Posts Tagged ‘reuters’
UK fund boss warned Germany about Russian money in Cyprus
UK fund manager Bill Browder, one of the Kremlin’s harshest critics, briefed German officials on Russian money laundering in Cyprus just before the European Union set tough terms for the island’s bailout.
He said at least $31 million was laundered through Cyprus bank accounts, funds that were part of a $230 million fraud his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky discovered before his death in a Moscow prison in 2009.
Browder said the Mediterranean island, one of the most important conduits for Russian money transfers, opened an investigation in December into the allegations the businessman first made in 2008.
Once the largest fund manager in Russia through his $4 billion Hermitage fund, Britain-based Browder is currently on trial in absentia in Russia on fraud charges. He denies any wrongdoing and says the charges are politically motivated.
“When Cyprus started to ask the Europeans for a 17 billion euro bailout, it seemed to me absurd that we should be bailing out Cyprus if they are unwilling to investigate the most well documented money laundering cases,” Browder said.
Browder spoke with Levin Holle, director general of financial markets policy at Germany’s ministry of finance, at a meeting last month confirmed by the ministry.
“There was a German team of people at a fairly senior level that were involved in structuring the Cyprus bailout. And they were very interested in what we had to say about this,” Browder said.
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Russian court portrays dead whistleblower as money-hungry schemer
Russian prosecutors portrayed a dead anti-corruption lawyer as a money-hungry schemer who used mentally disabled people to avoid paying taxes, in a case that has highlighted human rights concerns following Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency.
The courtroom cage normally reserved for defendants stood empty as prosecutors called witnesses to testify that Sergei Magnitsky, who worked for a law firm hired by Hermitage Capital Management, exploited loopholes for financial gain.
Tax service official Anastasia Gerasimova told the court that William Browder, head of the investment fund, had evaded taxes by using tax breaks for disabled employees.
“They didn’t do any work. They also didn’t receive any payments, just some small fees for what they did in the firm, but at the same time they had a permanent job,” Itar-Tass quoted Gerasimova as saying.
“As a result of these schemes, half a billion roubles (around $16 million)were lost,” she said.
Magnitsky was arrested on tax fraud charges shortly after he leveled similar accusations against Russian state officials in 2008. He died in jail nearly a year later – family and former colleagues say he was mistreated and denied medical care.
His death and posthumous trial have strained Russian-U.S. ties, Washington imposing sanctions on dozens of Russians suspected of a role in his death in December, prompting Moscow to ban Americans from adopting Russian children.
Magnitsky’s mother Natalya has refused to appoint lawyers to represent her late son or attend the trial, which she says is a designed to punish his exposure of schemes in which officials allegedly stole $230 million through fraudulent tax refunds.
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Russia to try dead whistleblower on March 11
A Russian court will start the posthumous trial of a dead anti-corruption lawyer next week after ignoring calls by his family and lawyers to abandon a case they say is absurd and politically motivated.
Sergei Magnitsky’s death in custody in 2009, after he had complained repeatedly of being denied medical treatment, has damaged Russia’s image and strained ties with the United States.
But Moscow’s Tverskoy Court said after a pre-trial hearing on Monday that the trial itself would open on March 11, a court spokeswoman said.
Lawyers say Magnitsky, who was 37 and was accused of tax fraud after investigating similar claims against his accusers, will be the first dead person to go on trial in Russia.
“The trial is indeed absurd,” said lawyer Alexander Molokhov after the court rejected his application to defend Magnitsky.
The court had already appointed a legal team to defend Magnitsky after his own lawyers refused to take part in a trial which his relatives say is politically motivated.
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Russia central banker slams vast criminal cash export
Russia’s central bank chief complained on Wednesday that some 2.5 percent of the national income was illegally siphoned abroad last year – a revelation critics said showed the extent of corruption under Vladimir Putin.
Bank of Russia chairman Sergei Ignatyev, who is about to retire, reckoned much of that sum, close to $50 billion, was controlled by a single group of people; he did not identify them but many saw it as an indictment of the “Kremlin capitalism” which has taken hold since Putin first became president in 2000.
One prominent critic called it “state money-laundering”.
“You get the impression that they are all controlled by one well organized group of people,” Ignatyev told Vedomosti newspaper in a front-page interview after a Bank study found more than half the flows involved firms linked to each other.
“With a serious concentration of efforts by law enforcement agencies, I think it is possible to find these people,” added Ignatyev, 65, who will retire in June after 11 years running an institution which has won widespread respect for integrity.
