Russia puts Hermitage's Browder on intl wanted list - Interior Ministry
MOSCOW. July 25 (Interfax) - The Russian Federation has put Hermitage Capital co-founder and CEO William Browder on the international wanted list, the Russian Interior Ministry told Interfax.
The Russian national bureau of Interpol, acting in line with an order by the Prosecutor General's Office, has forwarded a request to the Interpol Secretariat General to declare Browder, born in 1964, internationally wanted, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said.
"He has been accused of committing a grave crime covered by Russian Criminal Code Article 159 Part 4 (large-scale fraud)," he said.
Browder has been accused of "illegally acquiring over 131 million Gazprom shares at the domestic market price for over 2 billion rubles" in 1999-2004, he said.
"At that time, the Russian law stipulated that foreigners wishing to buy these shares were required to receive a sanction by the Federal Securities Market Commission and the government or buy so-called American Depositary Receipts on foreign stock exchanges, where the price was radically higher," he said.
To conduct these illegal transactions, Browder set up a number of companies in Kalmykia, after which he and a number of unidentified individuals opened accounts with Gazprombank's Depositary Center. After that, acting on behalf of companies affiliated with him, Browder filed an application for buying Gazprom shares, concealing the fact that the authorized capital of these companies was almost completely foreign.
"By pursuing these illegal activities, the accused concluded at least 30 transactions to buy Gazprom's shares, inflicting damage of at least 2.9 billion rubles on Russia," he said.
Moscow's Tverskoi Court ruled on July 11, 2013 to find Browder and Hermitage Capital auditor Sergei Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion amounting to over 522 million rubles through falsification of tax declarations and unlawful application for tax breaks granted to the disabled. Browder was tried in absentia, as he refused to appear before Russian investigative bodies, and the United Kingdom refused to extradite him.
The case against Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow pre-trial detention facility on November 16, 2009, had earlier been closed but was later reopened based on a Constitutional Court judgment to the effect that the closure of the case was unconstitutional and violated the presumption of innocence principle. The Constitutional Court ruled that cases must be reopened at the demand of the defendants' representatives. Attorneys for Magnitsky's mother protested the reopening of the case, arguing that this was not done at their request.
However, Moscow's Ostankinsky Court ruled on April 3, 2013 that the reopening of the criminal case against Magnitsky was legal.
