March 23, 2020 – Knockout details about how Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky used transfer-pricing in sales of Yukos oil to cheat the Russian government and minority shareholders of massive amounts of money are found in this seemingly staid business-academic book by Mikhail Glazunov.
March 28, 2007
Russia, through its energy company Rosneft, has started to recover the multibillion-dollar oil company 
Yukos that was stolen from it in the mid-90s. It is buying the assets in auctions. Indignant protests are heard from westerners.
Funny there was no indignation from western officials when Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other oligarchs, with the help of crooked President Boris Yeltsin, were appropriating Russian national oil and mineral wealth for kopeks on the ruble.
A Khodorkovsky company ran an auction at which a Khodorkovsky shell company won Yukos, paying $309 million for a controlling 78 percent. Months later, Yukos traded on the Russian stock exchange at a market capitalization of $6 billion.
The Nation, Jan 22, 2020 – Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, MBK in his homeland, is the most famous Russian “oligarch,” the name given by their compatriots to a handful of men who, when communism fell, turned it into gangster capitalism. With an estimated $16 billion fortune, he became the richest man in Russia. When the rules changed, he didn‘t adapt and spent a decade in prison.
May 1, 2018 – Here is what you never read in the mainstream press about crooked Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now in the MSM again because he received hacked emails the NY Times uses to declare that Russian lawyer Nataliya Veselnitskaya colluded with the Russian prosecutor in the Browder/Magnitsky case. It’s how he stole his billions. Here is the interview on Fault Lines. https://www.pscp.tv/stranahan/1rmGPmXLjpZJN
Oct 6, 2014 – Mikhail Khodorkovsky is “doing” the U.S. He appeared on big-time celebrity TV and I saw him today at the Council on Foreign Relations. After some dicey years as a Russian “oligarch” (a euphemism for a corrupt guy who loots the Russian patrimony), he became a “reformer” and was jailed by Vladimir Putin, serving ten years for tax evasion and related crimes. (Other oligarchs did the same crimes, but they got a pass, because they didn‘t challenge Putin.)
Yes, he was targeted for political reasons, but what about what he actually did? Siphon profit out of his companies via offshore shell companies, thereby cheating minority shareholders and (via tax evasion) the Russian people. (details below). How does he deal with it?
Feb 5, 2011 – The final edit of a film about the jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a film to which I contributed, has been stolen from the offices of German director Cyril Tuschi. The documentary, Khodorkovsky, is to have its world premier at the Berlin International Film Festival Feb. 14. I did reporting for the film and also was video-interviewed for it. The film tells Khodorkovsky’s story from his youth to the build-up of his oil empire and his political challenge to then President Vladimir Putin. Putin had told the oligarchs, men who had stolen the Russian patrimony to build their wealth, that he wouldn’t bother them as long as they stayed out of politics. Khodorkovsky, however, sought to influence the Duma election. He was arrested in 2003 and then tried and jailed for tax evasion.
Dec 27, 2006
Who might have killed former Russian spy Litvinenko? Julia Svetlichnaya, a Russian living in London, told the press there that she had met Litvinenko and learned that he was collecting information about mega-rich Russian entrepreneurs to use for blackmail.
It has not been reported before that Litvinenko’s collaborator, Yevgeny Limarev, had visited Elena Collongues-Popova (shown here), a Russian woman in Paris, to seek information connecting ex-Yukos official Alexei Golubovich to bribery of the former president of Lithuania. And Svetlichnaya hasn’t told the press that she worked for the very same Golubovich.
In mid-May a Moscow court will issue a verdict in the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the figure behind Yukos Oil, who was once known as Russia’s richest man. Khodorkovsky, who a few years ago was worth more than $15 billion, is on trial for fraud and tax evasion, much of it made possible through the use of offshore shell companies.
Khodorkovsky has been in prison since 2003, when he was charged with embezzlement and for rigging a privatization auction of the petrochemical company, Apatit. Some critics argue that Khodorkovsky is being held up as a symbol of Russia’s ruling class of exorbitantly wealthy businessmen, and that his trial is politically motivated. Senator John McCain – in a recent statement before the Senate – likened the charges against the young oligarch to the overthrow of a government saying, a creeping coup against the forces of democracy and market capitalism in Russia is threatening the foundation of the U.S.-Russia relationship.
CorpWatch, May 10, 2005
In mid-May a Moscow court will issue a verdict in the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the figure behind Yukos Oil, who was once known as Russia’s richest man. Khodorkovsky, who a few years ago was worth more than $15 billion, is on trial for fraud and tax evasion, much of it made possible through the use of offshore shell companies.
