Posts Tagged ‘Alexandrov’
Magnitsky case: Russia accuses Browder over Gazprom
Russia is preparing new charges against UK-based fund manager Bill Browder, whose lawyer died in a Russian jail but now faces tax evasion charges.
Mr Browder will be accused of illegally buying shares in Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom, the interior ministry said. Mr Browder called the move “absurd”.
On Monday a Russian judge ruled that a trial of the dead lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, should go ahead next week.
Mr Browder, who runs Hermitage Capital Management, is to be tried in absentia.
Speaking to BBC Russian, Mr Browder said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin “has given an instruction to law enforcement agencies to charge me with any crime they can think up, no matter how spurious or absurd”.
“Every single securities firm in Russia set up derivatives structures which were legal, to invest in Gazprom shares… there was nothing illegal going on,” he said.
Mr Magnitsky died after his pancreatitis went untreated. He had uncovered an alleged $230m (£150m) tax fraud involving Russian government officials.
Nobody has been convicted over his death or the alleged theft from Russian state coffers.
However, Mr Magnitsky and Mr Browder were charged with tax evasion in the wake of Mr Magnitsky’s offer of evidence to the Russian authorities.
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Russia alleges $70m fraud against Browder
Russia authorities are seeking to charge former investor and shareholder activist Bill Browder with illegally obtaining Gazprom shares worth $70m, interior ministry officials announced on Tuesday.
The American fund manager based in London said the allegations were yet another attempt to intimidate him as he campaigns for Europe to adopt US-style legislation barring Russian human rights violators known as the “Magnitsky Law” named for Mr Browder’s former lawyer who died in a Russian prison in 2009.
The announcement that charges would be brought against Mr Browder followed a well-tested formula in Russia, where criminal indictments usually follow denunciation on state television. Russian network First Channel on Sunday night devoted a seven-minute slot to Mr Browder’s financial dealings in Russia prior to his ejection from the country in 2005.
The allegations themselves focus on whether Mr Browder violated any Russian laws when his fund, Hermitage Capital, used Russian companies registered in the region of Kalmykia to purchase shares in the gas monopoly between 2001 and 2004. At the time, according to presidential decree, foreigners were barred from directly owning Gazprom shares, but many funds used Russian derivative structures to play the market nonetheless.
“Browder used specially developed schemes according to which foreign companies bought liquid shares in the name of Russian legal entities, registered in zones with special tax treatment,” said Mikhail Alexandrov from the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Department on Tuesday. He also accused Mr Browder of seeking to use share holdings in Gazprom to gain a seat on the board, and to exercise influence at the gas monopoly.
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Russia Says New Fraud Charges Against Browder
Russian authorities announced new fraud charges against U.S.-born investor William Browder, escalating pressure in a politically charged case that has fueled tensions between Moscow and the West.
The new charges come as a Moscow court is set to begin hearings in a rare posthumous trial of Mr. Browder’s former lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, on tax-evasion allegations next week.
Mr. Magnitsky died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after exposing what he and Mr. Browder claimed was a $230 million fraud perpetrated against the Russian government by senior police and security officials. A Kremlin human rights commission said in 2011 that Mr. Magnitsky was beaten and deliberately denied medical treatment, leading to his death. Russian authorities deny any wrongdoing and lower-level prison officials charged in the case have been acquitted.
The U.S. government, pushing for a full investigation of his death and the corruption allegations, passed a law known as the “Magnitsky Act” last year that imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials allegedly implicated in the case and other violations of human rights. The law triggered some of the worst tensions in years between Moscow and Washington. The Kremlin denounced the measure as unjustified interference in Russia’s affairs and retaliated by banning adoption of Russian children by Americans.
Mr. Browder, a U.K. citizen, is now pushing for passage of similar restrictions in Europe. He said Tuesday the new charges were “retaliation” for his global campaign. A Russian Interior Ministry spokesman denied that. Officials said they would seek his extradition to Russia, though so far western law-enforcement agencies haven’t cooperated in the probes.
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