American minority shareholders against Mrs. Kjodorkovsky, Shakhnovsky, Lebedev, and Mizamor. Stephen Curtis is a key figure of the global net of money laundering. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on August 10, 2004.
On this very day 19 years ago, on August 10, 2004, it became known that from the part of the small shareholders several claims were filed to court against the management of Yukos. The claims were addressed not only to the corporation but also personally to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, Vasiliy Shakhnovsky, and Boris Mizamor. As reported, until a certain date, determined by the initiators, the possibility to join these claims had all American shareholders of the Oil Company Yukos who bought them in the period from February 13 to October 25, 2003.
The newspaper ‘Kommersant' in its article entitled 'Yukos inundated with claims from all parts of America' counted nine such identical claims and divided this flow into three groups.
‘The first group – claims filed by three law firms (Lerach Coughlin Stoia & Robbins, Scott+Scott and Michael A. Swick) during the period from July 2 to July 6. The plaintiff for which all these three firms work is the offshore company Roxwell Holdings. The text of the claim of all these three law firms is identical. The plaintiff accuses Yukos, Yukos Universal, and Menatep of failure to submit information pertaining to the existence of tax claims to Yukos from the part of the Russian authorities, and the top managers of Yukos are accused of inflicting damage to Yukos by way of tax evasion in the capacity of physical persons.
The plaintiff also accuses of lying the auditor, the company PriceaterhouseCoopers, as well as the head of the American affiliate of Yukos Scott Ziegler and the British Company Curtis&Co connected with the Group Menatep, the main shareholder of Yukos. The plaintiff of this group makes personally responsible only Mrs. Khodorkovsky, Shakhnosaky, Lebedev, and Mizamor.
The second group – claims of the companies’ Murray, Frank & Sailer and Schiffrin & Barrows. They were files on behalf of physical person Roda Krause, lawyer and resident of the town Harrisonburg. The demands in these claims were identical to the claims of the first group.
And, finally, the third group of the court claims similar by implication with the previous, were initiated by the firms ‘Brodsky & Smith’, ‘Schwartz & Nobel’, ‘Charles J.Priven’ and GBG – all of these being similar.
‘It is highly likely’, reported the newspaper ‘Kommersant, 'that all nine claims in court were initiated by one and the same person, who was avoiding publicity. A suspicion arose that the company Yukos itself could be related to this serial filing of claims. ‘I do not exclude that the minority shareholders before filing their claims had consultations with that company,’ said Robert Ible, head of the Energy and National Security programs of the Kennedy Center of strategic research.
‘In fact, the claims filed are of advantage for Yukos,’ pointed out the newspaper without further explanations but emphasized that the Oil Company Yukos had calmly perceived these events.
(Judicial proceedings with regard to serial claims dragged on for years. It appears that the minority shareholders didn’t achieved any considerable victory).
‘The Financial Times’ hinted that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were interested in the death of Stephen Curtis
However, instead of commentaries, in the Western press, in particular in The Times, emerged the name of Stephen Curtis who died in an air crash in the spring of 2004.
‘The name of Stephen Curtis appeared in the claim filed by a group of American investors maintaining that they had lost up to 1 billion US dollars on account of the collapse of the Russian oil giant Yukos. In that claim, Curtis is accused of administering the creation of a great number of offshore companies that, supposedly, were part of the 'tax dodging and money laundering' schemes of Yukos. As the newspaper pointed out, 'the American lawyers who were carrying out a detailed investigation of Curtis's deals in Britain, Russia, on the Man Island and in Gibraltar insisted that he had been the key figure of the world net of money laundering and tax evasion which crippled Yukos.’
(See also 'The death of a Brit who directed tax-dodging.' American lawyers consider Stephen Curtis to be the key figure behind the tax-dodging schemes that crippled the Russian oil giant Yukos, 'The Times', James Doran and Daniel McGrory, 09.08.2004).
‘Stephen Curtis was ‘the corporate manager’ who had organized a lot of offshore structures which were part of the tax dodging and money laundering schemes describe in the claim.’ According to Darren Robins, of the lawyers who deal with the case filed July 27 by the investors of Roxwell Holdings, Curtis was not simply a hired lawyer. 'It becomes apparent from the accusations that he was in the center of the supposed abuses’, said Robbins speaking with a correspondent of the newspaper ‘The Times’.
Naturally, it was decided, at the suggestion of the fugitive oligarchs and picked up British activists, to find the ‘Kremlin’s hand’ in the death of Stephen Curtis. However, a detailed investigation of the newspaper ‘The Financial Times’ mildly hinted that the death of one of the key constructors of the offshore schemes for the Khodorkovsky's imperium, broke the threads that could have lead the investigation to the discovery of numerous mysteries connected with the money of Khodorkovsky and, above all, of his British friends.
(See the investigation ‘Before the collapse’, Thomas Catan, The Financial Times, Great Britain, 17.05.2004; https://inosmi.ru/inrussia/20040517/209649.html)
He was introduced to a curator in the criminal intelligence
According to ‘The Financial times’, Curtis addressed the British Intelligence in the months prior to the catastrophe and proposed to it information regarding the illegal activities of Russian businessmen in Great Britain. Several days prior to his death, he was presented to his curator from the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) which gathers information on organized criminality in the country. ‘It seems to me that representative of the British intelligence, that he feared prosecution from the Russian authorities as he was an accomplice in the illegal withdrawal of capital; perhaps, he thought that the British authorities will somehow protect him,’ said this representative of the British Intelligence, and the website Prigovor.ru. reminds its reads of that.
(See also the previous story: ‘Mortal numbers of Amsterdam’, ‘The defendant of the Yukos case can die in the following months. How the lawyer and the press were ‘burying’ Platon Lebedev. The website Prigovor.ru reminds us of what happened on August 9, 2004.
On this very day 17 years ago, on August 10, 2004, it became known that from the part of the small shareholders several claims were filed to court against the management of Yukos. The claims were addressed not only to the corporation but also personally to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, Vasiliy Shakhnovsky, and Boris Mizamor. As reported, until a certain date, determined by the initiators, the possibility to join these claims had all American shareholders of the Oil Company Yukos who bought them in the period from February 13 to October 25, 2003.
The newspaper ‘Kommersant' in its article entitled 'Yukos inundated with claims from all parts of America' counted nine such identical claims and divided this flow into three groups.
‘The first group – claims filed by three law firms (Lerach Coughlin Stoia & Robbins, Scott+Scott and Michael A. Swick) during the period from July 2 to July 6. The plaintiff for which all these three firms work is the offshore company Roxwell Holdings. The text of the claim of all these three law firms is identical. The plaintiff accuses Yukos, Yukos Universal, and Menatep of failure to submit information pertaining to the existence of tax claims to Yukos from the part of the Russian authorities, and the top managers of Yukos are accused of inflicting damage to Yukos by way of tax evasion in the capacity of physical persons.
The plaintiff also accuses of lying the auditor, the company PriceaterhouseCoopers, as well as the head of the American affiliate of Yukos Scott Ziegler and the British Company Curtis&Co connected with the Group Menatep, the main shareholder of Yukos. The plaintiff of this group makes personally responsible only Mrs. Khodorkovsky, Shakhnosaky, Lebedev, and Mizamor.
The second group – claims of the companies’ Murray, Frank & Sailer and Schiffrin & Barrows. They were files on behalf of physical person Roda Krause, lawyer and resident of the town Harrisonburg. The demands in these claims were identical to the claims of the first group.
And, finally, the third group of the court claims similar by implication with the previous, were initiated by the firms ‘Brodsky & Smith’, ‘Schwartz & Nobel’, ‘Charles J.Priven’ and GBG – all of these being similar.
‘It is highly likely’, reported the newspaper ‘Kommersant, 'that all nine claims in court were initiated by one and the same person, who was avoiding publicity. A suspicion arose that the company Yukos itself could be related to this serial filing of claims. ‘I do not exclude that the minority shareholders before filing their claims had consultations with that company,’ said Robert Ible, head of the Energy and National Security programs of the Kennedy Center of strategic research.
‘In fact, the claims filed are of advantage for Yukos,’ pointed out the newspaper without further explanations but emphasized that the Oil Company Yukos had calmly perceived these events.
(Judicial proceedings with regard to serial claims dragged on for years. It appears that the minority shareholders didn’t achieved any considerable victory).
‘The Financial Times’ hinted that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were interested in the death of Stephen Curtis
However, instead of commentaries, in the Western press, in particular in The Times, emerged the name of Stephen Curtis who died in an air crash in the spring of 2004.
‘The name of Stephen Curtis appeared in the claim filed by a group of American investors maintaining that they had lost up to 1 billion US dollars on account of the collapse of the Russian oil giant Yukos. In that claim, Curtis is accused of administering the creation of a great number of offshore companies that, supposedly, were part of the 'tax dodging and money laundering' schemes of Yukos. As the newspaper pointed out, 'the American lawyers who were carrying out a detailed investigation of Curtis's deals in Britain, Russia, on the Man Island and in Gibraltar insisted that he had been the key figure of the world net of money laundering and tax evasion which crippled Yukos.’
(See also 'The death of a Brit who directed tax-dodging.' American lawyers consider Stephen Curtis to be the key figure behind the tax-dodging schemes that crippled the Russian oil giant Yukos, 'The Times', James Doran and Daniel McGrory, 09.08.2004).
‘Stephen Curtis was ‘the corporate manager’ who had organized a lot of offshore structures which were part of the tax dodging and money laundering schemes describe in the claim.’ According to Darren Robins, of the lawyers who deal with the case filed July 27 by the investors of Roxwell Holdings, Curtis was not simply a hired lawyer. 'It becomes apparent from the accusations that he was in the center of the supposed abuses’, said Robbins speaking with a correspondent of the newspaper ‘The Times’.
Naturally, it was decided, at the suggestion of the fugitive oligarchs and picked up British activists, to find the ‘Kremlin’s hand’ in the death of Stephen Curtis. However, a detailed investigation of the newspaper ‘The Financial Times’ mildly hinted that the death of one of the key constructors of the offshore schemes for the Khodorkovsky's imperium, broke the threads that could have lead the investigation to the discovery of numerous mysteries connected with the money of Khodorkovsky and, above all, of his British friends.
(See the investigation ‘Before the collapse’, Thomas Catan, The Financial Times, Great Britain, 17.05.2004; https://inosmi.ru/inrussia/20040517/209649.html)
He was introduced to a curator in the criminal intelligence
According to ‘The Financial times’, Curtis addressed the British Intelligence in the months prior to the catastrophe and proposed to it information regarding the illegal activities of Russian businessmen in Great Britain. Several days prior to his death, he was presented to his curator from the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) which gathers information on organized criminality in the country. ‘It seems to me that representative of the British intelligence, that he feared prosecution from the Russian authorities as he was an accomplice in the illegal withdrawal of capital; perhaps, he thought that the British authorities will somehow protect him,’ said this representative of the British Intelligence, and the website Prigovor.ru. reminds its reads of that.
(See also the previous story: ‘Mortal numbers of Amsterdam’, ‘The defendant of the Yukos case can die in the following months. How the lawyer and the press were ‘burying’ Platon Lebedev. The website Prigovor.ru reminds us of what happened on August 9, 2004.
