The Wall Street Connection
When reporters followed the money, the path was clear -- a Moldovan ghost company was used to transfer funds stolen from the Russian tax authority to an international real estate company named Prevezon.
When reporters followed the money, the path was clear -- a Moldovan ghost company was used to transfer funds stolen from the Russian tax authority to an international real estate company named Prevezon.
In the winter of 2008, more than US$52 million poured through the bank accounts of two ghost companies based in Moldova. These companies were conduits for money that a ring of Russian state officials and organized crime figures stole through a complex tax fraud scheme.
As Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky slowly died in a Russian prison from abuse and neglect, US$230 million (5.4 billion Russian Rubles) in taxes stolen from his client disappeared into a maze of phantom companies, crooked banks and offshore accounts.
Exactly two years after his death in a dank, frigid, rat-infested cell, Sergei Magnitsky has become a byword for the byzantine world of state-sanctioned corruption, money laundering and violence endemic in some of Russia’s political and economic elites.