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Play puts Russian justice system in dock over lawyer’s death
In a poorly lit basement theatre in central Moscow, actors play out a symbolic trial of Russia’s justice system over its failure to protect an anti-corruption lawyer who died in custody.
Without costumes or a set, the actors in “One Hour and Eighteen Minutes” take on the roles of judges, an investigator, doctor and medical assistants, reciting lines cobbled together from legal documents, media and public pronouncements on the case of Sergei Magnitsky.
His death in 2009, while awaiting trial on charges of tax evasion and fraud, has outraged human rights campaigners who see it as an example of arbitrary justice in Russia, and contributed to a rift in U.S.-Russian relations.
A nervous giggle runs through the audience, perched on wooden chairs and benches, when an actor playing a judge says that the justice system is the only thing that is still working in Russia.
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Putin Aide Says U.S. Holds Key to Improving Ties
Strained U.S.-Russian ties will not improve unless Washington stops openly criticizing Moscow’s human rights record and supporting President Vladimir Putin’s foes, the top foreign policy official in the Russian parliament said.
Relations between the Cold War-era rivals took a dive after Putin’s return to the Kremlin in May, undermining a 2009 initiative by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russia’s then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, a more liberal Putin protege, to “reset” ties.
Alexei Pushkov, head of the international affairs committee in parliament’s lower chamber and a Putin ally, said the ties were “negatively stable” now and the “reset” could be considered over without an initiative on the highest political level to save it.
“The priority is political realism. Ideology matters should be secondary. I tell you, issues over ideology and values can destroy anything,” Pushkov said in an interview.
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Russia presses on with plans to try dead whistleblower
Russia pushed forward with plans for the posthumous trial of a lawyer on tax evasion charges on Monday, despite a boycott by relatives and lawyers who said President Vladimir Putin’s government was “dancing on the grave of a dead man”.
Sergei Magnitsky died in 2009 after complaining repeatedly he was denied treatment as his health declined in jail, prompting the United States last month to bar entry to Russians accused of involvement in his death or serious rights abuses.
Putin, restored to the presidency in May, has dismissed the international furor over the case, saying last month the lawyer had died of a heart attack.
Although Putin has rejected suggestions Magnitsky was tortured in prison, the Kremlin’s own human rights council has voiced suspicions he was beaten to death.
Magnitsky’s former employer, investment fund Hermitage Capital, says the lawyer was killed because he had accused law enforcement and tax officers of stealing $230 million from the state by setting up bogus tax refunds.
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Did Prime Minister Medvedev physically threaten Russia’s most acid billionaire critic?
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev appeared to physically threaten an American billionaire critic of his country in an off-the-record briefing with journalists, the billionaire says.
Because the briefing last week at Davos operated under Chatham House rules, which bar the disclosure of remarks attributed to specific individuals, none of the journalists has written about the session with Medvedev. But Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital, says that (video) four journalists who attended the Jan. 24 briefing told him of Medvedev’s remarks.
Browder, once one of Russia’s most enthusiastic Western investors and now one of its most acid critics, accuses Russian officials of murdering his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, after an expose accused them of stealing $230 million in government revenue. Magnitsky died in a Moscow jail in 2009, and the US has passed a law called the Magnitsky Act that bars US entry for Russian officials allegedly complicit in the death. Lithuania has frozen bank accounts allegedly used to secretly get some of the money out of Russia.
The reported remarks are highly unusual not just in their content but their source—Medvedev is typically one of Russia’s most mild-mannered senior leaders, particularly compared with the pugnacious and outspoken president, Vladimir Putin.
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Russia presses on with plans to try dead whistleblower
Russia pushed forward with plans for the posthumous trial of a lawyer on tax evasion charges on Monday, despite a boycott by relatives and lawyers who said President Vladimir Putin’s government was “dancing on the grave of a dead man”.
Sergei Magnitsky died in 2009 after complaining repeatedly he was denied treatment as his health declined in jail, prompting the United States last month to bar entry to Russians accused of involvement in his death or serious rights abuses.
Putin, restored to the presidency in May, has dismissed the international furor over the case, saying last month the lawyer had died of a heart attack.
Although Putin has rejected suggestions Magnitsky was tortured in prison, the Kremlin’s own human rights council has voiced suspicions he was beaten to death.
Magnitsky’s former employer, investment fund Hermitage Capital, says the lawyer was killed because he had accused law enforcement and tax officers of stealing $230 million from the state by setting up bogus tax refunds.
Magnitsky’s mother and her attorney refused to show up for a preliminary hearing for a trial they denounced as a politically motivated attack on a dead man, forcing the Moscow court hearing the case to appoint defense lawyers.
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