Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Fate of Europe’s common currency linked to murder

The Vancouver Sun

EU faces a dilemma — prop up Cyprus despite it role as a money-laundering tax haven for Russian robber barons or risk collapse of the euro

In an extraordinary twist in the story of the European Union’s troubled common currency, the fate of the euro is now linked to the murder of a Moscow lawyer and the laundering of billions of dollars in ill-gotten money by Russian oligarchs through their favourite tax haven, the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

For months, the Communist president member Cyprus, Demetris Christofias, has been appealing for the equivalent of $22.7 billion to bail out his island’s troubled economy, which like 16 other members of the 27-member European Union uses the euro as its currency.

But there is mounting resistance among EU governments to coming to the aid of the Cyprus government because of the island’s role as a tax haven and money laundering route for Russian billionaire oligarchs.

European governments are also outraged by the story that a Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was tortured to death in a Russian prison in 2009 after revealing that Russian tax authorities bilked a British investment fund of $230 million and laundered some of the money through Cyprus.