Posts Tagged ‘phil aldrick’
‘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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New York freezes $24m of Magnitsky fraud assets
A New York district prosecutor has frozen more than $20m of Manhattan property assets following allegations they were used to launder money for Russian criminals linked to a $230m fraud uncovered by dead whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky.
Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has filed a “civil forfeiture” complaint against nine companies that own $24m (£15m) of real estate, including “four luxury residential units and two high-end commercial spaces”. If the court upholds the complaint, the state would be able to seize the assets.
Mr Bharara said: “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. While New York is a world financial capital, it is not a safe haven for criminals seeking to hide their loot, no matter how and where their fraud took place.”
The court case is a major escalation in the ongoing diplomatic war between Russia and the US over Mr Magnitsky’s death and the fraud he uncovered. The former lawyer’s plight has become symbolic of state-backed corruption in Russia.
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Magnitsky libel case ‘may be backed by the Kremlin’
The Kremlin has been accused of abusing the British justice system to wage a politically motivated campaign against UK hedge fund boss Bill Browder after libel proceedings were launched against the millionaire in the High Court.
Pavel Karpov, an unemployed former Russian police officer, is suing Mr Browder and his UK-based fund Hermitage Capital for saying he was complicit in the “torture and murder” of anti-corruption whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky four years ago.
Mr Karpov strongly denies the allegations, along with suggestions he was involved in fraud and kidnapping, and is seeking to clear his name.
However, in a pre-trial hearing, Antony White QC for Mr Browder demanded the case be thrown out for “abuse of process” as Mr Karpov had “no connection with England and no reputation to protect here”. He added that the case was politically motivated and possibly funded by the Kremlin.
Mr White drew attention to Mr Karpov’s admission that he does not have the means to pay for litigation, which could come to £6m, as well as the “highly political dimension” of the case. Mr Magnitsky has become an anti-corruption martyr in Russia, and Mr Browder’s relentless campaigning a diplomatic headache for President Vladimir Putin.
According to Mr Karpov’s witness statement, the cost of his libel claim is being covered by a loan from Transnational Bank in Russia and backed by a wealthy entrepreneur friend who has agreed “to stand as a personal guarantor”.
Mr White told the court that if the case went to trial, the costs would be “£3m to £4m on our side alone”. Under UK libel law, Mr Karpov can seek up to a maximum of £240,000 in damages. Even if he wins, lawyers said, his damages would be unlikely to cover his costs.
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Magnitsky case: Russian authorities ‘brutally silenced’ critics
Russian authorities have been accused of allowing corrupt officials to “plunder” the state while “brutally silencing” their critics in a damning report by the Council of Europe.
Andreas Gross, a Swiss MP and chair of the Socialist Group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, made the accusations in an official report into death of the campaigning anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky four years ago.
The findings, in which Mr Gross claims “high level” state officials orchestrated a “cover up”, will inflame the diplomatic row over Russia’s handling of Mr Magnitsky’s death. The scandal has become a national embarrassment, damaging business investment and trade relations.
The US has already imposed visa bans and frozen the assets of 60 Russians linked to the alleged crime. In response, Moscow has barred US citizens from adopting Russian children.
Mr Magnitsky was working for UK hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management when he uncovered an alleged $230m fraud against the Russian taxpayer. After publicly naming the police involved, the same officers arrested him and threw him in jail on tax evasion charges. He was held for a year, dying after developing pancreatitis, being denied medical attention, and being beaten with “rubber truncheons”.
The Parliamentary Assembly was “appalled that Mr Magnitsky died in pre-trial detention and none of the persons responsible for his death have yet been held to account”, the report said.
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UK companies accused of money laundering in Magnitsky probe
British companies laundered millions of pounds stolen from the Russian Treasury in a $230m (£150m) tax fraud that has triggered a major diplomatic battle between the Kremlin and the US, it has been alleged.
