It describes as “fictitious” the sentence of a Russian court that condemned the investor William Browder
MADRID, 19 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has indicated that it is not opposed to the release of a letter rogatory to Russia to obtain the sentence of the Moscow Tverskoy District Court for which the president of Hermitage Capital Management LTD, William Browder, was sentenced, but warns that the They consider a “fictitious” resolution and warn that the Russian administration participated in the fraud of the 230 million dollars that is at the origin of the ‘Magnitsky case’.
This is stated in the Anti-Corruption report, to which Europa Press has had access, which indicates that this sentence -which is requested at the request of one of the investigated- “is part of the fraud mechanism that ended with the murder of Sergey Magnitsky”, the Russian lawyer hired by Browder and who, after discovering the criminal plot, was arrested and ended up dying in a cell at the age of 36.
In this case, which is being dealt with by the head of the Central Investigating Court number 2, Ismael Moreno, the laundering in Spain of at least 35 million euros from those 230 million dollars that were stolen from the Public Treasury of Russia through a scam in 2007. In this plot, dubbed the ‘Magnitsky case’, officials of the Government of Vladimir Putin were allegedly involved.
Now, after receiving the report from the prosecutors in the case, Moreno has issued an order, to which Europa Press has also had access, in which he agrees to issue this request to the competent authorities of the Russian Federation to facilitate this sentence. and explain if it is firm. It should be remembered that the sentence sentenced Browder to nine years in prison in a penal colony for tax evasion.
The magistrate warns that this request for international judicial cooperation must be sent through the Ministry of Justice with the formal requirements established in the European Convention on Judicial Assistance in Criminal Matters of April 20, 1959 of which Spain and the Russian Federation are part.
Despite the suspicion that the Prosecutor’s Office has that this Russian sentence is part of the gear that allowed the fraud, in their letter they do not oppose requesting it because the procedure “is consistent with the need for defense” of the person investigated who requested it.
According to the first Anti-Corruption brief, for which Moreno opened the case, the case dates back to 2017, when businessman Bill Browder, from Hermitage Capital, denounced in Spain the alleged money laundering from the 230 million dollars that the Treasury Russian had to return to his companies in 2007 and that he was defrauded by a criminal organization with ramifications in the Russian administration.
Precisely, Hermitage Capital investigated this matter on its own when the reimbursement of the funds began to be delayed and hired Magnitsky. The lawyer ended up revealing that the Police had fraudulently confiscated documentation from three Russian subsidiaries of the company and their ownership had been impersonated so that a criminal organization, the KOCG, could collect that money.
Since then, international condemnation through and with a law, the ‘Magnitsky Global Act’, approved in his honor in the United States to combat corruption and violations of Human Rights, numerous jurisdictions from different countries are on the trail of the destination of the money, that has been traveling since 2008 through shell companies and accounts in countries such as Estonia, Latvia or Ukraine until ending up, as would be the case, in Spanish banks.
The Prosecutor’s Office detailed a list of transfers in its complaint and requested that all the recipients that appear be called to testify to the National Court as being investigated for alleged crimes of criminal organization and continued money laundering.
In this way, Spain was added to the list of countries that are investigating the KOCG and its international money-laundering network for having been recipients of funds of illicit origin. Congress has already ruled on this matter, with a non-legislative proposal in line with the international condemnation that Magnitsky’s assassination aroused.
