Word: taxing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, imprisoned on tax evasion charges, told Russian Interior Ministry investigators that he was being denied medical care and subjected to "inhumane and humiliating conditions" in Moscow's notorious Butyrka jail. The treatment, he said, resulted from his refusal to give false testimony against himself and others. A month later, Magnitsky, 37, was dead. The Interior Ministry, which had charged the lawyer with conspiring to help William Browder, head of the London-based investment firm Hermitage Capital, allegedly evade more than $3 million in taxes, said it had not been aware that he had been...
...renewed focus on an odious criminal practice that embodies what President Dmitry Medvedev describes as the "legal nihilism" pervading the country. It's known as reiderstvo, or "raiding," a term that describes an array of illegal tactics - including identity theft, forgery, bribery and physical intimidation - used by corrupt policemen, tax officials, lawyers and financiers to seize a person's business or property. (See pictures of Hillary Clinton in Russia...
...targeted in just such an attack two years ago and that Magnitsky was arrested in retaliation for going public with the scam. According to Magnitsky, the raid began in June 2007, when police burst into Hermitage's offices with warrants and seized company records, corporate seals and tax certificates, which were then used by corrupt government officials and other members of their criminal gang to take ownership of three Hermitage subsidiaries. Months later, the company claims that phony lawsuits were filed against the three firms, leading to several judgments against them. With the assistance of tax officials, Hermitage says...
...Interior Ministry has denied any ulterior motives in Magnitsky's detention, saying he was being held solely because of the tax evasion charges. (Browder says those charges were without merit.) In April, a Moscow court convicted a sawmill foreman, Viktor Markelov, of fraud in connection with the raider scam, sentencing him to five years in prison. The verdict mentions only "unidentified persons" as Markelov's co-conspirators and does not include any reference to the Hermitage subsidiaries being stolen. But the company says Markelov was likely just a bit player and notes the $230 million has yet to be returned...
...Then, on Dec. 15, came a sign that authorities may be cracking down on individuals suspected to be involved in the raid on Hermitage's assets. The Kremlin said that Medvedev had dismissed Anatoly Mikhalkin, the head of the tax crimes department of the Moscow police. Police spokeswoman Zhanna Ozhimina denied the move was linked to the Magnitsky case, saying that Mikhalkin had stepped down because of his age. But Hermitage says Mikhalkin may have been fired because he had signed off on documents used in the seizure of its subsidiaries. (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory...