OJSC "Yukos Oil Company" was an oil and gas company based in Moscow, Russia. Yukos was acquired from the Russian government by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Bank Menatep during the controversial "loans for shares" auctions of the mid 1990s. Between 1996 and 2003, Yukos became one of the biggest and most successful Russian companies, producing 20% of Russia's oil output. In the 2004 Fortune 500, Yukos was ranked as the 359th largest company in the world. In October 2003, Khodorkovsky—by then the richest person in Russia and 16th richest person in the world—was arrested, and the company was forcibly broken up for alleged unpaid taxes shortly after and declared bankrupt in August 2006. Courts in several countries later ruled that the real intent was to destroy Yukos and obtain its assets for the government, and act politically against Khodorkovsky. In 2014, the largest arbitration award in history, $50 billion (€37.2 billion), was won by Yukos' former owners against Russia. This $50 billion award by the Permanent Court of Arbitration was ruled invalid by the District court in The Hague in 2016, but reinstated by the Court of Appeal of the Hague in 2020.
Financial services are the economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, accountancy companies, consumer-finance companies, stock brokerages, investment funds, individual asset managers, and some government-sponsored enterprises.
Permal Group is a global investment management firm focused on hedge funds and private equity funds products for international investors. Permal, founded in 1973, operates one of the oldest fund of hedge funds and manages approximately $22 billion in assets. Clients include sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, family offices, private banks and high-net-worth individuals. Its CEO is Omar Kodmani and its Chairman is Isaac R. Souede. Permal is headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Boston, Singapore, Paris, Nassau, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Beijing.
Tiger Management Corp., also known as "The Tiger Fund", is an American hedge fund and family office founded by Julian Robertson. The fund began investing in 1980 and closed in March 2000/01. It continues to operate today in direct public equity investments and seeding new investment funds.
William Felix Browder is an American-born British financier and political activist. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, the investment advisor to the Hermitage Fund, which at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. The Hermitage Fund was founded in partnership with Republic National Bank, with $25 million in seed capital. The fund, and associated accounts, eventually grew to $4.5 billion of assets under management. In 1997, the Hermitage Fund was the best-performing fund in the world, up by 238%. The primary investment strategy of Browder was shareholder rights activism. Browder took on large Russian companies such as Gazprom, Surgutneftegaz, Unified Energy Systems, and Sidanco. In retaliation, on November 13, 2005, Browder was refused entry to Russia, deported to the UK, and declared a threat to Russian national security.
Global macro is an investment strategy based on the interpretation and prediction of large-scale events related to national economies, history, and international relations. The strategy typically employs forecasts and analysis of interest rate trends, international trade and payments, political changes, government policies, inter-government relations, and other broad systemic factors.
Andrei Lvovich Nekrasov is a Russian film and TV director from Saint Petersburg.
Ūkio Bankas was a Lithuanian commercial bank based in Kaunas. More than 50% of shares are owned by Lithuanian businessman Vladimir Romanov who therefore is in the control of the bank. It was the fifth largest and oldest private bank in Lithuania.
Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky was a Ukrainian-born Russian tax advisor responsible for exposing corruption and misconduct by Russian government officials while representing client Hermitage Capital Management. His arrest in 2008 and subsequent death after eleven months in police custody generated international attention and triggered both official and unofficial inquiries into allegations of fraud, theft and human rights violations in Russia. His posthumous trial was the first in the Russian Federation.
The Magnitsky Act, formally known as the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, is a bipartisan bill passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2012, intending to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009 and also to grant permanent normal trade relations status to Russia.
Vinay Nair is a serial entrepreneur and academic. He is involved as an advisor or board member in several companies in financial services, across investment management, venture capital and fintech. He is also involved in technology-enabled solutions that link Israel, India and the US. He is the founder and chairman of TIFIN, a platform to create and manage a portfolio of fintech brands and companies in areas of investments, wealth management and asset management, as well as founder and chairman of 55ip, a fintech firm with offices in Boston and Mumbai, India. Nair is also a visiting professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Jamison Reed Firestone is an American attorney. Firestone graduated from Tulane University in 1988 and Tulane Law School in 1991. In August 1991, shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union, he moved to Moscow, Russia and co-founded the law firm Firestone Duncan. He fled Russia in August 2009 following the arrest of his employee Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison, after eleven months' incarceration without trial.
Fusion GPS is a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C. The company conducts open-source investigations and provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as for political inquiries, such as opposition research. The "GPS" initialism is derived from "Global research, Political analysis, Strategic insight".
Natalia Vladimirovna Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer. Her clients include Pyotr Katsyv, an official in the state-owned Russian Railways, and his son Denis Katsyv, whom she defended against a money laundering charge in New York. On 8 January 2019, Veselnitskaya was indicted in the United States with obstruction of justice charges for allegedly having attempted to thwart the Justice Department investigation into the money laundering charges against Katsyv.
Rinat Rafkatovitch Akhmetshin is a Russian-American lobbyist and a former Soviet counterintelligence officer. Bill Browder alleges that Akhmetshin represents Russian intelligence interests. He came to American media spotlight in July 2017 as a registered lobbyist for an organization run by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, along with him, had a meeting with Donald Trump's election campaign officials in June 2016.
Denis Katsyv is a Ukrainian Russian and Israeli businessman based in Moscow and owner of Prevezon Holdings Limited. He was linked in a civil-assets case to money laundering through real estate investments in the United States, in violation of the Magnitsky Act of 2012; the case was settled in 2017 with the United States Justice Department by Prevezon agreeing to pay $5.9 million. "The Parties agree that the Complaints do not allege that any of the Defendants, Claimants, or Denis Katsyv, Alexander Litvak, or Timofey Krit, is responsible, directly or indirectly, for the arrest, detention, or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or that they have acted as an agent of, on behalf of or in agreement with a person in a matter relating to the arrest, detention, or death of Sergei Magnitsky."
The Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation (HRAGI) is a Washington, D.C.-based lobby group, nominally focused on restoring American adoption of Russian children. It is being investigated as part of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation. It is reportedly defunct.
The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is a 2016 documentary directed by Andrei Nekrasov, concerning the 2009 death in a Moscow prison cell, after 11 months in police custody, of 37-year-old Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky. In 2007, Magnitsky was hired by American-born British financier Bill Browder to investigate the government's seizure of three of Browder's Russian subsidiaries. Discovering evidence of embezzlement, Magnitsky implicated two senior police officers in a tax rebate scam that used shell corporations plundered from Browder's holdings to defraud the Russian treasury of $230 million. Subordinates of those officials then arrested Magnitsky and charged him with the very crime he had exposed.
Alexander Vasilyevich Prokopchuk is a Russian employee of the internal affairs agencies, head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation National Central Bureau of Interpol from 14 June 2011, and vice-president of Interpol from 10 November 2016.
Magnitsky legislation refers to laws providing for governmental sanctions against foreign individuals who have committed human rights abuses or been involved in significant corruption. They originated with the United States which passed the first Magnitsky legislation in 2012, following the execution of Sergei Magnitsky in Russia in 2009. Since then, a number of countries have passed similar legislation such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