Khodorkovsky has been in prison since 2003, when he was charged with embezzlement and for rigging a privatization auction of the petrochemical company, Apatit. Some critics argue that Khodorkovsky is being held up as a symbol of Russia’s ruling class of exorbitantly wealthy businessmen, and that his trial is politically motivated.
But Western corporations and, by extension, the Western media may in fact be equally motivated to obscure the facts and make Khodorkovsky into a capitalist martyr.
The Russia Journal, Nov 28, 2003
Two ex-bankers on Wednesday, Nov. 26, filed a criminal complaint with the Swiss attorney general against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, and Alexei Golubovich, accusing them of money laundering and support for a criminal organization.
The Russia Journal has obtained a copy of the report. The Journal asked Yukos press office to comment on the charge but no comments were received.
The former bankers have requested the federal officials in Switzerland to open an investigation into the charges and to search the records of the Swiss offices of Menatep SA, Menatep Finances SA and Valmet (in liquidation) and of Bank Leu related to investigate claims of fraud against the Russian company Avisma and money laundering by Menatep in Switzerland.
Feb 22, 2023 – How do you make a good propaganda film? How do you expose it before it wins a truth-telling award and embarrasses the prizegivers — before they discover it’s a propaganda pseudo-documentary that has been nominated for an “Oscar” – before the white envelopes are opened before millions of people on Oscar night, March 12th?
April 11, 2021 – A new Australian “light news” show, Channel 10’s The Project, broadcast a 29 March 2021 attack on the government for not passing legislation designed by a British fraudster to save his bloated bank account from Russian law enforcement. The Russians have evidence the fraudster stole hundreds of millions of dollars through evaded taxes, illicit stock buys and fraud against the Russian Treasury, but host Waleed Aly, with zero evidence, orchestrated a video aimed at getting public support for a bill the fraudster designed, which is a William Browder Protection Act.
Dec 15, 2019 -This is German news magazine Der Spiegel’s response to a complaint by William Browder to its editor and to the German Press Commission about its exposé that proved he was a fraudster and his Magnitsky story a fabrication. Key parts are marked in bold. The text and documents show the Spiegel story to be correct and Browder to be a charlatan.
Nov 4, 2019 – The network of lawyers in conflicting roles in Browder, Assange and U.S. government cases raises questions about Julian Assange‘s defense.
Sept 30, 2019 – Guest: Lucy Komisar. A deep dive into the story behind the “Magnitsky Hoax”. Lucy tells the story of Bill Browder, Hermitage (his hedge fund) and how he managed to create a massive political weapon called the Magnitsky Act to protect himself and his benefactors and to use against others. The story also involves shell companies, tax havens, money laundering, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Robert Maxwell, Gasprom, HSBC, Natalia Veselnitskya, the Trump Tower meeting, the resurgence of the Cold War with Russia, Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and more.
Nov 30, 2018 – This is an analysis of the worst William Browder acolyte article I have seen to date, by Marie Brenner, published by Vanity Fair, November 11, 2018. It eschews evidence and simply writes what Browder says as a stenographer would do. The full text is here. Below are the most egregious excerpts with my comments marked **. They are extensive, as the piece is replete with fakery.
Nov 2, 2018 – I spoke today on Fault Lines radio about how Mikhail Khodorkovsky and William Browder scammed Russian energy sector companies by Khodorhovsky getting control of Yukos oil through rigged auctions in the corrupt Yeltsin regime and then using transfer-pricing to cheat minority shareholders and Russian taxpayers and Browder buying shares in Russian energy conglomerate Gazprom through cutout companies to evade rules that banned purchases of its stock in Russia by foreigners.
May 6, 2018 – I just saw Mikhail Khodorkovsky‘s Wall Street Journal April 23, 2018 article How to Stop Vladimir Putin‘s Mafia. Among other things, he promotes the Magnitsky Act “to stop Putin‘s Mafia.” But now see how golden boy MBK made a deal with William Browder and colleagues Kenneth Dart (Dart Cups) and Francis Baker (Andersen Group) to sell them the Russian firm titanium Avisma complete with a transfer-pricing investor & tax-cheating scam.
Jan 15, 2015 – Anne Applebaum wrote an article about Putin’s Russia in the Dec. 18, 2014 issue of the New York Review of Books that was filled with distortions. When I saw NYRB editor Robert Silvers at a Dissent magazine party in New York Dec. 5th, I told him my opinion. He said to send him my comments. But then he declined to print those comments and said that he would run this editorial statement:
Lucy Komisar has written to us that she has a statement to make about the article by Anne Applebaum in our December 18, 2014 issue. This statement is available on her website, The Komisar Scoop. ” The Editors.
