The Swiss authorities will return $37 million to businessman Dmitry Klyuev, $8 million to businessman Denis Katsyv, and will also return more than half of the frozen funds to Olga Stepanova and her husband, who were previously members of the leadership of the Moscow tax inspectorate, this is another $5.5 million, follows from the decision court, which foreign journalists got acquainted with.
This decision contrasts with the original accusation – the Swiss prosecutor’s office took on the case of money laundering through tax fraud, which was investigated by the auditor Sergei Magnitsky. The charges were initially against “unidentified persons”. As a result, the case slowly but surely fell apart. However, the amounts of money that are not comparable to the earnings of ordinary modest tax officials came from somewhere?
However, if the Swiss prosecutor’s office did not find anything, then the local court will not change anything. He can only settle legal formalities, points out the lawyer, managing partner of K&P.Group Igor Ozersky:
“Foreign courts have the right to seize and freeze funds for interim measures. The next question is what is the basis for unfreezing these assets. The investigation went on for ten years, only in 2021 it was completed. The crime has not been established. Thus, the grounds for further freezing disappeared. There is no such procedure that the criminal case is completed and everything is automatically defrosted. This happens through the will of the parties. That is, you need to go to court and ask the court to remove this arrest. Here, it’s not that the court should or should not have checked where the money came from, it doesn’t even have such competence. As part of the criminal case, no particular factors were established – and then this is a purely procedural issue. And now this news has caused a certain resonance, because these are returns against the backdrop of political events. It looks like a bit of a contrast.”
The Swiss authorities have said that the Magnitsky investigation is finally completed, only in 2021. The statute of limitations has passed – ten years have passed. The problems of the Hermitage Capital fund, the founder of the fund, Bill Browder, and his statements that Swiss banks were an important channel for money laundering for corrupt officials from Russia were somehow forgotten. And the decision of the Swiss authorities to return the frozen funds, of course, looks unusual due to the political situation – as opposed to the pan-European anti-Russian agenda.
And here, ironically, foreign journalists note that sanctions have already been imposed on a number of defendants in the Magnitsky case. This means that they most likely will not see the unfrozen money, Eduard Savulyak, director of the Moscow office of Tax Consulting UK, believes:
“If sanctions have already been imposed on these individuals in other cases, then, I am afraid, these assets have been released only in this case and it will be problematic to use them. Most likely, as part of the later sanctions, they will be blocked again. But no sanctions were imposed. The opportunity to dispose of such assets has now appeared. Again, given that Switzerland does not exchange information with Russia, which is on the black list, it will be difficult to do something with these assets now. You can take them out only to Russia without violating the currency legislation. Switzerland does not work directly with Russia in terms of money transfers. And it will also be problematic to transfer to another place. They can only look at their assets electronically.”
Last spring, Bill Browder accused the new Swiss attorney general of turning a blind eye to his predecessor’s alleged blunders. “He intends to return the money to Russia. This literally says everything about the situation in Switzerland,” said Browder. However, he does not leave hope for a new investigation on the old subject. And there, who knows, maybe defrosted, but stuck money will be frozen again.