So the terrible secret has finally been revealed. For a long time I kept racking my brain: why, why on earth did the full power of Putin’s Russia rise up to defend this pathetic bunch of crooks: some Olga Stepanova and her colleagues from Tax Inspectorate No. 29, some insignificant police officers like Artyom Kuznetsov, Pavel Karpov, and so on.
They were obviously crooks, and it was all documented.
A reminder of the basic outline of the Magnitsky case: employees of Tax Inspectorate No. 29 ran schemes involving refunds of allegedly overpaid corporate profit tax and VAT. They submitted fake documents and “refunded” billions from the state budget on that basis. For these schemes they used several companies seized from the Hermitage Fund during police raids (you can’t get billions reimbursed through a complete shell).
Sergei Magnitsky was the auditor for these companies. He uncovered the illegal “refund” scheme, after which he was arrested and tortured to death in prison.
And it was completely unclear why anyone was defending these women from the tax service at all. They were so openly buying villas in Dubai
apartments in luxury developments with interiors like these
and houses on Rublyovka (an elite, wealthy area outside Moscow) that everything about them was obvious. You’d think they could have been taken down for show. Supposedly as proof of fighting corruption. The ratings would have gone up.
Instead, this whole riffraff was defended at the very highest level with fanatical zeal. There were no investigations into Stepanova and Co., despite their sudden and glaring wealth.
Now it’s clear why. One very famous Vladimir was feeding off the tax schemes Stepanova was running too.
Today brought a new installment in the story of Putin’s “wallet,” the cellist Roldugin. A couple of months ago, an investigation like this might have been the sensation of the month, but today, unfortunately, few people pay attention to such things. And in fact, these things are very important.
OCCRP analyzed another batch of documents concerning the offshore company of the world’s richest musician, Sergei Roldugin—who just happens to be Putin’s best friend and his daughter’s godfather. The list of those who “gave Roldugin money for musical instruments” has grown. And this time it’s not businessmen like Karimov and Mordashov, whom I wrote about. The people transferring money into the “Putin wallet” were figures from the “Magnitsky case.” And not just the same people—the very same money.
Nearly $1 million out of the stolen $230 million was paid to a company wholly owned by Putin’s best friend.
The scheme is laid out in detail here:
In short, it can be described like this:
That’s it—the end of the scheme.
The money was in the Russian state treasury, and then it ended up in an offshore account belonging to Putin’s best friend.
The article even includes the agreement for the purchase of shares between two offshore companies.
Now let’s recall a few important points.
Putin personally confirmed the authenticity of the “Panama Papers” during his annual televised Q&A. At the same time, he said that he was “very proud of his friendship with Roldugin.”
Next: according to the official Russian version, the money was stolen from the budget not by corrupt officials like Karpov, Kuznetsov, and the Stepanovs, but personally by Browder and Magnitsky.
And more recently, according to a Rossiya 1 television investigation about “Agent Freedom,” Browder is simultaneously an agent of the CIA and MI6.
Put all that together and you get the wildly convoluted plot of a cheap spy movie. Browder, an American-British spy who stole tax money from the Russian treasury, for some reason shares the “loot” with the president’s best friend. And then, without anyone noticing a thing, he secretly buys up shares in the state oil company Rosneft under cover of night.
That can’t possibly be true, can it? Which leaves only one conclusion. The thieves from the tax service and the Interior Ministry, who stole $230 million from the Russian budget and spent it on apartments in Moscow and Dubai, expensive cars, and country houses, were also transferring part of the stolen money to the offshore companies of “Putin’s wallet.”
In return, they enjoyed complete immunity and security guarantees.
That’s how it is.
The statements contained in the video “Russian Untouchables 3. Olga Stepanova. (The Untouchables Caste)” alleging that: “Pavel Aleksandrovich Karpov, personally or with the assistance of others, took part in the torture and murder of auditor S.L. Magnitsky in order to conceal his involvement in fraud against the Hermitage Fund”; “Pavel Aleksandrovich Karpov participated in fraud and stole US$230 million from the Russian treasury, laundering the stolen funds through the purchase of movable and immovable property, including an apartment worth about US$1 million”; “Pavel Aleksandrovich Karpov participated in the abduction of F.M. Mikheev for the purpose of extorting money and later, in order to conceal this fact, fabricated a criminal case against him and helped secure a sentence of lengthy imprisonment” were found to be untrue by a ruling of the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow dated March 10, 2015.