Hermitage Capital Management, the investment fund that employed lawyer
Sergei Magnitsky before he was beaten to death in a Russian prison in
2009, announced this week that it has filed criminal complaints in
eight foreign jurisdictions against the Russian government.
To demonstrate systemic fraud perpetrated by Russian officials, the
complaints filed by Hermitage Capital use evidence uncovered by
journalists at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
(OCCRP) and at the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. During two years
of investigation, those reporters tracked down $135 million of the
$230 million stolen from Hermitage Capital by the Russian government
in the form of fraudulent tax manipulations in 2006.
The money was traced through a complex laundering operation and found
to have ended up paying for multi-million dollar properties in Dubai
for Russian oligarchs and officials at a Moscow Tax Office.
Hermitage used those forensic records to file complaints in Austria,
Switzerland, Finland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and three Baltic republics.
The complaints alert officials to the stolen funds, ask for the
relevant accounts to be frozen, and request that criminal investigations
be opened.
It's too soon to tell whether these jurisdictions will do so, and the Russian government has not responded to the charges. But one Latvian bank implicated in the charges has said it will "check the facts," according to alocal media report.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament has made the first steps toward introducingvisa sanctions against the Russian officials believed to be involved in Magnitsky's death.