Top secretive firm dogged by allegations of money laundering and ‘fake’ documents – finances exposed

catalog of disputes

Over the years, British companies set up by the IOS have appeared in a series of sophisticated money laundering schemes. Loginex Projects LLP was named in a civil fraud verdict in London against Mukhtar Ablyazov, a Kazakh dissident and businessman accused of embezzling $5 billion from Kazakh bank BTA Bank in 2010, an allegation Ablyazov has denied.

Four other UK shell companies set up by IOS – Castlefront LLP, Everfront Sales LLP, Jackwell LLP and Unitronic LLP – played key roles in laundering the proceeds of an alleged $230m Russian tax refund fraud, revealed by lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

When Magnitsky claimed that the fraud was carried out with the help of corrupt police officers, he was imprisoned without charge for about a year and pressured to withdraw the charges. A few days before his release, Magnitsky was found beaten and dead in his cell.

In 2020, former Magnitsky chief Bill Browder, an investment fund manager turned anti-corruption activist, told the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee that $3 billion in suspicious transactions had flowed through bank accounts belonging to four British firms, including That. money from the deceased’s lawyer exposed the alleged tax fraud.

Meanwhile, the financial statements of companies presented by IOS clients at the Companies House showed minimal business activity. “These suspicious transactions have been reported but no action has been taken by UK regulatory and law enforcement authorities,” Browder told MPs.

Elsewhere, journalists from the OCCRP, the Danish newspaper Berlingske and other media uncovered larger laundry operations dubbed the Russian Laundromat, the Troika Laundromat, and the Azerbaijan Laundromat. Each of these schemes involved anonymous British companies created by the IOS.

One of the companies set up by the IOS that was linked to both the Troika Laundromat transactions and the tax fraud uncovered by Magnitsky was called Roberta Transit LLP. According to the OCCRP report, this unnamed British company also helped funnel money into a deal to buy a stake in the Russian gas company Rosneft, which was secretly owned by Russian cellist and lifelong friend of President Vladimir Putin Segui Roldugin. No regulatory or law enforcement action followed.

There is no indication that IOS or any of its directors or officers have ever been accused of, involved in, or known of wrongdoing in connection with any of these companies that created it.

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