SKY: YouTube is completely democratic, no one could block it

October 21, 2009

For more than a decade, Bill Brow­der of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment was one of the largest for­eign investors in Russia.

But in an inter­view for Jeff Ran­dall Live he has alleged that he has been the vic­tim of a con­spir­a­cy that has seen him being refused re-entry into the coun­try and the seizure of his com­pa­ny’s documents.

He claims that this allowed the busi­ness to be stolen from him as part of plot to defraud the Russ­ian tax system.

“In a high­ly com­plex fraud that took place after that the com­pa­nies were then used by the crim­i­nal group who stole them to steal $230m (£140m) from the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment of tax­es that we had paid two years before.”

Mr Brow­der claims that his com­pa­ny has been tar­get­ed because he had uncov­ered so many cas­es of cor­rup­tion in Rus­sia dur­ing the 10 years he worked there between 1995 and 2005.

He also explained why he has just filed a crim­i­nal com­plaint with the Russ­ian courts alleg­ing that hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars have been stolen in state funds.

“We’ve actu­al­ly writ­ten a let­ter of com­plaint to var­i­ous law enforce­ment author­i­ties last week to high­light the fact that the author­i­ties in the tax offices in Moscow were work­ing with the crim­i­nal group to make the largest tax refund in Russ­ian his­to­ry in two days and we have doc­u­men­tary evi­dence of that.

“Fur­ther­more, we have evi­dence that about eight oth­er fraud­u­lent tax refunds were made totalling 11.2bn rou­bles, which is rough­ly $400m (£244m).”

He says the prime moti­vat­ing fac­tor now for his cam­paign is the case of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, a lawyer involved in uncov­er­ing the fraud who has spent the past 11 months in deten­tion on charges of tax evasion.

Sky News has con­tact­ed the Russ­ian author­i­ties for their response to the alle­ga­tions made by Bill Browder.

A Krem­lin offi­cial told us that it was an ongo­ing legal mat­ter which will be resolved with­in the court system.

An inte­ri­or min­istry spokesman also said it has asked Inter­pol to place Mr Brow­der on its want­ed list.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/Investment-Boss-Bill-Browder-Alleges-He-Has-Damning-Evidence-of-Fraud-In-Russian-Business-World

Comments

• Link