We solved the Magnitsky case. How billions left Russia. Schemes, names, banks

By going to a grocery store or a cafe to drink a cup of coffee, we, without realizing it, are fulfilling our responsibilities within the framework of a social contract with the state, allowing us to withdraw part of the amount we paid for goods into the budget. This part is called Value Added Tax (VAT), the burden of which ultimately falls on us, the consumers. The duty of the state within the framework of the social contract is to spend this money on our protection, health, pensions... However, an investigation by Novaya Gazeta showed: every month, billions of taxes are stolen from Russian citizens - our money, transferring them to shell companies under the guise of VAT refunds. This is done by the same security officials and tax officials whom lawyer Sergei Magnitsky accused of stealing 5.4 billion rubles from the budget in 2007. We'll tell you how it's done.

What is behind the Magnitsky case?

No matter how much publicity the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for the Hermitage Capital Management fund who was killed in a pre-trial detention center in 2009, received, it is still underestimated. If the whole matter was only about 5.4 billion rubles stolen from the budget, as Magnitsky spoke about, naming the names of specific defendants, then, probably, a couple of such characters would have long been presented to the public as switchmen. Moreover, the long “Magnitsky list” is full of candidates suitable for this role - from ordinary law enforcement officers to mid-level tax officials. However, so far not a single minor official involved in the theft has been punished. This suggests that there is something more behind the Magnitsky case than a one-time fraud. An objective investigation of this crime can lead to shocking conclusions: for example, the existence of a constant practice of siphoning tens of billions of rubles in taxes from the budget for the personal needs of senior officials. That practice, which has already received the code name “parallel corruption budget” of Russia.

In our today's investigation we will try to understand how this shadow budget is formed. Novaya Gazeta managed to obtain a list of all companies that refunded VAT from 2009 to 2010 in Moscow. The list includes tens of thousands of companies that reimbursed taxes in all inspections of the capital. For several months, we searched this list for returns of over 100 million rubles to companies with signs of being one-day companies. And this is what we managed to find.

Fictitious companies - real billions

On February 26, 2009 (at that time Magnitsky was already in a pre-trial detention center, and a few months before that he gave detailed testimony with names and positions), officials of the 28th Tax Inspectorate (the same one from where most of the 5.4 billion rubles were stolen, which Magnitsky wrote about from prison more than once) decided to refund VAT to the company Aurora LLC for 500 million rubles. Just a few days later, on March 3, 2009, all papers in this regard were received by the Federal Treasury. And the very next day (!), March 4, 2009, the Treasury transferred 500 million rubles from the budget to the account of Aurora LLC in Benifit Bank CJSC ( we will return to this bank later ).

A few months after the first refund, on May 28, 2009, the same 28th Tax Inspectorate decided to issue another VAT refund to the Aurora company - for 503 million rubles. The very next day (!), May 29, 2009, this conclusion was received by the Federal Treasury. And three days later, on June 1, 2009, 503 million rubles from the budget were transferred to the account of Aurora LLC in the same Benefit Bank.

“VAT refunds are always a big problem for the inspectorate. We have a plan for collecting taxes for a quarter, for six months, for a year... Unforeseen refunds can disrupt this plan, and then the inspector’s official will lose his bonus,” says the former head of one of the Moscow tax inspectorates. According to her, tax authorities always prefer to delay the VAT refund process for several months, even if the company has all the legal grounds to demand a refund. “It happens before, but for this the company must be well-known and registered with the inspectorate for several years.”

The chairman of the bar association “Your Legal Attorney”, Konstantin Trapaidze, agrees with her (lawyers from his board defended some tax workers accused of illegal tax refunds). According to him, the tax office, as a rule, “prefers to refuse companies on formal grounds, and then the company goes to court.” We are talking about budget money, and the taxman, like any official, tries “to drag out this matter for as long as possible, precisely because there may be many questions about it later.”

Let's see what the company Aurora LLC was like, which returned more than 1 billion rubles of VAT from the 28th Tax Inspectorate over several months of 2009.

Aurora LLC was registered in 2006. The founder and director at the time of registration was Andrey Kalinin from Northern Chertanov. We have at our disposal several decisions of arbitration courts in which Kalinin is mentioned as a mass founder of companies with signs of one-day companies. Novaya Gazeta was unable to contact him.

