Sergei Magnitsky
Want to know what happens in Russia if you challenge the authorities then read Bill Browder’s book Red Notice.
Bill Browder started a Hedge fund, Hermitage Capital Management to take advantage of the wild east of Russia’s public asset carve up after Yelstin then Putin took over from Gorbachev. Unfortunately his fund’s wealth became the target some shadowy corrupt Russian government figures.
Mr Browder was prevented from entering Russia in 2005 and escaped with his life unfortunately his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky paid with his in November 2009. goodreads summary of the book:
Russian authorities said Mr Magnitsky died of a heart attack but then these photos appeared showing he had been tortured & beaten:
Mr Browder led a public campaign in the US and other western capitals to put the spotlight on what happened resulting in President Obama signing into law the Magnitsky Act in 2012. The act names and restricts 44 Russian officials from entering the US, plus, more importantly, using the US banking system to access/transfer their wealth.
Where did those stolen funds get money laundered?
Well as we will show below out of the $230m stolen, $102m were transferred through Ukio Bankas, Lithuania & Rietumu Banka, Latvia, banks connected with two well known major Scottish football team owners: Vladimir Romanov of Hearts FC and Dermot Desmond of Celtic FC.
I wonder what Mr Browder, a UK resident who lives in London, would say when he finds out that two Scottish major football team owners who maintained their ‘Fit and Proper’ status via the SFA had major ownerships in two of the banks that helped funnel overseas the Hermitage Capital Management’s taxes stolen in Russia while his lawyer languished in prison under torture then death?
Mr Browder’s contact details: Twitter @BillBrowder Email: book@billbrowder.com
Ukio Bankas/Romanov
The OCCRP (Organised Crime and Corruption Report Project) team of reporters covers Eastern European corruption. In 2013, when Ukio Bankas was going down the tubes with UBIG, Hmm.. same time as Heart of Midlothian PLC which was funded by Ukios. The Lithuanian bank was accused of aiding the transfer of some of the funds stolen from Russian authority figures related to the Magnitsky case. Unfortunately the Lithuanian prosecutor suspended their investigation. Then in 2015 when the Panama Papers surfaced last year, Hermitage (Bill Browder) demanded that the case be re-activated. This was reported by the OCCRP on 26 July 2016:
So Hearts bankers/funders, Ukios, and parent UBIG controlled by Vladimir Romanov were money laundering for Russians, while Mr Romanov was running Hearts through Ukios Bank funding.
Rietumu Bank/Desmond
We’ve seen in a previous post, Dermot Desmond’s 33.11% share holding (& his position on The Council of Rietumu Banka, ie. the board) in Rietumu Bank, Latvia from 2005 and that bank’s fines for money laundering in Latvia and their latest €80m fine for tax evasion by the French authorities. Well guess which Latvian bank was involved in laundering some of the Magnitsky funds? Rietumu Banka.
London lawyers, Brown Rudnick, on behalf of Mr Browder, sent a complaint in 30 July 2012 to Latvian regulators & police with their evidence that $19m of the Hermitage funds were moved through six Latvian banks. The lawyers tried to freeze the illicit funds:
One of the six Latvian banks was Rietumu Banka:
The Brown Rudnick document shows that $2.1m went to Rietumu Banka and accounts of entities in Panama and the Seycelles. Bottom LHS flow.
As can be seen that happened in 2007-2008 when both bank shareholders were involved when they controlled their Scottish teams, Hearts and Celtic.
Thus in the same week when Scottish Limited Partnerships were exposed as the conduits to funnel billions of funds in what has been called the ‘Azerbaijani Laundromat’ another connection has been established with Scottish involvement in money laundering.
Scottish football appears to tainted by ownership of two major football teams in 2008, Hearts and Celtic, also being deeply connected in ownership with these money laundering complicit banks.
Maybe Mr Browder can ask the SFA/SPFL why under their ‘Sporting Integrity’ rules why two of their teams owners had/have interests in banks used to launder his stolen Hermitage funds?
Or are the SFA/SPFL run like the mafia where omerta, a code of silence, reigns?
©footballtaxhavens.wordpress.com 2017 
footballtaxhavens 
Discussion
No comments yet.