Posts Tagged ‘Hermitage’
Russian police escalate case against William Browder
Lawyers for William Browder, chief executive of UK-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management, have attacked Russian police for the “flagrant misuse of the criminal justice system” in attempting to summon him to Moscow for questioning.
Mr Browder has been fighting a campaign against corrupt state officials for allegedly stealing $230m (£140m) from the Russian taxpayer and causing the death in custody of his colleague Sergei Magnitsky, a investigative lawyer.
The summons came from one of the officers accused of the alleged crimes and did not allegedly go through the proper channels.
Read More →
Facebook
Twitter
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
del.icio.us
Google Bookmarks
Yahoo! Buzz
Tumblr
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
NewsVine
Digg
Briton uses YouTube to accuse Russian tax official of £25m fraud
The Sunday Times
A leading British investor has accused a Russian official and her husband of embezzling more than £25m (€29m) through their part in a scam that led to the theft of three of his companies and the largest tax fraud in Russia’s history.
William Browder, a British citizen born in America who has been barred from Russia since 2005, has gathered evidence that, he claims, shows a senior Moscow tax official and her husband went on a multimillion-pound spending spree, despite earning a combined annual salary of only £25,000.
It happened after interior ministry officials allegedly stole three companies from Hermitage Capital, Browder’s London-based investment fund, and used them to apply for a fraudulent £140m tax rebate, which was paid in a single day.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Russia summons British hedge fund exec concerning murder of lawyer investigating corruption in Moscow
Russian Interior Ministry investigator Oleg Silchenko, who was responsible for the false arrest, torture and murder in custody of Hermitage Fund’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, has issued a summons to question the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, William Browder, in Moscow.
The summons came by fax from Silchenko just two days before the date of the intended questioning. Silchenko’s notice was printed on Russian Interior Ministry letterhead and was faxed to Hermitage’s London office on 10 May, inviting William Browder to appear in Moscow two days later on May 12, at 11am at the Ministry of Interior Investigative Committee: Office 71, 10/2 B Nikitskaya, Moscow, Russian Federation.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Russians accused of Swiss money laundering
Russian tax officials are being investigated for alleged money laundering in Switzerland, the federal prosecutor’s office has confirmed.
The Swiss money laundering reporting office received a complaint from legal representatives of an investment fund run by Hermitage Capital Management, a company based in Guernsey that specializes in Russian markets.
The company’s head, Bill Browder, who works out of London, said Switzerland has frozen the accounts of the husband of one of the Russian tax officials suspected of financial fraud.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Assets probed in Russian lawyer’s killing
The people responsible for killing Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky have stolen money in European accounts, his former boss says.
Bill Browder, head of Hermitage Capital Management, and his staff have spent a year hunting the assets of Russian officials exposed in a $250 million tax fraud by Magnitsky soon before he was jailed, the EUObserver reports.
Magnitsky died under suspicious circumstances in police custody Nov. 16, 2009, after almost a year in prison.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Stolen Russian tax money is in EU banks, US sleuth says
People responsible for the death of Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky have salted away stolen money in EU bank accounts, Magnitsky’s former employer has claimed.
Bill Browder, the US-born head of the UK investment firm, Hermitage Capital Management, and five of his staff have spent the past year hunting down the assets of Russian officials exposed in a €175 million tax fraud by Magnitsky shortly before he was jailed and murdered in his cell.
Browder scored a victory last week when Swiss authorities froze a number of accounts in the Credit Suisse bank following evidence brought to light by Hermiatge and broadcast on YouTube.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Swiss freeze Russian accounts over giant tax swindle
The Swiss authorities have frozen the bank accounts of Russian tax officials alleged to have pulled off Russia’s largest tax fraud, a U.S. magazine has said.
Credit Suisse accounts held by a former Moscow tax bureau head, Olga Stepanova, and her deputies were blocked at the request of Swiss prosecutors, according to an article in Barron’s Magazine.
Stepanova is alleged to have approved a $230 million tax refund in 2007 to a ring of embezzlers masquerading as representatives of subsidiaries of British investment company Hermitage Capital Management, once the leading foreign portfolio investor in Russia.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Russian Accounts Frozen at Credit Suisse
Swiss authorities have apparently closed bank accounts held by Russians alleged to have been part of a giant Russian tax swindle.
Swiss law enforcement officials have apparently frozen the Credit Suisse (ticker: CS) bank accounts of the Russians alleged to have participated in Russia’s largest reported tax swindle.
Records from those bank accounts formed the basis of a Barron’s story (“Crime and Punishment in Putin’s Russia,” April 18) which showed that the family of an influential Russian tax official, Olga Stepanova, became fabulously wealthy after she approved part of a $230 million tax refund to scammers in 2007 who used corporate identities stolen from the well-known Russia-focused hedge fund Hermitage Capital. When Hermitage and its attorney Sergei Magnitsky presented evidence that the conspiracy involved Stepanova and police officials in Russia’s Internal Ministry, the police instead arrested Magnitsky and kept him in detention until he died in prison in November 2009.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Russian Court Sanctions Arrest of Hermitage Executive Cherkasov (updated with corrections)
The Other Russia
Update: This article has been corrected from earlier versions. Please see statement below. We apologize for any misunderstanding.
Moscow’s Tverskoy Court has sanctioned a warrant to arrest Hermitage Capital Management executive Ivan Cherkasov in absentia, Gazeta.ru reports.
Interior Ministry investigator Oleg Silchenko had announced on May 3 that he was seeking the arrest of Cherkasov, a colleague of deceased lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who has lived in London since 2006, on the basis that the Hermitage Capital executive has failed to pay 2 billion rubles in taxes.
Cherkasov’s lawyers asked the judge to delay the court hearing for several days to give them time to study court materials and prepare their defense with Cherkasov himself. However, as lawyer Aleksandr Antipov told the BBC’s Russian service, this request was denied with no explanation as to why.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
