13-04-2013, 12:10 AM
High finance. Who was stealing whose assets?
Quote:Factbox - Who's who on the U.S. Magnitsky list
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's administration has released a list of 18 people who will be banned from the United States under a new law penalizing Russia for alleged human rights abuses.
The U.S. law, named after a Russian whistleblower called Sergei Magnitsky who died in prison in 2009, has become an irritant in relations between the former Cold War superpowers. Obama signed it in December.
Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who worked for the Hermitage Capital Management investment fund, found himself facing accusations of a $230 million (149.9 million pounds) tax fraud from the officials he had accused of responsibility.
Friends and family say Magnitsky was denied medical treatment in jail and died after a beating. Nobody has been found responsible. Instead, Magnitsky has been put on posthumous trial, in the first case of its kind in Russia, his lawyers say.
Sixteen people were put on the U.S. list "because of their association with the persecution and ultimate death of Sergei Magnitsky," a senior State department official said on Friday. The other two people on the list are linked to two other deaths.
They are all subject to U.S. visa bans and asset freezes in the United States.
Those on the list include:
ARTYOM KUZNETSOV, MOSCOW INTERIOR MINISTRY TAX INVESTIGATOR
An officer in the tax crimes unit of the Moscow division of Russia's Interior Ministry, Kuznetsov allegedly took part in the police raids on the offices of Hermitage and its law firm in 2007, according to Magnitsky's supporters.
Hermitage said the documents seized in the raids were later used to re-register ownership of its subsidiaries and claim an illegal $230 million tax refund paid to bogus new owners.
Kuznetsov, 38, also allegedly oversaw the arrest of Magnitsky on unrelated tax evasion charges, after Magnitsky had testified to the Interior Ministry about the suspect $230 million rebate.
Magnitsky's supporters have published information which they said showed Kuznetsov had acquired millions of dollars worth of property soon after the fraud. The Interior Ministry has found no evidence of wrongdoing by Kuznetsov.
PAVEL KARPOV, MOSCOW INTERIOR MINISTRY INVESTIGATOR
Karpov, who held the rank of major, was a senior investigator in the Moscow division of the Interior Ministry at the time of the 2007 police raids on Hermitage and its law firm.
Karpov, 35, was named along with Kuznetsov in testimonies by Magnitsky that described the tax rebate scheme. Magnitsky's supporters say that at the time of the alleged fraud, key documents were in Karpov's possession.
They subsequently published information which they said showed Karpov had bought more than a million dollars worth of property around the time the fraud was committed.
The Interior Ministry has found no evidence of wrongdoing by Karpov. Karpov, who has since resigned from the ministry, has initiated a libel case in London's High Court against Hermitage chief William Browder. Karpov's lawyer, Geraldine Proudler, has said that "there is not a shred of evidence against Karpov," and on Friday, Karpov denied the allegations.
"I am expecting soon the decision from the high court of London which will confirm the falsehood of the accusation" Karpov told Interfax.
OLEG SILCHENKO, FEDERAL INTERIOR MINISTRY INVESTIGATOR
Silchenko, a senior investigator at the federal Interior Ministry, was in charge of the investigation into Magnitsky and ordered his detention.
He also headed the investigation into the alleged $230 million tax rebate fraud reported by Magnitsky. The probe exonerated all Russian officials accused by Magnitsky and his supporters.
Magnitsky's supporters also accuse Silchenko, 35, of inhumane treatment of Magnitsky in custody, denying him medical treatment, family visits and phone calls.
Silchenko has denied mistreating Magnitsky, saying there was sufficient proof of Magnitsky's guilt, and calling the fraud accusations against law enforcement officials "absurd."
OLGA STEPANOVA, TAX OFFICER
Olga Stepanova headed Moscow Tax Office No. 28, which authorized 3.7 billion roubles (101 million pounds) in tax rebates that were part of the $230 million tax refund.
The Russian investigation into the alleged fraud cleared her and other tax officials of wrongdoing, saying that they had been misled into making the refunds.
Magnitsky's supporters have alleged that Stepanova and her ex-husband Vladlen Stepanov acquired millions of dollars of property shortly after the alleged fraud was committed. They published evidence which they said showed Vladlen Stepanov deposited money from the alleged fraud into offshore companies and a Swiss bank account.
Stepanov, a construction company manager, has responded to the allegations by saying that he bought all the property with his own money.
YELENA STASHINA, JUDGE
Yelena Stashina, a judge of the Tverskoi regional court of Moscow, prolonged Magnitsky's detention, according to allegations by U.S. lawmakers and rights activists.
Stashina "refused his (Magnitsky's) complaint about the deprivation of medical treatment at a hearing on November 12, 2009, four days before his death," said a paragraph about her in a summary of allegations against 60 Russian officials sent to the State Department back in 2010 by Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin, who was proposing visa bans on all of them. Cardin was the main Senate sponsor of the Magnitsky Act.
ANDREY PECHEGIN, DEPUTY DIVISION HEAD IN PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE
Andrey Pechegin worked in the Russian general prosecutor's office as deputy head of the division of supervision of investigations. He allegedly denied more than 20 complaints from Magnitsky and his lawyers about Magnitsky's treatment, according to information from Cardin's 2010 list of allegations against the 60 officials.
