The New York Times: Major Investor in Russia Sees Wide Fraud Scheme.
July 30, 2009
By ANDREW E. KRAMER MOSCOW
William F. Browder, once the largest foreign investor in the Russian stock market, filed court documents in New York this week contending that other Western investors in Russia had colluded with the authorities to steal hundreds of millions of dollars through tax refunds and then laundered the money through New York banks. Mr. Browder has hired the law firm of John D. Ashcroft, the former United States attorney general, to represent him in New York in a request for a subpoena for bank wire transfer and other records that Mr. Ashcroft contends will prove Mr. Browder’s allegations.
The filing is a new twist on Mr. Browder’s case, which began almost four years ago. His lawyers say the wire transfers will show a fraud larger than previously disclosed — remarkable even by the standards of Russia.
In its sweep and scale, the case has echoes of the Bank of New York money-laundering scandal in the late 1990s, though this time there are no allegations that American banks other than the subsidiary of a Russian investment company were involved. Mr. Browder was expelled from Russia in a politically tinged visa refusal in 2005, and relocated his business, Hermitage Capital Management, to London. Later, he said subsidiary companies he had formed in Russia to invest in Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, were used by others to acquire a fraudulent tax refund of $230 million.
For more information please visit