Swiss Money Laundering Investigation in the Magnitsky Case Widens With New Requests Sent to Multiple Swiss Financial Institutions and Accounts Frozen

January 9, 2013

The Swiss Pros­e­cu­tor has widened its probe into the mon­ey laun­der­ing involv­ing Russ­ian offi­cials con­nect­ed to the crimes uncov­ered by Sergei Mag­nit­sky. The Swiss author­i­ties have sent requests to mul­ti­ple finan­cial insti­tu­tions and frozen accounts, report­ed Tages-Anzeiger, one of Switzerland’s main newspapers. 

A num­ber of bank accounts have been frozen con­tain­ing mil­lions of funds in unspec­i­fied cur­ren­cy, accord­ing to the news­pa­per arti­cle “Sus­pi­cion of Mon­ey Laun­der­ing: Con­fed­er­a­tion Blocked Mil­lions” (http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/schweiz/standard/Verdacht-auf-Geldwaescherei-Bund-blockiert-Millionen/story/10790179).

This infor­ma­tion comes on top of a pre­vi­ous announce­ment by the Swiss author­i­ties that they froze accounts at Cred­it Suisse in Zurich last year belong­ing to Vladlen Stepanov, for­mer hus­band of a senior Russ­ian tax offi­cial Olga Stepano­va, who approved numer­ous ille­gal tax refunds through which hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars were stolen from the Russ­ian trea­sury. Some of the funds in the frozen Swiss accounts had been used to buy lux­u­ry real estate in Dubai for Russ­ian tax offi­cials and their fam­i­lies. Fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tion of the Swiss action, Mr Stepanov stat­ed that approx­i­mate­ly 8 mil­lion Euros in his Swiss accounts had been frozen. It is not spec­i­fied who the per­sons are who are now con­nect­ed to the widen­ing Swiss probe.

“All finan­cial trans­ac­tions leave a per­ma­nent and inerasable trail. Those who were con­nect­ed to the theft and laun­der­ing of the mon­ey, and the false arrest and killing of Sergei Mag­nit­sky to cov­er it up may be able to get away with mur­der, but they won’t be able now to hide the pro­ceeds of their crime in the West,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

The Russ­ian author­i­ties have recog­nised that $230 mil­lion had been stolen from the Russ­ian trea­sury and blamed it on a sawmill employ­ee and a job­less man. They con­tend­ed that the mon­ey could not be traced because bank records blew up in a truck explo­sion. As of now, not a sin­gle Russ­ian offi­cial involved in the $230 mil­lion fraud­u­lent tax refund and theft has been prosecuted.

In the mean­time, Russ­ian author­i­ties have acquit­ted Dmit­ry Kra­tov, for­mer head of Butyr­ka deten­tion cen­ter and the only offi­cial brought to tri­al for the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky. The acquit­tal of Mr Kra­tov was request­ed by the Russ­ian state pros­e­cu­tor in an unusu­al U‑turn just four days after the pub­lic claim by Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin that Sergei Mag­nit­sky had not been “tor­tured” and had died of “heart fail­ure” in spite of the doc­u­men­tary evi­dence of the use of rub­ber baton and injuries on his body revealed dur­ing his funeral. 

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