KAZBEK DUKUZOV, AQUITTED IN KLEBNIKOV KILLING
Dukuzov is one of two natives of the Chechnya region who were tried for the 2004 killing in Moscow of American journalist Paul Klebnikov, the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, and were acquitted by a jury in 2006.
A retrial in 2007 was suspended because Dukuzov could not be tracked down. Nobody has been brought to justice over Klebnikov's killing.
LECHA BOGATYROV, IMPLICATED IN KILLING IN VIENNA
Lecha Bogatyrov was implicated by Austrian police as the killer of Umar Israilov, a former bodyguard of Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Israilov became a critic of Kadyrov and was shot dead in Vienna in 2009. Bogatyrov reportedly escaped arrest and returned to Russia.http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/...sky-list#6
Quote:The publication of the so-called Magnitsky list will irrevocably bury the idea of ​​"reset" of relations between Russia and the United States, believes Alexei Pushkov of Russia's Duma Foreign Affairs Committee.
He noted that Russia has never declined partnership, but one can hardly talk of comprehensive cooperation at a time when the United States has gone ahead with an anti-Russian law that arbitrarily "blacklists" people whose guilt has not been recognized by any court exclusively on suspicions of U.S. congressmen.
The U.S. on Friday published the "Magnitsky list" that contains 18 names of officials allegedly linked to the 2009 death of Hermitage Group lawyer Sergey Magnitsky in a pre-trial detention center. These people will now see visa and financial sanctions applied against them allegedly over human rights abuses.
Alexei Pushkov said Russia has drawn up a list of its own, imposing symmetrical sanctions against U.S. human rights abusers.http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_04_13/Moscow...-ties-005/
Quote:Hermitage Capital Management
Hermitage Capital Management is an investment fund and asset management company specializing in Russian markets founded by Bill Browder and Edmond Safra. Hermitage Capital Management headquarters are in Guernsey, whilst it also maintains offices in the Cayman Islands and Moscow, Russia.[SUP][1][/SUP]
Its main investment fund, the Hermitage Fund created in 1996,[SUP][1][/SUP] has been extremely successful, earning 2,697% through December 2007, according to Opalesque.TV.[SUP][2][/SUP] It has been ranked the World's Best Performing Emerging Markets Fund over the 1996-2001 five-year period by Nelsons.
Hermitage is an activist fund. One of its main tactics is to expose corporate corruption in the companies it is holding, in the hope of improving managerial behaviour and lessen the significant discount that corruption has on share prices. Most famously, Hermitage has helped to expose several high-profile cases of corruption in Russia's largest company Gazprom between 1998 and 2000. In October 2000, Hermitage reported that "investors are valuing this company as if 99 percent of its assets have been stolen. The real figure is around 10 percent so that's good news."[SUP][3][/SUP]
In April 2007 the firm launched Hermitage Global, an activist fund focused on global emerging markets.
Russian Government controversy
Although the fund's founder William Browder was a supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin, in November of 2005 he was blacklisted by the Russian government as a "threat to national security" and denied entry to the country. The Economist has accused the Russian government that this blacklisting occurred because he interfered with the flow of money to "corrupt bureaucrats and their businessmen accomplices."[SUP][4][/SUP]
As the New York Times reported in 2008,[SUP][5][/SUP] over the next two years, several of his associates and lawyers, as well as their relatives, were victims of crimes, including severe beatings and robberies during which documents were taken. In June 2007 dozens of police officers swooped down on the Moscow offices of Hermitage and its law firm, confiscating documents and computers. When a member of the firm protested that the search was illegal, he was beaten by officers and hospitalized for two weeks. Hermitage became victim of what is known in Russia as "corporate raiding": seizing companies and other assets with the aid of corrupt law enforcement officials and judges. Three Hermitage holdings companies were seized on what the company's lawyers insist are bogus charges.
On 8 October Hermitage released a video on YouTube accusing Russian Police of fraud.[SUP][5][/SUP]
On November 16, 2009 Sergei Magnitsky, a partner of the legal company Firestone Duncan, who was a representative and legal consultant for William Browder in Moscow, having been accused in tax fraud and imprisoned for 11 months, died in prison. In 2013 it was announced that Magnitsky will go on trial posthumously.
Opalesque.TV released a video on February 8th 2010 in which Browder reveals details of Sergey Magnitsky's ordeal during his eleven months in detention.[SUP][6][/SUP]
Quote:Bill Browder
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William Felix "Bill" Browder (born in 1964) is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management.
Early life and education
Bill Browder is the grandson of Earl Browder, the former leader of the Communist Party USA,[SUP][1][/SUP] and the son of Felix Browder, the noted mathematician.
He grew up in Chicago, Illinois and attended the University of Chicago where he studied Economics. He received an MBA from Stanford Business School[SUP][2][/SUP] in 1989 where his classmates were Gary Kremen and Ryland Kelley. He later became a British citizen.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][3][/SUP]
Prior to setting up Hermitage, Browder worked in the Eastern European practice of the Boston Consulting Group in London and managed the Russian proprietary investments desk at Salomon Brothers.
