Alexander Perepilichnyy and the FinCEN files
In another great piece of reporting by the OCCRP (https://www.occrp.org/en/the-fincen-files/prevezon-holdings-the-black-money-collector) Prevezon Holdings is brought back into the limelight.
Obsessives with long memories (people like me) will recall that, soon after being made President, Donald Trump sacked Preet Bharara (then US Attorney for the Southern District of New York) and soon after the case against Prevezon (which alleged it was a conduit for some of the “Magnitsky” money) was settled out of court with no admission of guilt.
This became of even more interest when it emerged that one of the Russian lawyers employed by Prevezon to have the case removed, was none other than Natalya Veselnitskaya, famous (or infamous) for her attendance at the notorious “Trump Tower” meeting with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and the now convicted Paul Manafort.
But there is one element, highlighted by the below graphic, taken from the OCCRP account, which has been under-reported.
It concerns two of the companies mention there.
Firstly, Baikonur Worldwide Ltd.
Back in August 2005, The Ukraine Opportunity Trust plc incorporated at Companies House (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/05537892). One of the original directors was Mr Perepilichnyy. Helpfully, I have managed to track down a copy of the prospectus (https://www.preqveca.ru/placements/memorandum/download/54/) which was issued to accompany the incorporation. It lists Mr Perepilichnyy’s existing directorships.
Here they are:
As we can see, Mr Perepilichnyy himself discloses his directorship of Baikonur.
But there is much more about the prospectus that is interesting. For a start, it was issued by United Financial Group via its Cyprus subsidiary U.F.G.I.S. Trading Limited. Deutsche Bank Moscow acquired a 40% stake in UFG in 2004, subsequently buying the remainder in 2008 (https://www.db.com/russia/en/content/765.htm). It was this which formed the equity desk at DB which got embroiled in the mirror trading scandal.
One of the main conduits of the mirror trades was a firm called IC Financial Bridge, which was owned, at least in part, by Mr Perepilichnyy (https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/deutsche-bank-mirror-trades-and-more-russian-threads).
Returning to the OCCRP graphic, we see that the preceding entity to Baikonur in the payment chain was a company called Quartell Trading Ltd. This is another company which, according to Perepilichnyy’s Wikipedia page, referencing an article on CNN - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Perepilichny#cite_note-4) was also a Perepilichnyy company.
Leaked copies of Quartell’s bank statements can be found online (https://www.reportingproject.net/proxy/jdownloads/Following%20the%20Magnitsky%20Money/p30.pdf) along with a second – redacted – set (https://www.russian-untouchables.com/rus/docs/D253.pdf) which reveal payments to Quartell, Arivust (see graphic) and to PF Realty, another one of Mr Perepilichnyy’s companies identified above.
Mr Perepilichnyy, of course, sadly died at the age of 44 while out for a run near his Weybridge home, a refuge he had sought after turning whistleblower and providing a trove of documents to Swiss prosecutors relating to the Magnitsky affair.