April 4, 2011 –
Sergey Ivanov, the Russian deputy prime minister, spoke at a Council on Foreign Relations lunch today. I asked if he thought the U.S. and Russia should get together to put a stop to offshore tax evasion. He smiled and agreed that the two countries need to deal with the international offshore system. That was something to consider in the future. And then he said, There are more than 1,000 banks in Russia. They are not banks but launderers.
Speech to conference on Taming the Giant Corporation, organized by Ralph Nader and The Center for Study of Responsive Law, Washington DC, June 8, 2007
The tax haven racket is the biggest scam in the world. It‘s run by the international banks with the cooperation of the world‘s financial powers for the benefit of corporations and the mega-rich. This talk is about strategy, but first you have to know the target, and most Americans, including progressive activist Americans, don‘t know what I‘m going to tell you. And that‘s part of the problem.
Between 1996 and 2000, of U.S. and multi-national corporations operating in the United States, with assets of at least $250 million or sales of at least $50 million, nearly two-thirds paid no U.S. income tax. Over 90 percent reported owing taxes of under 5 percent. One year, six in ten paid less than a million.
This is the dirty little secret of globalization: the end of controls on capital flows and the expansion of the tax haven system from 25 years ago to where it has more than doubled to about 70 tax havens.
The system is a major reason for the growing inequality in the U.S. and between the West and the developing worlds.
The system has given the big banks and corporations and the super-rich mountains of hidden cash they use to control our political systems.
Hound-Dogs, March 2004
(Same title but not same article as in Dissent 2003)
This is a story about a massive money-laundering operation run by the world‘s biggest banks. It hides behind the “eyes-glazing over” technicalities of the international financial system. But it could be one of the biggest illicit money-moving operations anyone has ever seen. And it‘s allowed to exist by the financial regulators who answer to Western governments.
In these days of global markets, individuals and companies may be buying stocks, bonds or derivatives from a seller who is Clearstreamhalfway across the world. Clearstream, based in Luxembourg, is one of two international clearinghouses that keep track of the “paperwork” for the transactions.
Dec 2003
Alexei Golubovich, longtime partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is the target of legal action in Switzerland by his former associate Yelena Collongues-Popova and is being investigated by a Geneva judge on her charge of forgery.
Golubovich has not been indicted by Russian prosecutors, though they are interested in talking to the former Yukos finance director who has reportedly fled to London. However, he could be indicted by the Swiss.
Collongues-Popova, who for half a dozen years ran some 30 offshore companies for Golubovich, got a court order in Switzerland that froze $4.2 million she says represents loans he owes a company she owns. Swiss investigative magistrate, Claude Wenger, is looking into her criminal complaint that Golubovich forged her signature to avoid paying the loans.
The Russia Journal, Nov 5, 2003
The charges against key shareholders in Yukos are enormous and very varied in scope. The Yukos tale is a long, complex and controversial one, requiring lengthy and painstaking substantiation. Public interest in the Yukos controversy is very high.
However charges and counter charges, mostly of a political nature, are being flung so wildly about in the media that The Russia Journal believes it essential at this stage to focus on the evidence in the accusations against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partners. His innocence of the charges that have been filed against him must be presumed until a competent trial is held.
Those who support his innocence of the charges are invited to review and comment on this, the first in a Russia Journal series on the case against him and others in Menatep Group.
Nov 2003
A business group headed by Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was arrested in October for allegedly defrauding the state of $1 billion, stashed money in offshore centers, including Switzerland, Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands, the Seychelles, Panama and the Bahamas, according to Yelena Collongues-Popova, who worked for one of Khodorkovsky‘s associates. Lucy Komisar, a New York investigative reporter, interviewed Collongues- Popova. This is her story.
PARIS — A French woman of Russian origin, with thousands of papers related to the Menatep business group and its offshore banking and dealings over the past decade, has been providing information to Russian prosecutors who are building a case against oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia, who was arrested in October for tax evasion.
She says she set up numerous offshore companies and bank accounts in the Caribbean and Europe to help the Menatep group cheat Russian company shareholders and tax authorities. Her registered agent in the Caribbean was Icaza Gonzalez Ruiz and Aleman in the British Virgin Islands and Bahamas, against which she now has a legal action. She says she used Bank Leu (Bahamas), a subsidiary of Bank Leu, Geneva, to deposit funds in fiduciary accounts to have the benefit of withholding tax exemptions.
