Posts Tagged ‘klyuev’
International group urges sanctions on Russians
An international body devoted to security and democracy Sunday chided Russia—one of its 56 members—on its human rights record and urged governments to impose sanctions by banning visas and freezing the assets of Russians connected to the death of a crusading lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), representing the United States at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe, which was convened in Monaco, spoke urgently in favor of the resolution approved Sunday, calling Magnitsky’s death an example of pervasive and systemic corruption in Russia.
A similar law, named in memory of Magnitsky, is already making its way through Congress, with the energetic support of Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D.-Md.), who is vice president of the OSCE parliamentary assembly.
Magnitsky was working for an American law firm in Moscow, advising the Hermitage Capital investment firm on tax issues, when he uncovered a $230 million tax fraud. After he accused tax officials and police investigators of the crime, Magnitsky was arrested and charged instead. He died in 2009 after a year in pre-trial detention, denied medical care and showing signs of having been beaten. “Not one person has been held responsible,” McCain said, calling Magnitsky’s treatment tantamount to torture.
Russia put up a spirited defense Sunday, arguing that an investigation of Magnitsky’s death was very much underway and that the sanctions amounted to conviction by public opinion rather than a court of law. It was overruled by an overwhelming show of hands in favor of the resolution.
Speaker after speaker criticized official impunity, the lack of a convincing investigation and the absence of punishment for Magnitsky’s death. He was 37 when he died.
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Magnitsky-linked criminal at debate
Russian delegates at a debate, calling for action against individuals linked to Sergei Magnitsky’s death, handed their passes to a convicted criminal connected to the crime.
Russian delegates at a cross-border parliamentary debate, calling for action against individuals linked to the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, handed their passes for the event to a convicted criminal connected to the crime.
Dmitry Klyuev, who served a two-year suspended sentence for attempted fraud and has been accused of laundering money for a fraud uncovered by Mr Magnitsky, was pictured at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) assembly in Monaco over the weekend, wearing a delegation badge. He was accompanied by his lawyer, who also appeared to have been given one of the Russian officials’ access passes.
US Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain accused Mr Klyuev of running a “transnational criminal organisation”.
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Explosive Video Documents Depth of Putin’s Mafia State
World Affairs
Michael Weiss
It is no longer possible to distinguish where organized crime ends and the state begins in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. An extraordinary 17-minute video just exhibited by the anti-corruption website Russian Untouchables shows how an elite crime syndicate headed by a longtime gangster, Dmitry Klyuev, and including active agents of the Russian Interior Ministry and Moscow tax offices, managed to steal close to $1 billion from state coffers in fraudulent tax claims. It was the Klyuev Group that attorney Sergei Magnitsky exposed after one of his clients, Hermitage Capital, was raided and its corporate documents pilfered in order to defraud the Russian state of $230 million in a sham corporate tax refund—a refund which was processed in a single day by the co-conspirators themselves. After Magnitsky exposed it, the Klyuev Group had him framed, tortured, and murdered, then blamed for the crime. The substance of this new video, all obtained through Magnitsky’s relentless legal work and backed by bank, state, and airline records, is both the reason for his death as well as his testament. All the evidence corroborating what Magnitsky uncovered can be accessed at the Russian Untouchables website. What follows is a precis of the film.
Dmitry Klyuev was a petty crook who was hired in 2002 by Igor Sagiryan, the president of Renaissance Capital, one of Moscow’s most prominent investment firms, to act as a “tax advisor who had skills in arranging tax refunds through the Russian court system,” according to another Renaissance executive who testified in court. The scheme involved arranging a refund for a company Renaissance had only recently purchased; it was completed within 6 to 8 months.
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McCain Requests Additional Sanctions in Magnitsky Case
U.S. Republican Senator John McCain on Tuesday said he expected President Barack Obama to consider additional sanctions in the case of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death in 2009.
In his letter to Obama, McCain proposed imposing sanctions against an organized crime group he claims comprises Russian officials and bankers allegedly involved in Magnitsky’s death.
“I write you today to request that you begin a process to determine whether to designate and impose sanctions, under the authority of Executive Order 13581, against a dangerous transnational criminal organization known as the ‘Klyuev Group,’ which publicly available information suggests may have been involved in numerous international crimes,” McCain said in his letter.
“It is possible that one of those crimes was the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer killed in jail in retaliation for exposing the corruption of Russian officials who appear to have been aligned with the Klyuev Group,” he said.
“Publicly available information, much of it uncovered by Mr. Magnitsky himself before his arrest in Russia in 2008, suggests that the Klyuev Group has colluded with senior Russian officials to engage in bribery, fraud, embezzlement, company thefts, and other serious financial crimes,” he said.
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Magnitsky documentary suggests fraud, collusion between Russian officials, police detectives
In April the Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported that unusually large rebates were issued in 2009 and 2010 by the same tax offices involved in the Hermitage case, amounting to an additional $370 million or more, suggesting the refund scheme persisted beyond the Hermitage case.
On Tuesday, McCain wrote to President Obama, asking him to designate the circle of officials, dubbed the Klyuev group, as a criminal organization abusing global financial systems through extortion, money laundering and theft. Such a designation would result in the freezing of their assets and making it impossible for them to conduct business in dollars anywhere in the world.
According to the documentary and the documents, the key players knew each other from previous tax-refund cases, and from vacations in Cyprus, Dubai, Istanbul, Switzerland and London.
In late 2006, for instance, a company called Rengaz Holdings obtained a $107 million tax refund and deposited the money in Dmitry Klyuev’s Universal Savings Bank. That deal was handled by Klyuev’s lawyer, Andrei Pavlov, and approved by Olga Stepanova, the tax official in charge of Tax Office No. 28, according to documents unearthed by Magnitsky and provided by the Hermitage investigation. All three would later be involved in the Hermitage case.
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Jamison Firestone, “We reject the option, where we do not demand that the people who killed Magnitsky go to prison”
(Translated from Original Russian)
Hermitage Capital’s lawyers demand a criminal case against the former head of the Moscow Tax Inspectorate № 28 of Olga Stepanova. Jamison Firestone (Firestone Dunken), colleague Magnitsky, answered questions from RFI.
RFI: Jamison, good morning. Attorneys «Hermitage Capital» call to investigate a new crime of tax official’s Olga Stepanova. Sergei Magnitsky has helped uncover a crime, was arrested and died. Are not you afraid that history may repeat itself?
Jamison Firestone: Of course, we’re afraid of this. But there is a problem: there is a group of people who systematically stole huge amounts of money – nearly $ 400 million – from the budget, and to hide it, they killed a man. And we just categorically reject the option where we do not require that the people who killed Sergei go to prison. So, of course, it is frightening work; But on the other hand, people killed a man, a man whom Russia should recognize as a hero, and these people should be held responsible for his murder. And in order for them to answer for this, we continue to work.
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