"After we informed the Russian government in a complaint that 5.4 billion rubles had been embezzled from the state, the Russian police took care of the informers," said William Browder, head of Hermitage Capital Management.
Photo: Frank Villagra
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Search in Offices of Bank’s Lawyers
Hermitage Capital has issued press release on the searches in Moscow law offices that represent its interests and those of HSBC bank. The searches took place in the evening and night of August 20. The Corporate Consultation Bureau, the offices of Eduard Khairetdinov and Vladimir Pastukhov and the Firestone Duncan offices were searched. Letters of attorney and orders to act on the behalf the fund and bank were among the documents seized. Others included documents associated with other clients and tax and accounting statements for HSBC.
An unopened package just received by Khairetdinov was also seized. The sender indicated on the package was Alexander Strazhev, a fictitious person.
In May 2007, a criminal case was initiated by the Moscow police (GUVD) against OOO Kameya on tax charges. Kameya head Ivan Cherkasov, who also headed the Russian division of Hermitage, was charged in February 2008, but he had already fled to Great Britain. Charges under the same article of the Criminal Code were made against William Browder in Kalmykia. That case was dropped and then revived in February of this year. Investigators say Hermitage used Russian firms it controlled – OOO Rilend, Parfenon and Makhaon – to avoid taxes. Fund executives and lawyers say that law enforcement was acting in the interests of raiders and that they had done nothing illegal, paying 5.4 billion rubles in taxes in 2006.
Documents seized when the three firms were searched in 2007 fell into the hands of people Khairedtonov described as raiders, and new leaders took over at those companies. A St. Petersburg company, Logos Plus, filed suits worth a combined total of 30 billion rubles against the three companies for lost profits on an earlier deal and the new heads of the firms, Vyacheslav Khlebnikov (Rilend), Valery Kurochkin (Parfenon) and Viktor Markelov (Makhaon) paid the sums demanded. It later turned out that the head of Logos Plus, Alexander Strazhev, did not exist. The new heads of the firms applied for and received a refund of the 5.4 billion rubles Hermitage paid in taxes.
Last December, Hermitage and HSBC lawyers petitioned the Prosecutor General’s Office investigative committee to open a case against Markelov, Kurochkin and Khlebnikov for embezzlement. In February of this year, a case was initiated. In June, the Interior Minister of Tatarstan also initiated a case against the men.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 25, 2008
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