Posts Tagged ‘bout’
‘Sheriff of Wall Street’ pursues case linked to death of Russian lawyer
Preet Bharara is the new “Sheriff of Wall Street”. The US district attorney for the southern district of New York has taken down 60 insider dealers, including former McKinsey boss Rajat Gupta and Raj Rajaratnam over the Galleon scandal.
Currently, he has SAC Capital in his sights. He’s charged the giant hedge fund itself with allowing insider trading. Not for nothing has he inherited the populist monicker last claimed by Eliot Spitzer during his post-dotcom crackdown on white-collar crime.
Bharara even claims to eat “raw meat” for breakfast. If true, he’ll need it.
His latest target is far from white collar. Bharara is going after the Russian mafia – an organised crime group whose tentacles stretch throughout the state and, apparently, right into the Kremlin. At least two people connected to the crimes he’s pursuing have died in suspicious circumstances.
Last week, Bharara froze $24m (£15m) of property assets in Manhattan and Brooklyn, including “four luxury residential units and two high-end commercial spaces”, on charges of money-laundering. One 35-storey block boasts a pool, roof terrace, Turkish bath and indoor golf.
“As alleged, a Russian criminal enterprise sought to launder some of its billions in ill-gotten rubles through the purchase of pricey Manhattan real estate,” he said. “While New York is a world financial capital, it is not a safe haven for criminals seeking to hide their loot.”
If the court upholds the “civil forfeiture” complaint, the government will seize the assets.
Bharara’s case is the latest instalment in the tragic saga of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who uncovered a $230m tax refund fraud against the Russian people in 2007 while working for UK-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management.
Magnitsky blew the whistle hard. He named police officers involved in the crime group, identified tax officials who authorised the illegal payments and had begun tracking the money when he was thrown in jail on trumped-up tax-evasion charges in late 2008.
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From Moscow to Manhattan, the Long Way
U.S. prosecutors are trying to seize millions of dollars in ritzy New York City real estate they say are laundered rubles linked to the death of Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Federal prosecutors last week sought the forfeiture of $24 million worth of Manhattan real estate they say was purchased in part with funds connected to the notorious theft of $230 million from Russia’s Treasury in 2007. The crime assumed international importance later when lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in the custody of Russian police he’d accused of complicity in the theft. Magnitsky was representing a Western-backed hedge fund that was victimized in the massive tax fraud.
“A Russian criminal enterprise sought to launder some of its billions in ill-gotten rubles through the purchase of pricey Manhattan real estate,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a statement. “While New York is a world financial capital, it is not a safe haven for criminals seeking to hide their loot.” An order freezing the properties and related bank accounts was signed on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa.
The government’s civil complaint is the first U.S. law-enforcement response to the 2007 seizure of the Russian subsidiaries of Hermitage Capital, once the largest foreign investor in Russia. The complaint states that back then criminals stole the corporate identities of the money manager and used them to falsely claim the refund of $230 million for taxes that Hermitage had paid in prior years. When Moscow attorney Magnitsky presented evidence that he believed showed the involvement of police and tax officials, the complaint continues, he was arrested and died in prison a year later under suspicious circumstances. Barron’s reported on the case in detail in “Crime and Punishment in Putin’s Russia,” in our edition of April 18, 2011.
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Russia’s Counter To Magnitsky Bill
Russia is planning to sanction all supporters of the Magnitsky Act, Russian Izvestia daily reported. The US Senate approved a bill last week that would impose financial and visa restrictions on foreign officials connected to human rights abuse. The bill is named after a Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was allegedly killed in prison by police.
Russia reacted to the Magnitsky Act with threats, as the bill was originally drafted to impose sanctions specifically on Russian officials involved in human right abuses. Izvestia reported on Friday that the Russian Parliament is discussing a long list of individuals who might be banned from Russia under a draft “Law On Measures against Individuals Involved in Violation of Russian Citizens’ Rights Abroad.” This law was introduced in June 2011.
