Posts Tagged ‘Perepilichny’
Death threats in fraud case ‘ignored’
The Times. The British authorities were accused last night of ignoring evidence about death threats and intimidation linked to a multimillion-pound Russian fraud, months before a “whistleblower” in the case was found dead outside his Surrey home.
10 December 2012
Fiona Hamilton Crime Correspondent
Alexander Perepilichny, 44, whose cause of death is described as “unexplained”, had passed documents to campaigners fighting to expose the huge tax fraud in Russia that had led to the death of an anti-corruption lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
The alleged fraudsters are said to have stolen three companies from a British-based investment firm, Hermitage Capital, and used them to perpetrate the fraud.
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From Russia with hate – are Russian assassins on the loose in Britain? With the death of a businessman in Surrey now being treated as suspicious, we look at the spate of hits that have taken place in Britain
Daily Telegraph
Apparently healthy people do drop dead, so Surrey Police were not unduly exercised by the sudden demise of Alexander Perepilichny. The body of the Russian businessman was found near his home on the St George’s Hill estate in Weybridge on Saturday, November 10. A member of staff at his house, rented for £12,500 a month, happened upon the body as darkness fell. Perepilichny, aged 44, had been seen jogging earlier that day and was still in his running gear. There were no signs of violence, nothing to suggest foul play. The gated community, a collection of secluded detached houses selling for £3 million and above, is one of the most exclusive in Britain, favoured in the past by singers and soccer stars, and supposedly one of the most secure. For officers assigned to the case, Perepilichny’s death initially represented a personal tragedy, but nothing more.
Only later, when the alert was raised by his associates, did they begin to consider the possibility that something darker may have occurred. Following an inconclusive first autopsy, a second was ordered. A toxicology report is not expected for months.
Assassinations, successful or attempted, are rare things in Britain, but when they happen there is a reasonable chance that a Russian will be involved. Russia is a far less violent place than it was even five years ago, but for the many criminal entities in that vast country, some rooted deeply in government, there are still vendettas to be pursued and inconvenient people to be rubbed out. The fact that the target has sought shelter in the United Kingdom may serve as a deterrent to a would-be assassin, but it would not put them off completely.
Britain is home to 300,000 Russians, and London in particular has benefited from an influx of billionaires and millionaires grown fat on the privatisation of Russia’s state assets in the Nineties. Some 100 Russian millionaires accounted for a quarter of Tier 1 UK visas in the year to June. The privileged permits allow long-term, non-domicile residence here in return for a minimum investment in British property, shares and bonds of £1 million.
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Murder or mishap? The mysterious death of Russian businessman Alexander Perepelichny
In any other circumstances, it might not have raised suspicion. But when Alexander Perepelichny, a reclusive Russian businessman, collapsed and died after jogging near his luxury Surrey home three weeks ago, police soon realised that they could not jump to conclusions.
Was it, as it seeemed, just a tragically early heart attack or stroke, brought on by a vigorous bout of exercise? Or, given his role as a witness to one of Russia’s most politically sensitive corruption scandal, was it a case of yet another awkward Russian being silenced on British soil?
Last week, 1,500 miles away inside Room 33 of the Tverskoy district court in northern Moscow, Natalya Magnitskaya was pondering that very question. Not, though, just in relation to Mr Perepelichny, but over her own son Sergei, who died a lingering, agonising death three years ago in a Moscow jail cell.
What links the two men’s deaths is that they both attempted to lift the lid on the so-called Hermitage Capital scandal, in which Russian tax officials defrauded a British-based investment company of some £140 million back in 2007.
The Hermitage case was just one of many examples of state gangsterism in Russia in recent times, with one important difference: namely, that the fraud’s victims fought back.
Mr Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage, compiled a detailed dossier identifying the alleged culprits, only to be thrown in jail himself, where he died through a combination of brutal beatings and deliberate neglect of his medical needs.
And there the affair might have ended, were it not for Hermitage continuing the fight on his behalf – aided, it now seems, by Mr Perepelichny, a former business associate of some of the accused, who recently turned “supergrass” on Hermitage’s behalf.
Mr Perepelichny, who fled Moscow three years earlier after falling out with a crime syndicate, passed documents to prosecutors in Switzerland, corroborating how officials first fingered by Magnitsky transferred huge tranches of cash to Credit Suisse accounts. It would mean there are plenty of people who might wish him ill.