Hermitage Capital Management
Bill Browder and Edmond Safra founded Hermitage Capital Management in 1996 for the purpose of investing initial seed capital of $25 million in Russia. The business was very successful, profiting from the wave of privatizations occurring in Russia at that time, and increased its investor base substantially. Following the Russian financial crisis of 1998 Browder continued the business of Hermitage investing in Russia, despite significant outflows from the fund. His fund became a prominent activist shareholder in the Russian gas giant Gazprom, the large oil company Surgutneftegaz, RAO UES, Sberbank, Sidanco, Avisma and Volzhanka.[SUP][4][/SUP] Browder exposed management corruption and corporate malfeasance in these partly state-owned companies.[SUP][5][/SUP] He has been quoted as saying: "You had to become a shareholder activist if you didn't want everything stolen from you".[SUP][1][/SUP]
In 1995-2006 Hermitage Capital Management was one of the biggest foreign investors in Russia[SUP][6][/SUP] and Browder has amassed a significant fortune through his management of the Fund. In 2006 he earned an estimated £125-150 million.[SUP][7][/SUP] In 2007 he earned a further £125-£150 million.[SUP][8][/SUP]
In March 2013, the bank HSBC which is the trustee and manager of the Hermital Capital Management, announced that it would be ceasing the fund's operations in Russia. The decision was taken amid a libel court case in London and a trial in absentia for tax evasion in Moscow, both against Browder. [SUP][9][/SUP]
Conflict with the Russian legal system
In 2006, after ten years doing business in the country, he was blacklisted by the Russian government as a "threat to national security" and denied entry to the country. The Economist wrote that the Russian government blacklisted Browder because he interfered with the flow of money to "corrupt bureaucrats and their businessmen accomplices". Browder had been a supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin before, though.[SUP][10][/SUP]
As reported by the New York Times in 2008, "over the next two years several of his associates and lawyers, as well as their relatives, became victims of crimes, including severe beatings and robberies during which documents were taken". In June 2007 dozens of police officers "swooped down on the Moscow offices of Hermitage and its law firm, confiscating documents and computers. When a member of the firm protested that the search was illegal, he was beaten by officers and hospitalized for two weeks, said the firm's head, Jamison R. Firestone." Hermitage became "victim of what is known in Russia as "corporate raiding": seizing companies and other assets with the aid of corrupt law enforcement officials and judges". Three Hermitage holdings companies were seized on what the company's lawyers insist are bogus charges.[SUP][1][/SUP]
Since this time, Browder has continued to run Hermitage from offices in London. Hermitage has alleged that the raids in June 2007 were a pretext by corrupt law enforcement officers, to steal the corporate registration documents of three Hermitage holding companies, and reclaim the $230 million of taxes paid by those companies to the Russian state in 2006. In November 2008 one of his lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested on charges of tax evasion, which Browder claims were instigated as a retaliatory measure by the same officers Magnitsky had accused of involvement in the $230 million theft in sworn testimony.[SUP][11][/SUP] Magnitsky died on November 16, 2009, after eleven months in pre-trial detention.[SUP][12][/SUP] Opalesque.TV released a video on February 8, 2010 where Browder spoke about Sergey Magnitsky's ordeal during his eleven months in detention.[SUP][13][/SUP]
In February 2013, Russian officials announced that Browder and Magnitsky would both be put on trial for evading $16.8 million in taxes. Both men will be tried in absentia.[SUP][14][/SUP] Furthermore, as announced in March 2013, Russian authorities will be investigating Browder illegally obtaining Gazprom shares worth $70 million by his company Hermitage Capital. The investigation will be focusing on whether he violated any Russian laws when his fund, Hermitage Capital, used Russian companies registered in the region of Kalmykia which employed disabled veterans from the Soviet War in Afghanistan for tax break purposes[SUP][15][/SUP] to purchase shares in the gas monopoly between 2001 and 2004, gain a seat on the board, and to exercise influence over its decisions. At the time, according to the Russian law, foreigners were barred from directly owning Gazprom shares. Browder has also been charged with trying to gain access to Gazprom's financial reports.[SUP][16][/SUP]
Browder admitted seeking influence in Gazprom but denied any wrongdoing.[SUP][17][/SUP] In his view, purchasing Gazprom shares was an investment in the Russian economy, while the desire to influence the Gazprom management was driven by the need to expose a "huge fraud going on at the company". In the meantime, the scheme with Russian-registered subsidiaries entitled to tax advantages was practiced by other foreign investors at the time and was not illegal, according to him.[SUP][18][/SUP]
Browder also said that he believes the trial is in response to the United States passing the Magnitsky Act, which blacklists Russian officials involved in Magnitsky's death from entering the U.S. As claimed by The Financial Times, this trial is deemed to be the first in Russian history over a dead defendant.[SUP][19][/SUP]
Amnesty International described the trial as "a whole new chapter in Russia's worsening human rights record" and a "sinister attempt to deflect attention from those who committed the crimes he Magnitsky exposed."[SUP][20][/SUP]
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
