Posts Tagged ‘stepanova’
Impudence and Impunity
Russia Profile.org
As Russia prepares for this year’s Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, the long-running saga of the Hermitage Capital Management will loom large in the minds of potential investors and could cast a shadow of uncertainty over Russia’s shaky investment climate. Last week, one of the individuals accused by the British hedge-fund firm of involvement in a $230 million tax scam, finally broke what looked like a sacred vow of silence.
In an interview with the Vedomosti business daily published on Friday, Vladlen Stepanov, the husband of a Russian tax official who allegedly embezzled millions through the tax rebate scam, denied any connection between his wealth and the fraud. He announced that he had filed a lawsuit to protect his honor, dignity and business reputation against the Echo of Moscow radio station, which aired the allegations, and against Jamison Firestone, a managing partner at Firestone Duncan who voiced them.
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Russian corruption scandal: A trail leads to Switzerland
Schweizer Fernsehen
A story like a thriller: A Russia lawyer, Sergei magnitsky, uncovers a huge tax fraud and accused Russian police officers and judges of being involved. Instead of investigating his claims, the police officers take him to prison, where he is being treated inhumanely and dies. A portion of the stolen money was laundered though banks accounts of Credit Suisse.
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Briton uses YouTube to accuse Russian tax official of £25m fraud
The Sunday Times
A leading British investor has accused a Russian official and her husband of embezzling more than £25m (€29m) through their part in a scam that led to the theft of three of his companies and the largest tax fraud in Russia’s history.
William Browder, a British citizen born in America who has been barred from Russia since 2005, has gathered evidence that, he claims, shows a senior Moscow tax official and her husband went on a multimillion-pound spending spree, despite earning a combined annual salary of only £25,000.
It happened after interior ministry officials allegedly stole three companies from Hermitage Capital, Browder’s London-based investment fund, and used them to apply for a fraudulent £140m tax rebate, which was paid in a single day.
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Stolen Russian tax money is in EU banks, US sleuth says
People responsible for the death of Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky have salted away stolen money in EU bank accounts, Magnitsky’s former employer has claimed.
Bill Browder, the US-born head of the UK investment firm, Hermitage Capital Management, and five of his staff have spent the past year hunting down the assets of Russian officials exposed in a €175 million tax fraud by Magnitsky shortly before he was jailed and murdered in his cell.
Browder scored a victory last week when Swiss authorities froze a number of accounts in the Credit Suisse bank following evidence brought to light by Hermiatge and broadcast on YouTube.
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Swiss freeze Russian accounts over giant tax swindle
The Swiss authorities have frozen the bank accounts of Russian tax officials alleged to have pulled off Russia’s largest tax fraud, a U.S. magazine has said.
Credit Suisse accounts held by a former Moscow tax bureau head, Olga Stepanova, and her deputies were blocked at the request of Swiss prosecutors, according to an article in Barron’s Magazine.
Stepanova is alleged to have approved a $230 million tax refund in 2007 to a ring of embezzlers masquerading as representatives of subsidiaries of British investment company Hermitage Capital Management, once the leading foreign portfolio investor in Russia.
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Russian Accounts Frozen at Credit Suisse
Swiss authorities have apparently closed bank accounts held by Russians alleged to have been part of a giant Russian tax swindle.
Swiss law enforcement officials have apparently frozen the Credit Suisse (ticker: CS) bank accounts of the Russians alleged to have participated in Russia’s largest reported tax swindle.
Records from those bank accounts formed the basis of a Barron’s story (“Crime and Punishment in Putin’s Russia,” April 18) which showed that the family of an influential Russian tax official, Olga Stepanova, became fabulously wealthy after she approved part of a $230 million tax refund to scammers in 2007 who used corporate identities stolen from the well-known Russia-focused hedge fund Hermitage Capital. When Hermitage and its attorney Sergei Magnitsky presented evidence that the conspiracy involved Stepanova and police officials in Russia’s Internal Ministry, the police instead arrested Magnitsky and kept him in detention until he died in prison in November 2009.
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Play Based on Magnitsky’s Death to Premiere in US
A play based on the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky is set to stage its North American premiere in Washington, DC on May 4, 2011.
The play, called “One Hour Eighteen,” is a highly acclaimed production based on excerpts from Magnitsky’s personal diary. As has been the case in Moscow since premiering last June, the play will be followed by a group discussion.
Sergei Magnitsky’s tragic death has become a symbol for those working to further human rights and the rule of law in Russia today. After uncovering a $230 million tax fraud case implicating a variety of Russian officials, bankers, and members of the mob, Magnitsky was arrested and placed in a Moscow detention facility. After eleven months of being denied proper medical care, he died without ever seeing trial in November 2009. What followed was an unprecedented global outcry demanding justice for what, upon closer inspection, appeared to be a case of premeditated murder. While a still-ongoing independent inquiry ordered by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev concluded last week that Magnitsky’s jailing and treatment was illegal, no charges have been filed in the case.
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Magnitsky’s Colleagues: He exposed a fraud and paid for it with his life
WPS: What the Papers Say
Once they recovered from the shock caused by the news of Sergei Magnitsky’s death behind the bars, his colleagues initiated an investigation of their own. They are convinced that Magnitsky was murdered because he had exposed a fraud costing the Russian treasury 5.4 billion rubles and because he was prepared to testify in an open trial. Hermitage Foundation is still following the trail of the vast sums gone from the treasury in the hope to unearth a connection with people on the so called Cardin’s List. A video appeared in the Internet last week, focused on the colossal sums to be found on foreign bank accounts of Vladlen Stepanov, the husband of the former chief of Moscow Tax Inspectorate No 28 Olga Stepanova. It had been Stepanova who authorized return of the billions of rubles from the budget on December 24, 2007.
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Marital murmurings in Magnitsky case
Embezzlement charges against tax official Olga Stepanova are now washing around her marriage and her relationship with her husband.
Stepanova and a $230 million fraud are at the centre of a media storm, with supporters of the late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison, say ended up in Stepanova’s husband’s offshore bank accounts.
Stepanova’s lawyer says that this in no way implicates her client, as the two have been separated for almost 20 years.
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