At least £35m passed through the foreign bank accounts of about 10 UK registered front companies to “clean” the money, an investigation has found. The alleged 2007 fraud at the heart of the case has been linked with five deaths, including that of Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose story has been turned into a play and documentary.
Evidence that the UK system has been abused prompted one MP to demand the Government follow the US’s lead and ban the 60 Russians implicated in the fraud and Mr Magnitsky’s death, including a number of state officials, from entering the country.
Dominic Raab MP said: “We don’t want Britain to become a playground for these gangsters, let alone a battleground for the violence that tends to follow.”
Among the UK companies named is Nomirex, a shell company owned in Cyprus than names a Cypriot yoga teacher as its director. Between 2007 and 2009, its accounts stated it was “inactive”. However, an investigation by the BBC’s Panorama found that $365m was transferred through its Latvian bank account in that time.
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Cyprus bail-out doubts over Russian money laundering
Politicians across Europe are urging their governments to demand a crackdown on alleged Russian money-laundering in Cyprus as a condition of any bail-out for the troubled eurozone member.
Cyprus is close to securing a €17bn (£14bn) rescue package but MPs in the UK, Finland and the Netherlands want tough questions to be asked of the country’s banks before a deal is signed and any funds are released. German politicians are believed to be looking at making similar demands.
The moves follow revelations that the Cypriot authorities refused to investigate claims that criminals linked to a $230m (£145m) alleged Russian tax fraud laundered $30m through the country’s banks. The case has been linked to a number of suspicious deaths, including that of Alexander Perepelichny, the 44-year-old whistleblower living in Surrey who died while out jogging last month.
The supposed criminal conspiracy involving police and tax officials was uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer working for UK-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management, who died in 2009 after a year in pre-trial detention on unproven charges of tax evasion. The US has since banned entry to 60 Russians linked to the fraud and death.
In July, Hermitage wrote to Cyprus’s attorney-general, Petros Clerides with evidence that banks had received stolen money. Mr Clerides said he could not investigate without a request from the Russian authorities, even though similar allegations are being looked at by Switzerland, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Estonia.
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One Hour Eighteen Minutes, New Diorama, review
In the UK, we’re familiar with the name of Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless Russian journalist and outspoken critic of the Putin regime gunned down outside her flat in Moscow in 2006.
Despite much thorough and expert reporting by the Telegraph’s economics editor Philip Aldrick, I suspect readers may be far less aware of the perturbing case of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in November 2009 at the age of 37 as a consequence of appalling neglect – and probably abuse – by the authorities. He had been detained in increasingly squalid conditions for 358 days without trial.
Held on charges of tax evasion, his offence appears to have been that he uncovered a huge trail of fraud and corruption while working for the UK-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management – centring on the criminal hijacking of sundry legitimate Hermitage companies in order to reclaim $230m in tax from the Russian state.
Partly because this embezzlement was a complex business, Magnitsky – who is currently being tried posthumously, in a new low for Russian law – is not an easy name to conjure with but he has still become a cause celebre in the West and quite possibly a catalyst for significant change.
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MPs mount campaign to ban Russian visas over Sergei Magnitsky death
Backbench MPs will on Wednesday pile pressure on the Government to ban a number of senior Russian officials from entering the UK by demanding action against those allegedly linked to the death of an anti-corruption lawyer working for a British hedge fund in Moscow.
Dominic Raab, Conservative MP for Esher & Walton, has tabled a motion for a backbench debate in the Chamber of the House of Commons, after Prime Minister’s Questions, to vote for legislation to bar visas for 60 Russians connected to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, who worked for Hermitage Capital, and to seize their assets.
The motion has the support of five former foreign ministers, including David Miliband, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Others backing it include former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis and former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell. In total, 26 MPs have signed the motion.
The law would be based on similar arrangements as in the US, which has barred entry to the 60 individuals, including the Russian deputy solicitor general, the deputy interior minister, and the head of the economic espionage unit at the Federal Security Service – the successor to the KGB.
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