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Paranoid? Quite possibly, but it’s the price of survival
Wealthy Russians have moved to the Home Counties not to indulge a love of golf but to find shelter from what they see as predatory tax authorities, intrusive secret policemen, politicised courts and the infighting of the business caste that had a habit of turning nasty.
The high walls of gated communities in Surrey or the reassuring proximity of Windsor Great Park have not taken away the fear, however. Some assassination plots are imagined, others are real but botched. And, sometimes, a rich man drops dead in Leatherhead or Weybridge, far away from home.
The sudden death of Alexander Perepilichny, 44, and the apparent heart failure of Badri Patarkatsishvili, 52, the Georgian entrepreneur, may not have been hits — but suspicions linger on. There are too many scores being settled, too many open feuds between Russia and the exiled Russians of Britain, to have blind faith in an innocent death.
When German Gorbuntsov, 45, a banker, was shot in Canary Wharf in March it seemed to some Russians that to be paranoid was to be in full possession of the facts. He survived — but it appeared to demonstrate the deadly reach of Russian vengeance.
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Ban suspected Russian gangsters from the UK Dominic Raab
The body of the whistleblower Alexander Perepilichny was discovered near his Surrey home only months after he gave evidence to a Swiss investigation into money laundering. It is understood that he fingered the husband of an official implicated in Russia’s biggest tax fraud. His death is “unexplained” — the fourth unexplained death linked to the case.
Sergei Magnitsky was the first to pay with his life in 2009. Having exposed the $230 million scam, the dissident lawyer was persecuted by the officials he named. Magnitsky is the Solzhenitsyn of his age — except that Solzhenitsyn was sent to the gulag, whereas Magnitsky was tortured to death and is now being prosecuted posthumously for the crime he uncovered. Only in Putin’s Russia.
Toxicology tests are being carried out on Mr Perepilichny. Meanwhile we need to know whether any of the 60 named suspects in the Magnitsky case have been allowed to enter the UK. Government policy is not to routinely reveal the names of those subject to visa bans, but the Foreign Affairs Select Committee recommended disclosure in the public interest. In this kind of case it is vital.
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The lawyer and businessman who tried to take on the criminal gang
Sergei Magnitsky, 37, was a lawyer for the US firm Firestone Duncan and represented the London-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital. Hermitage’s founder Bill Browder was once Russia’s biggest foreign investor until he was banned from the country on national security grounds in 2005.
Mr Magnitsky testified against a group of Interior Ministry police officers that he had accused of fraudulently reclaiming $230 million (£144 million) in state taxes paid by Hermitage companies in 2008. He alleged that they had raided the law firm to seize documents relating to the companies, and had then changed the ownership to carry out the largest tax fraud in Russian history.
The same police arrested him a month later and accused him of tax evasion. He complained of repeated torture and beatings to try to force him to withdraw his testimony, while family members were barred from visiting him.
Mr Magnitsky was denied medical treatment for his illnesses and died in pre-trial detention shortly after being beaten in his cell by a group of eight guards as an ambulance waited for more than an hour outside the prison in November 2009.
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Whitehall fears ‘another Litvinenko’ as police probe businessman’s death
Ministers were warned six months ago about the activities of Russian officials linked to a “whistleblower” businessman who was mysteriously found dead outside his Surrey mansion.
Police are investigating after the body of Alexander Perepilichny was discovered in the grounds of his home in Weybridge. Mr Perepilichny, 44, had passed vital documents to campaigners fighting to expose a massive tax fraud in Russia that had led to the death of an anti-corruption lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
The businessman, who is said to have sought refuge in Britain three years ago after falling out with a crime syndicate, had been helping Swiss prosecutors to investigate a money-laundering scheme involving Russian government tax officials.
He is the fourth person linked to the Magnitsky case to have died in unexplained circumstances. Surrey Police said that a post-mortem examination had been “inconclusive” and that further tests were being carried out before an inquest.
Mr Magnitsky, 37, died in agony in Matrosskaya Tishina prison in Moscow in November 2009 after being held for a year in pre-trial detention and denied medical treatment for serious illnesses. He repeatedly complained that he was tortured in prison to try to force him to withdraw testimony against a group of Interior Ministry police who he had accused of stealing $230 million from businesses owned by Hermitage Capital, a British investment company.
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