The AN asks the Prosecutor's Office if it should call the Russian Treasury as affected in the laundering of 35 million in Spain

MADRID, 21 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The judge of the National Court (AN) Ismael Moreno has asked the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor to rule on whether it is appropriate to cite the Russian Public Treasury as the injured party for the alleged laundering in Spain of 35 million euros from the Hermitage Capital Management fund .

This is stated in an order of the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 2, to which Europa Press has had access, in which a brief from the defense of one of the investigated parties is attached to the case and transfers the same to the Public Ministry like the rest of the parties so that they can pronounce themselves.

In that letter, sent by the lawyer Antonio Alberca and to which Europa Press has had access, it is explained that it is necessary to take a statement from the Russian Treasury as the injured party since the investigating judge himself indicated in a January 2023 order that the The cause of money laundering that he is investigating has its origin in a prior crime of fraud against the Russian Treasury.

In this sense, it includes part of Moreno's order in which he explained that the Tverskoi District Court, in Moscow, sentenced two low-level members of the 'KOCG' --Markelov and Khlebnikov-- for the fraudulent theft of 230 billion dollars from the Russian Treasury. And that this sentence came from sentences of April 2009 and March 2011 in which it was concluded that this amount was stolen "under the simulation of a tax refund."

Likewise, the lawyer points out that in the judgment of the Tverskoi Court it was explained that Markelov had committed fraud, "that is, the theft of a significant amount of money from the property of other people with premeditation by means of deception with a group of people , using his official position in the company." And he added that at the time of the fraud he was general director of the Parfenion Limited Liability Company and a member of the boards of the companies SRL Parfenion, SRL Majaón and SRL Rylands.

The sentence explained, according to the lawyer's brief, that Markelov used his official position to enter "in a criminal conspiracy" with unknown persons and, through deceit, organized the "illegal" return to the taxpayers SRL Parfenion, SRL Majaón and SRL Rylands "For the alleged overpayment of income taxes that they allegedly paid in 2006." With this ruse, says the lawyer, he stole money from the budget of the Russian Federation and the city of Moscow in the amount of 5,409 million rubles.

After this, the letter explains that given this background it follows that if there is a victim of the alleged crime of money laundering investigated in the National Court "of course it is the Treasury of the Russian Federation."

To this argument is added the version of the president of the Hermitage fund, Bill Browder, who in a book published in 2022 under the title 'Embargo Order' explained that in November 2005 Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that he was a threat to national security and expelled him from Russia.

"To protect my clients' assets, my team liquidated the fund's holdings in Russia. I also evacuated my team and their families, including our chief operating officer, Ivan Cherkasov, and our head of research, Vadin Kleinet, to London." recalls Browder in his book.

He adds that 18 months later his Moscow office was stormed by "dozens of Russian Interior Ministry officers led by a certain Lieutenant Colonel Artyom Kuznetsov" and that they "also stormed" his lawyer's Moscow office.

He pointed out that in that registry they took certified stamps of their investment companies that proved that they were their property and that "they were then delivered to Commander Pavel Karpov, also from the Ministry of the Interior." "While these items were in his custody, they were used to fraudulently re-register the ownership of our investment holdings in the name of a group of violent ex-convicts," he added.

In line, Browder pointed out that they verified that these criminals had used those "stolen" companies and their false claims to request a fraudulent tax refund of 230 million dollars. "It was the same amount of taxes that our companies had paid in 2006 after having liquidated our 'holdings' in Russia", he recalled.

And it says that that fraudulent refund request was approved in a single day, on Christmas Eve 2007, and the refund was paid two days later by transferring a large amount of money to a "shady Russian bank called Universal Saving Bank." ". "Overall, it was the largest return in the entire history of Russia," he noted, adding that while the Russian government did not have to care if a foreigner was defrauded, they should feel concerned about the theft of money from their own country.

The lawyer, who requests the appearance of Russia as the injured party in the procedure that is being followed in the National Court, also indicates that the Swiss Prosecutor's Office also understands that "it is the Russian tax authorities who are the injured parties." It contains a press release from the Swiss Public Ministry in which it is said that there were suspicions of acts of money laundering "allegedly committed in Switzerland between 2008 and 2010, as a result of a fraud committed in Russia to the detriment of the Russian tax authorities at the end of of 2007, which resulted in improper tax returns totaling the equivalent of US$230 million".

The note went on to state that these funds "had been laundered first in Russia and then in various other countries, and partly in Switzerland." And he pointed out that after reviewing the claimant status of the Hermitage fund, "during the course of the investigation (...) it came to the conclusion that it had not been possible to demonstrate that the funds investigated in Switzerland came from a crime committed to the detriment" of that portfolio.

In another letter from this lawyer, dated February 20 and to which Europa Press has also had access, it is requested that a rogatory letter be addressed to Russia to request a copy of a sentence of the Tverskoi Court in which the president of the fund was sentenced. Hermitage --Browder-- to 9 years in prison in a penal colony, and to the fund itself "for tax evasion of the taxes that make up the predicate offense of the alleged money laundering."

According to this lawyer, the sentence could clarify whether both Browder and Hermitage "are part of the organization that took the funds from the Russian Treasury and that they have allegedly tried to launder them, as well as the motivation and credibility of their complaint before the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office."

It considers that Browder's testimony before the investigating judge and the information and documents provided "have led to the civil death" of his client and the company Katerina Properties "by blocking all their bank accounts and properties and thus preventing them from operating in traffic mercantile and subsist".