January 18, 2016
The mind-boggling case currently making its way through U.S. District Court in Manhattan centers on money, power, and strange plot twists. The most eye-opening particulars of the case, however, aren’t even officially on the docket: an audacious $230 million tax-fraud scheme, allegedly carried out with the complicity of Russian government officials, followed by the posthumous conviction of а whistle-blowing tax auditor and the trial in absentia of a crusading British-American financier.
According to filings, U.S. investigators have traced those funds through banks and shell companies in Moldova and elsewhere back to the 2007 scheme that involved shell companies filing sham lawsuits in Russian courts, then using court judgments to claim tax refunds in Russia.