$135 Million of Russian Government Money Stolen by the Criminal Group Exposed by Sergei Magnitsky Has Been Found in Eight Different Countries

September 24, 2012

After two years of a foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tion involv­ing the author­i­ties and courts in four dif­fer­ent coun­tries, jour­nal­ists from Novaya Gaze­ta and the Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion Report­ing Project have iden­ti­fied where $135 mil­lion of the mon­ey stolen from the Russ­ian trea­sury by a crim­i­nal group exposed by the mur­dered lawyer, Sergei Mag­nit­sky, end­ed up. The mon­ey was traced through U.S., Swiss, Moldovan and Russ­ian bank records to accounts in 8 dif­fer­ent juris­dic­tions, 62 off­shore accounts and 20 dif­fer­ent banks. The mon­ey was found in Aus­tria, Switzer­land, Fin­land, Cyprus, Hong Kong and three Baltic republics.

This is the largest sin­gle dis­cov­ery out­side of Rus­sia of bank accounts and indi­vid­u­als who were involved in the cor­rupt con­spir­a­cy to steal Russ­ian trea­sury funds uncov­ered by late Sergei Magnitsky.

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant dis­cov­er­ies from this new inves­ti­ga­tion is doc­u­men­tary evi­dence show­ing a link between the funds from the Russ­ian trea­sury through 10 dif­fer­ent banks in 4 dif­fer­ent juris­dic­tions and the accounts at Cred­it Suisse Pri­vate Bank in Zurich of a com­pa­ny belong­ing to Vladlen Stepanov, ex-hus­band of for­mer head of Moscow tax office num­ber 28. The mon­ey from this account was shown to have been used to pay for mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar prop­er­ties in Dubai for Vladlen Stepanov (http://russian-untouchables.com/rus/docs/D252.pdf) and two offi­cials of the Moscow Tax Office 28 — Olga Tsare­va and Ele­na Anisi­mo­va — and their rel­a­tives (http://russian-untouchables.com/rus/docs/D247.pdf, http://russian-untouchables.com/rus/docs/D246.pdf).

Anoth­er impor­tant trail from the stolen trea­sury funds was a $1,468,023 pay­ment to accounts at UBS in Zurich.

Pre­vi­ous inves­ti­ga­tions have revealed that $800 mil­lion was stolen by the Russ­ian offi­cials and crim­i­nals exposed by Sergei Mag­nit­sky using the same scheme dur­ing a four-year peri­od of 2006 – 2010, includ­ing $230 mil­lion paid in tax­es to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment by Her­mitage Fund’s Russ­ian com­pa­nies in 2006. This mon­ey was ille­gal­ly refund­ed in one day, on 24 Decem­ber 2007, under the guise of a “tax refund” by crim­i­nals work­ing with Russ­ian tax and Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials. Fam­i­lies of those offi­cials have since been shown to have become rich well in excess of their gov­ern­ment salaries.

Her­mitage Cap­i­tal has filed 8 crim­i­nal com­plaints with the pros­e­cu­tors and police in the eight for­eign juris­dic­tions, alert­ing them to the stolen funds and ask­ing for the accounts to be frozen and crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions to be opened.

The appli­ca­tions say:

“Our clients have dis­cov­ered that the funds held at and which moved through these accounts rep­re­sent a por­tion of some $800 mil­lion in illic­it pro­ceeds gen­er­at­ed in a crim­i­nal scheme involv­ing the theft of funds from the Russ­ian Trea­sury, as well as pro­ceeds of sim­i­lar crimes ear­li­er, pay­ments to cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials and mem­bers of their fam­i­lies involved in the scheme, and fraud, of which $230 mil­lion relates to tax­es paid to the Russ­ian Trea­sury by Her­mitage and the Her­mitage Fund, as well as to oth­er ongo­ing crim­i­nal activity.”

“Because the Russ­ian author­i­ties have blocked all appli­ca­tions to inves­ti­gate the mon­ey trail and to bring impli­cat­ed Russ­ian offi­cials to jus­tice, our efforts have been focused on crim­i­nal jus­tice oppor­tu­ni­ties out­side Rus­sia,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

Sergei Mag­nit­sky who uncov­ered the unprece­dent­ed fraud against the Russ­ian peo­ple and the Russ­ian state, was arrest­ed by offi­cers he had impli­cat­ed, tor­tured and killed in cus­tody. In Novem­ber 2010, he was posthu­mous­ly hon­ored by Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al with the Integri­ty Award (http://www.transparency.org/getinvolved/awardwinner/sergei_magnitsky) for his fight against offi­cial corruption.

As of now, not a sin­gle mem­ber of the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment has been pros­e­cut­ed for the theft of the funds or the mur­der of Sergei Magnitsky.

Ear­li­er, Mag­nit­sky’s for­mer boss, U.S. lawyer Jami­son Fire­stone, filed three appli­ca­tions with the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee seek­ing to open a crim­i­nal inquiry into the Russ­ian tax offi­cials who autho­rized the tax refunds, and into the high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials who have been block­ing any inves­ti­ga­tion. Fire­stone also filed sev­en requests to inves­ti­gate the illic­it wealth of the fam­i­lies of tax and police offi­cials impli­cat­ed in the thefts, and the crim­i­nal activ­i­ties of the Klyuev orga­nized crime group since 2002. The Russ­ian author­i­ties have not opened any probes into any­one named in Fire­stone’s applications.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please contact:

Her­mitage Capital

Phone:             +44 207 440 1777

Email:             info@lawandorderinrussia.org

Web­site:          http://lawandorderinrussia.org

Face­book:        http://on.fb.me/hvIuVI

Twit­ter:           @KatieFisher__

Live­jour­nal:     //hermitagecap.livejournal.com/

Inves­ti­ga­tion by Novaya Gaze­ta here:
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/inquests/53950.html

Inves­ti­ga­tion by the Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion Report­ing Project: http://www.reportingproject.net/proxy/en/following-the-magnitsky-money

Comments

• Link