1 June 2016 – Hermitage Capital Management has filed a criminal complaint with the Estonian General Prosecutor seeking an investigation of funds received by an Estonian company, Transgroup Invest AS, which was 50% owned by Maxim Liksutov, who is currently deputy Mayor of Moscow.
In 2012, Transgroup Invest AS received US$336,153 from Zibar Management Inc, an offshore company registered in BVI and used by the Klyuev Organized Crime Group to launder proceeds from the US$230 million fraud uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky.
The funds were wired to Transgroup Invest AS from account of Zibar Management Inc with Cypriot branch of FBME, which had its licence revoked by the Central Bank in December 2015.
Zibar Management‘s nominal director, British citizen, Andrew Moray Stuart, served as director of hundreds other companies, including 214 BVI companies, 36 UK companies, 43 Irish and 4 New Zealand companies. While the company was dormant in BVI, it wired from its Cypriot account hundred thousands of dollars, including over $300,000 to Maxim Liksutov’s company in Estonia.
According to investigation of Panama Papers by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and Russian Novaya Gazeta, Maxim Liksutov had a 50% share in Transgroup Invest, registered in Estonia prior to becoming deputy mayor of Moscow. Several months after the receipt of funds from Zibar Management, Maxim Liksutov transferred his share in Transgroup Invest to his wife, Tatiana, who he soon divorced.
Maxim Liksutov was ranked 157 in the Forbes Russia rich list in 2013, with an estimated fortune of $650 million. In the Moscow City government, Maxim Liksutov is in charge of transportation.
Previously, it was reported that a son of the Transportation Minister and Vice Premier of the Moscow Region Denis Katsyv is facing Swiss and US money laundering investigations into his Cypriot company, Prevezon Holdings, which is alleged to have received proceeds of the US$230 million fraud. His father Petr Katsyv, currently Vice President of Russian state monopoly, Russian Railways, was ranked 65 in the Forbes list of Russia’s richest officials.
A cellist Sergei Roldugin, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, was recently identified as
yet another recipient of funds connected to the US$230 million fraud into his corporate Swiss account, according to “Panama Papers” investigation.
Sergei Magnitsky, Hermitage’s lawyer who uncovered the US$230 million fraud and testified about the complicity of Russian officials in it, was falsely arrested, detained for 358 days without trial, tortured and killed in Russian police custody at the age of 37.
The unprecedented events of this case are described in the New-York Times best-seller “Red Notice. How I Became Putin’s No 1 Enemy” by William Browder, leader of the global Magnitsky justice movement, and in a series of justice campaign videos on Youtube channel “Russian Untouchables.”
For more information, please contact:
Justice for Sergei Magnitsky
+44 207 440 1777
e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org
