Posts Tagged ‘olga tsymai’
Official Implicated in Magnitsky Case Charged With Embezzlement
A former Russian tax official implicated in a tax fraud scheme uncovered by the late Sergei Magnitsky has been charged with embezzling 4.4 billion rubles ($132 million) in state funds, a news report said Friday.
According to investigators, Olga Tsymai, a former employee of Moscow’s tax inspectorate No. 28, verified falsified tax return documents submitted by alleged swindlers and actively assisted them in obtaining tax returns through tax inspectorate No. 25, Kommersant reported, citing official files on the case.
Tsymai’s name appears on a list put together by U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin of 60 Russians suspected of being involved in the theft of $230 million in Russian government money, a theft uncovered by Magnitsky, who was subsequently accused himself of taking part in the theft and who died in prison in 2009.
Last year, U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law a measure named after Magnitsky that requires the White House to publish a list of Russians suspected of human rights violations, including individuals implicated in the fraud Magnitsky uncovered and in his death. People on this so-called “Magnitsky list” are subject to visa bans and asset freezes in the U.S.
Tsymai’s name is not on that official U.S. government list, which contains only 18 names.
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Magnitsky-Linked Official is Suspect in Fraud Case – Report
A former tax inspector included on a draft version of the Magnitsky List of Russian officials banned from the United States for human rights abuses has become a suspect for Russian investigators looking into a huge tax scam, Kommersant newspaper reported Friday.
Olga Tsymai, a former employee of the Federal Tax Service, allegedly signed off on documents provided to her by an unidentified group of people in 2009 and 2010 allowing certain companies to fraudulently claim large tax refunds, Kommersant said, citing investigators.
As a result of Tsymai’s actions, investigators allege that 4.4 billion rubles ($134 million) was paid out in tax refunds to fictitious companies, from where the money was moved to personal bank accounts or transferred abroad.
Tsymai, who later worked for the Defense Ministry, was included on a draft US list of Russian officials implicated in the death of auditor Sergei Magnitsky. The draft was compiled by US Senator Benjamin Cardin, one of the authors of the Magnitsky Act passed by the United States last year that punishes Russian officials accused of human rights abuses.
Magnitsky, who worked for British investment fund Hermitage Capital, was arrested on tax evasion charges in November 2008, days after accusing officials of involvement in a $230 million tax refund fraud, and died at the age of 37 following almost a year in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center.
No Russian official has been charged in connection with the allegations of tax fraud leveled by Magnitsky, nor has anyone been held responsible for his death in prison. But against the express wishes of his family, Magnitsky himself is the defendant in an ongoing tax fraud trial, the first such trial of a dead person in Russian or Soviet legal history.
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