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By typical Russian, whatabout, chutzpah double standards, yes the treatment of Bout is inhumane
Just when I thought that Russian chutzpah could never surprise me, something like this comes along:
A federal court handed Bout 25 years in prison on Thursday for conspiring to sell weapons to Columbian guerrillas who were actually US federal agents in disguise.
. . . .
The ministry claimed the US had used “unbearable conditions” in detention as a means of physically and psychologically pressuring Bout during his trial. “Long before the verdict, the authorities declared V.A. Bout a ‘merchant of death’ and little short of an international terrorist, while the prosecution was built entirely on his imputed ‘criminal intent’,” it said, adding: “The Russian foreign ministry will take all necessary efforts to return V.A. Bout to the Motherland.”
This from the country that uses psychological pressure and physical torture and literally-literally-unbearable conditions to coerce those they want to break.
Three prominent examples: I could spend days assembling many more.
Example 1. Today is the 6th anniversary of the arrest of Vasily Aleksanyan. Aleksanyan worked for Khodorkovsky and Yukos. The Russians wanted to compel him to testify against Khodorkovsky. How? Here’s how:
During Aleksanyan’s imprisonment, his health rapidly deteriorated due to HIV-related illnesses. He became almost blind and developed cancer of the liver with metastasis into the lymph nodes. He also became ill with tuberculosis.
Despite the grave medical situation demanding urgent antiretroviral treatment and chemotherapy in a hospital, he was denied both. The prosecutors also ignored three injunctions by the European Court of Human Rights on 27 November 2007, on 6 December 2007 and on 20 December 2007.According to Aleksanyan, the prosecutors are demanding false evidence against other Yukos executives from him before starting his medical treatment. On 26 December Aleksanyan made public a statement asking for help from human rights advocates.
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Russia’s WTO accession sparks debate over human-rights legislation
Russia’s expected invitation to join the World Trade Organization next month has ignited debate in Congress on a bill that targets Russian human-rights abuse and a trade law that could hurt U.S. businesses.
The debate over punishing Russian human-rights abusers and voiding a Cold War-era trade law poses a test for the Obama administration’s “reset” in relations with the former Soviet republic.
As a WTO member, Russia would enjoy regulated access to U.S. markets, even as Moscow has backslid on democratic reforms by cracking down on dissenters, limiting opposition and restricting the press.
Russia has threatened to end cooperation with the U.S. on Iran sanctions and Afghan transit if the U.S. implements the proposed Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act.
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Bout Illustrates Why Putin Will Fail
When a U.S. jury last week convicted Viktor Bout, the so-called Merchant of Death, of conspiracy to kill Americans and selling weapons to a terrorist organization — a crime that carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison — Russian authorities reacted with anger.
The Foreign Ministry stated, “The guilty verdict was delivered … under unprecedented political pressure by U.S. authorities.” The ministry has created a “Bout’s list” of U.S. citizens who would be denied entry to Russia for allegedly violating the human rights of Bout and other Russian citizens. It is also seeking Bout’s extradition to Russia.
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Remember Sergei Magnitsky
Who’s really running Russia? The smart money has been on Vladimir Putin, and the case of Sergei Magnitsky appears to underscore that conclusion. How the Magnitsky case is resolved will reveal the extent of Mr. Putin’s reach, even though Dmitry Medvedev serves as president.
Mr. Magnitsky was arrested by Russia’s Interior Ministry in 2008 shortly after he declared that he had evidence of police corruption and embezzlement at the ministry. The complaint said he had helped a client, American-owned investment firm Hermitage Capital, evade taxes. He died after 11 months in prison.
Now Russia has indicted two doctors for his death in a case that exudes the smell of a cover-up. It has strained U.S.-Russian relations and tested the relative powers of President Medvedev, an advocate of the rule of law, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
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Death and diplomacy in Russia
There’s a little diplomatic row happening between Russia and the United States. Odds are very good you haven’t even heard about it. It hasn’t received much coverage. But as quiet and minor as it may be, with each country putting a handful of citizens from the other country on a visa blacklist, it has to do with a much deeper, more troublesome story: the story of human rights abuses and corruption running as rampant as ever in Russia.
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