, a bill becomes effective one month from its official publication after it is passed in three readings by the Duma, endorsed by the Federation Council, the upper parliament chamber, and signed into law by the president. займ на карту buy over the counter medicines https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php hairy woman
No Financial Center Without Rule of Law
The plans to make the Moscow stock market into a major international exchange and Moscow into a major international financial center are, unfortunately, one big pipe dream as long as the regime of President Vladimir Putin continues to trample over private property rights.
Foreign investors will not bring their money into a financial marketplace in significant amounts until they can be assured that their investments are protected by a strong rule of law and an independent judiciary. As Russian capital continues to flee the country, a natural question arises: If Russians don’t trust their own country’s financial markets, why should foreign investors?
The Russian government and its senior officials continue to delude themselves every day. The growth that has occurred in Russia in the past 10 years is not because of Putin. It is despite him. The absurd criminal trial of a deceased Sergei Magnitsky is a pathetic attempt to deceive Russians and cover up the corrupt activities of Kremlin officials. It is right out of the Soviet playbook, as is the Russian ban on adoptions of Russian orphans by U.S. citizens.
Despite populist statements by the government about efforts to improve the business climate, the Kremlin’s control of the courts continues to be the law of the land. The cases of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his colleagues Platon Lebedev, Vasily Aleksanyan, Svetlana Bakhmina and others awakened the world to Russian justice under Putin. Magnitsky and the corruption exhibited by the Russian administration in everything associated with that case are indicative of complete lack of a rule of law and a continuation of the obfuscation.
Read More →
Browder: Tymoshenko imprisonment ‘sends the most terrible message’
William Browder, the London-based head of Hermitage Capital, remains unrelenting in his quest for justice in the 2009 death of his former lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky was a 37-year-old lawyer who was tortured, deprived of medical attention and left to die in a Russian prison in 2009, nearly a year after uncovering a $230 million tax fraud allegedly committed by top Russian law enforcement officials. Russian officials say he was not murdered, but died of a heart attack while awaiting tax evasion charges. The people Magnitsky implicated in the fraud arrested him in 2008. A year after his death, several of these officials were promoted.
The traumatic events transformed Browder into an activist. He lobbied successfully for the passage in America last year of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which denies visas to and freezes the assets of those in the Russian ruling elite implicated in Magnitsky’s murder, corruption and other human rights violations. He now wants to push for a similar law in the European Union, and says such laws may need to be broadened and aimed against leaders in Ukraine, Belarus and other nations where human right violations are severe.
Browder has made himself an enemy of Kremlin leaders, who accuse him of tax fraud. Browder is also a co-defendant in the posthumous tax-fraud trial of Magnitsky set to resume in Russia later this month. He is being tried in absentia, after being barred from entering Russia since 2005.
“This Mr. Magnitsky, as is known, was not some human rights champion; he did not struggle for human rights,” Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying at a December news conference. “He was the lawyer of Mr. Browder, who is suspected by our law enforcement of committing economic crimes.”
Read More →
Browder May Win EU Version Of Magnitsky Law
Hermitage Capital Management founder Bill Browder seems to have convinced the EU to join the U.S. in making life difficult for Russians linked to the death in prison of Browder’s colleague, Serge Magnitsky.
Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who represented Browder’s hedge fund in a tax fraud case and who accused Russian Interior Ministry officials of defrauding Hermitage, was charged with tax fraud in 2009 and spent almost a year in Moscow’s most notorious prisons where Russian human rights activists allege he was tortured to death.
Only two people were ever charged in Magnitsky’s death, both doctors. The doctor who treated Magnitsky during his last weeks, Larisa Litvinova, had charges against her dropped last year; officials said that statute of limitations had run out. Other officials linked to Magnitsky’s death have been cleared, and some have been promoted.
But Browder, not satisfied with these outcomes, successfully lobbied the U.S. government to pass the Magnitsky law, barring Russian officials tied to his death from entering the country and freezing their assets.
In October, the European Parliament adopted a recommendation to the European Council to establish common visa restrictions for Russian officials involved in the Magnitsky case and freezing their assets in Europe.
Read More →
Billion Dollar Hedge Fund Mgr Goes After Putin And Russia, This Time In Europe
Bill Browder, the founder of Hermitage Capital Management in London, is doing his best to embarrass Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Russian government once again.
After successfully and single-handedly lobbying for the passing of the Magnitsky Act in the U.S. Senate in November, Browder seems to have convinced European governments to go after alleged Russian criminals in the same way: by banning travel and access to bank accounts in their respective countries.
