U.S. Judge Grants Freezing Order Over $23 Million of New York Assets in Lawsuit Brought by the U.S. Attorney in the Sergei Magnitsky Case

September 16, 2013

The New York Dis­trict Court has issued a freez­ing order for over $23 mil­lion in Man­hat­tan prop­er­ty and bank accounts linked to the $230 mil­lion theft uncov­ered by Russ­ian lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky. The bank accounts are held at Bank of Amer­i­ca. The court order was made at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which launched the first action in the Sergei Mag­nit­sky case in the Unit­ed States last week.
http://followmydata.net/D/Prevezon-Restraining-Court-Order-signed-by-court‑9 – 11-13.pdf

Pre­sid­ing U.S. Judge Thomas Griesa said in the order:
“The Restrained per­sons, their attor­neys, agents, employ­ees and any­one act­ing on their behalf, and all per­sons or enti­ties act­ing in con­cert or par­tic­i­pa­tion with any of the above, all rel­e­vant finan­cial insti­tu­tions, and all per­sons and enti­ties hav­ing actu­al knowl­edge of this Order, shall not, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, trans­fer, sell, …or take, or cause to be tak­en, any action that would have the effect of depre­ci­at­ing, dam­ag­ing, or in any way dimin­ish­ing the val­ue of prop­er­ty or oth­er inter­ests belong­ing to, or owed to, or con­trolled in whole or in part by the defen­dant, which prop­er­ty or oth­er inter­ests are sub­ject to forfeiture.” 

The Unit­ed States com­menced its action in New York on 10 Sep­tem­ber 2013 when the civ­il for­fei­ture com­plaint was filed by attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York Preet Bharara. In grant­i­ng the freez­ing order, the court referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office complaint:
“The Com­plaint fur­ther alleges, in part, that in 2007, a Russ­ian crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion (“the Orga­ni­za­tion”) engaged in an elab­o­rate tax refund fraud scheme that defraud­ed Russ­ian tax­pay­ers out of approx­i­mate­ly U.S. $230 mil­lion; that the fraud pro­ceeds were laun­dered through a series of shell com­pa­nies in Rus­sia and oth­er coun­tries; and that some of these fraud pro­ceeds were trans­ferred from shell com­pa­nies in the Repub­lic of Moldo­va to PREVEZON HOLDINGS, which then used those funds, com­min­gled with oth­er funds …, to pur­chase mul­ti­ple pieces of real estate in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York, which were held by the oth­er Pre­ve­zon Entities.”

The aim of the freez­ing court order is to pre­serve the assets from dissipation.
In 2008, Sergei Mag­nit­sky, an out­side lawyer for the Her­mitage Fund, uncov­ered the crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy involv­ing Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials and crim­i­nals, respon­si­ble for the theft of Her­mitage Fund’s Russ­ian com­pa­nies and $230 mil­lion of their tax pay­ments, and tes­ti­fied about it to Russ­ian author­i­ties. He was then arrest­ed by some of the same offi­cials he had impli­cat­ed, ill-treat­ed and tor­tured for near­ly a year and killed in Russ­ian state cus­tody on 16 Novem­ber 2009. 

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