Posts Tagged ‘Hermitage’
Russian rights council to issue report into Magnitsky death
An advisory council to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says it is close to finishing a report into the death in custody of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
Magnitsky, who was defending British investment company Hermitage Capital Management against tax evasion charges, died aged 37 in a Moscow pre-trial detention facility after being refused medical treatment for pancreatitis.
“The material is almost ready,” Mikhail Fedotov, head of the president’s council on human rights and civil society, told reporters on Wednesday.
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Police raid Moscow tax service office, home of deputy head
Police on Wednesday raided the office of the Moscow Administration of the Federal Tax Service and the home of its deputy head as part of an investigation into the attempted theft of $70.7 million by a St. Petersburg firm, a police source said.
The case also involves ten incidences of theft committed by the firm ES – Kontraktstroi – under the guise of VAT refunds, the source said.
“From 9 a.m. raids have been continuing in the office of the Moscow administration of the Federal Tax Service…, and in the building of [Moscow’s] tax inspection number 28 ….Moreover, the home of deputy head of Moscow’s Administration of the Federal Tax Service Olga Chernichuk was also raided,” the source said.
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Who was Sergei Magnitsky?
Sergei Magnitsky was a humble Moscow lawyer who stumbled across possibly the greatest corporate tax fraud Russia has ever known. It was a discovery that would ultimately cost him his life.
His investigations uncovered a web of alleged corruption involving senior members of the police, judges, officials, lawyers and the Russian mafia. Despite death threats, he refused to leave Russia, instead deciding to probe deeper into the apparent fraud – uncovering two other suspected cases.
One of the policemen he had testified was at the heart of the crime was appointed to investigate him. Magnitsky was subsequently arrested on suspicion of tax avoidance and jailed.
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Hermitage Capital Sues Russian Ministry Over Tax Investigation
Hermitage Capital Management, the $1.2 billion hedge fund run by William Browder, sued Russia’s Interior Ministry, accusing it of opening an improper tax investigation that defrauded the government out of $230 million.
Hermitage filed a lawsuit at Russia’s Constitutional Court last month that says the ministry had no justification for opening a 2007 tax probe into a company the hedge fund advised on investments in the country. The probe allowed the ministry to obtain Hermitage documents that were used to steal taxes the London-based hedge fund had paid to the Russian government, Hermitage said in a statement released today.
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Risks of rushing back to Russia
Oil prices are on the rise and suddenly it’s time to make sure you’re on the investment train to Russia again. And, despite a continued perception of higher risks associated with investing in the country, the early birds are already there, as a report in Monday’s FTfm explains.
While emerging market funds in general have seen big net outflows this year, according to EPFR, a global fund flow data provider, fund flows into Russia have been picking up. Russia-focused funds have gathered a total of $1.22bn in the year to date, against outflows of $2bn for China and $980m for India in the same period, EPFR data show.
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No more Western hugs for Russia’s rulers
This year started quite symbolically in Russia. In the last days of 2010, government authorities decided to demonstrate their power and their intolerance for being challenged: The verdict issued at the farcical trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev had no relation to jurisprudence; leading opposition figures were detained for as many as 15 days on purely political grounds.
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Interview: Browder Sees ‘Tipping Point’ In Western Attitudes To Russia
Bill Browder’s Hermitage Capital Management fund was the biggest foreign investor in Russia until he was kicked out of the country in 2005.
Once one of the Kremlin’s biggest public supporters, Browder is now spearheading a campaign to enact international sanctions against 60 Russian officials after a lawyer for Hermitage, Sergei Magnitsky, died in prison last year.
Browder spoke to RFE/RL correspondents Irina Lagunina and Gregory Feifer about that campaign and the reasons behind it.
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Russian pundits question Medvedev’s, deputy PM’s investor reassurances at Davos
Ekho Moskvy
Independent radio Ekho Moskvy has asked prominent experts to comment on a speech given by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 27 January. Shuvalov was in particular quizzed about the fate of the Hermitage Capital fund. Shuvalov told William Browder, head of the fund, that attention should be focused on the positive trends in Russia, and that 20 people had been dismissed following the death in custody of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergey Magnitskiy.
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Davos Man and Khodorkovsky
The Russian phrase for it is pryamoi razgovor, and it’s rare to hear from Russia’s political elite: straight talk. But that’s what a senior adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev delivered last week about the latest show trial of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Mr. Khodorkovsky was Russia’s richest man until he earned the ire of Vladimir Putin by supporting liberal political causes and attempting to open his oil company to the West. Imprisoned in 2003 on charges of tax evasion, he was set to go free this year. But he was retried last year for different crimes and sentenced to six more years in Siberian prison.
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