Browder’s colleague and friend, Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer with the Moscow-based law firm Firestone Duncan, was arrested in 2009 for tax fraud affiliated with Hermitage. The billion dollar hedge fund was subsequently kicked out of Russia, and Magnitsky died in prison, a victim, it is widely believed, of poor treatment.
Late last year, Congress passed two laws that make life increasingly difficult for Russians currently on a “black list” at the U.S. State Department for their involvement in Magnitsky’s death. Under the so-called Magnitsky Act, both houses of Congress now have access to that list of Russians the State House had been inclined to keep under wraps out of concern of embarrassing The Kremlin.
Washington and Moscow are going through a revamp, or a reset, of bilateral relations and the current human rights scandals had put a strain in that relationship. Under the new law, Congress now knows which Russians to ban from traveling or having any type of financial business in the United States.
Immediately after its passing, Pavel Khodorkovsky, director of the Khodorkovsky Center in New York, told me that the idea was for some countries in Europe to pass similar legislation.
Read More →
Magnitsky fund boss brings Russia blacklist campaign to Europe
The investor pushing to blacklist Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has brought his campaign to Europe’s capitals, in a move that could have far-reaching implications for their relations with Moscow.
The London-based head of Hermitage Capital Management, William Browder, was in Paris on Monday to push for a French version of the US Magnitsky Act, a December law that blacklisted Russian officials tied to Magnitsky’s prison death.
The law has prompted a crisis in US-Russia ties, with Moscow retaliating by banning US adoptions of Russian orphans.
Ahead of talks with French lawmakers, Browder told AFP he was sure that within a year European capitals would have followed Washington’s lead in imposing sanctions on Russian officials.
“The Russian government tortured and murdered Sergei Magnitsky, our lawyer, after he uncovered a massive corruption scheme,” Browder said.
“The Russian government has taken every step to cover up the involvement of the officials… and then attack the victim. It has become clear to us that we have to get justice outside of Russia.”
Read More →
Moldova Joins Campaign to Probe Russian Money Laundering
Moldova said it’s investigating Russian money laundering, becoming the fifth country to announce an inquiry into bank transfers stemming from the biggest tax fraud in Russian history.
Moldovan authorities opened a criminal investigation into suspected money laundering on Dec. 28, Anzhela Starinschi, a spokeswoman for the National Anti-Corruption Center in Chisinau, said by phone today.
The probe concerns funds transferred in 2008 to Moldova’s state-controlled Banca de Economii, according to a letter sent by Prime Minister Vladimir Filat last week to the anti- corruption center, the general prosecutor’s office and Interior Ministry. Banca de Economii declined to comment by phone and asked for an e-mailed request, to which it hasn’t repsonded.
Switzerland, Cyprus, Latvia and Lithuania are also investigating money laundering connected to a $230 million tax fraud uncovered by Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in 2009 in a Moscow prison. His case sparked a diplomatic dispute between the U.S. and Russia, after American sanctions imposed in December on Russian officials accused of having a role in his death prompted Moscow to bar U.S. adoptions of Russian children.
Read More →
Jargonbuster gets ‘pragmatic’
If we are asked to be pragmatic, we are asked to consider the practical consequences of our actions. This can be seen as a positive quality. Pragmatism is in fashion among commentators decrying the ideological gridlock which paralyses US politics. But ‘pragmatic’ is also a term favoured by politicians searching for a grubby compromise. It is often followed by a sentence to the effect of ‘you’ve got to see the bigger picture’ – one where the needs of the powerful outweigh those of the weaker.
The Kremlin claims to pursue ‘pragmatic national interests’, particularly in relation to the countries around its border. It is actually pursuing international goals at the expense of countries whose interests must be sacrificed to assuage the former superpower, perhaps in exchange for assistance in other areas or for a little ‘give’ commercially. At least the Russians are open about their pragmatism. Much of the West may be more scrupulous, but it is also more underhand. Again with reference to Russia, the US has a ‘Magnitsky List’ – named in honour of a whistle-blowing lawyer who died in a Moscow prison – which bans Russians involved in human rights abuses from entering the US.
Unlike the US, Britain does not have an official list of banned Russians. The current government claims it could adversely affect jobs and money flowing into the City. Actually, we are told by Whitehall, the individuals on the Magnitsky List would probably not be able to gain entry to the UK if they tried to do so. So there is a list, but it is apparently better not to be open about it.
Read More →
-
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
