Posts Tagged ‘switzerland’
Swiss freeze Russian accounts over giant tax swindle
The Swiss authorities have frozen the bank accounts of Russian tax officials alleged to have pulled off Russia’s largest tax fraud, a U.S. magazine has said.
Credit Suisse accounts held by a former Moscow tax bureau head, Olga Stepanova, and her deputies were blocked at the request of Swiss prosecutors, according to an article in Barron’s Magazine.
Stepanova is alleged to have approved a $230 million tax refund in 2007 to a ring of embezzlers masquerading as representatives of subsidiaries of British investment company Hermitage Capital Management, once the leading foreign portfolio investor in Russia.
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Russian Accounts Frozen at Credit Suisse
Swiss authorities have apparently closed bank accounts held by Russians alleged to have been part of a giant Russian tax swindle.
Swiss law enforcement officials have apparently frozen the Credit Suisse (ticker: CS) bank accounts of the Russians alleged to have participated in Russia’s largest reported tax swindle.
Records from those bank accounts formed the basis of a Barron’s story (“Crime and Punishment in Putin’s Russia,” April 18) which showed that the family of an influential Russian tax official, Olga Stepanova, became fabulously wealthy after she approved part of a $230 million tax refund to scammers in 2007 who used corporate identities stolen from the well-known Russia-focused hedge fund Hermitage Capital. When Hermitage and its attorney Sergei Magnitsky presented evidence that the conspiracy involved Stepanova and police officials in Russia’s Internal Ministry, the police instead arrested Magnitsky and kept him in detention until he died in prison in November 2009.
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Hermitage claims against Russian official prompt Swiss probe
Switzerland has opened a money-laundering probe against a former Russian tax official at the request of British investment company Hermitage Capital Management Ltd., the Barron’s weekly said on Thursday.
Prosecutors are investigating suspicious transactions in a number of Credit Suisse accounts opened on behalf of the husband of former tax official Olga Stepanova. Stepanova approved the refund in 2007 of $230 million to scammers impersonating Hermitage Capital.
The Russian Interior Ministry has blamed the theft on Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who first reported the theft. Magnitsky died in a Moscow pre-trial detention facility in 2009 after being refused medical treatment for pancreatitis.
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Browder’s Russia Money-Laundering Allegations Spark Swiss Investigation
Switzerland has opened a money- laundering probe at the request of Hermitage Capital Management Ltd., the first criminal investigation outside Russia linked to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison.
The allegations involving a former Russian tax official are the most recent lodged by Hermitage founder William Browder as he asks authorities around the world to sanction officials he blames for Magnitsky’s death. The lawyer, who alleged Interior Ministry officials fraudulently collected a $230 million tax refund using documents seized from Hermitage, died in 2009 after a year in pre-trial detention.
“It’s been impossible to get any kind of real criminal investigation in Russia,” Browder said yesterday by phone. “It’s highly significant that a Western law enforcement agency is taking this seriously and is launching an investigation.”
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