After some time, Kalinin was replaced as director of the company by Pavel Pestryakov from the village of Zavolzhsky, Pugachevsky district, Saratov region. It was Pestryakov, a resident of a distant village, who was the director of the Moscow company at the time when it received more than 1 billion rubles from the budget. Novaya Gazeta was also unable to contact Pestryakov.

However, he did not remain director for long. On January 26, 2010 (six months after the company received more than 1 billion rubles from the budget), Yulia Gorskaya ( about her - see help ) from the distant village of Melekshino, Ryazan region, became the new director of Aurora LLC. On the same day that Gorskaya became director, Aurora changed its legal address and moved to the city of Tver: Belyakovsky Lane, 46, office 33a .

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Gorskaya Yulia Gennadievna (maiden name - Baeva) has already become a legendary figure among tax authorities, operatives and investigators.

Hundreds of fictitious companies are registered in her name and have appeared in a variety of fraudulent schemes. She was the “founder” of companies that received contracts from the state-owned Transneft for the construction of the ESPO pipeline system, according to documents published by Alexei Navalny. She was also involved in fictitious companies that participated in the supply of fuel to Moscow airports, which made it possible to inflate the cost of jet fuel and evade taxes. Five companies were registered in her name, which refunded VAT in 2009-2010 from the 28th Inspectorate for a total amount of 3.5 billion rubles. On the forum of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs it is said about her: “A certain Gorskaya, to whom most transferred money, is a drunk. She lived in Moscow, now she sold her apartment and moved into the depths of the Ryazan region to a house in the village. What will you exact from her?”

The existence of the company in Tver did not last long: in May 2010 it was reorganized, merged with a number of legal entities, ultimately forming a new company - StroyProgress LLC with an address in Yaroslavl: Ushinsky Street, 8.

On July 22, 2009, the same 28th Tax Inspectorate decided to refund VAT to Apiteks LLC in the amount of 500 million rubles. On the same day (!) this conclusion was received by the Federal Treasury, which the very next day (!!!), July 23, 2009, transferred half a billion rubles from the budget to the company’s account in the same Benifit Bank.

Less than a week has passed since the same 28th Tax Inspectorate made another decision to refund VAT to the Apiteks company for 502 million rubles. Within two days, money from the budget went to the company’s account at Benifit Bank CJSC.

Apiteks was registered in 2004. Novaya Gazeta managed to contact the former director, who headed the company from 2004 to 2009. He is a real person, and not a figurehead ( at his request, we do not mention his last name ). According to him, the Apiteks company was bought in 2004 “to conduct construction activities, but in reality it turned out to be unnecessary, there was practically no turnover on it.” In February 2009 ( that is, several months before the VAT refund ), 100% of the shares “were sold to a certain Mr. Sarafanov.” As the former director of Apiteks says, he did not know Sarafanov, but simply sold him a ready-made company with zero turnover for 10 thousand rubles. “I learned from law enforcement agencies that someone is trying to recover VAT for trading operations allegedly carried out during the period of my directorship. Naturally, before the sale of the company, Apiteks LLC did not carry out any contracts or trading operations,” says the former director of the company. According to him, documents on trade transactions, which became the basis for the reimbursement of more than 1 billion rubles from the budget, were forged and signed retroactively.

After VAT reimbursement, in February 2010, Apiteks LLC changed its legal address and moved to the city of Tver, to the same Belyakovsky Lane, to the same building 46, to the same office 33a , where a month earlier Aurora LLC “moved”, which also reimbursed more than 1 billion rubles from the 28th inspection. Moreover, on the same day that Apiteks LLC changed its legal address, the same Yulia Gorskaya from the village of Melekshino became the new director of the company.

The existence of Apiteks LLC in Tver also did not last long: in June 2010, the company ceased to exist - it was reorganized and merged with a number of legal entities into a new company, Novy Mir LLC, with an address in Yaroslavl: Nekrasova Street, 24.

During June-September 2009, the same 28th Tax Inspectorate made two decisions to reimburse Vikant LLC for 840 million rubles in VAT. Money from the budget was transferred to the company's account at Russobank. Let's see how well this company meets the criteria of a bona fide organization and what grounds it had for reimbursement of a huge amount from the budget.

The founder of Vikant LLC at the time of registration and VAT refund was Pavel Akulov from Moscow. Novaya Gazeta called Akulov’s home phone, where we were informed that he, unfortunately, died a year and a half ago. At the same time, Akulov is still listed as the owner of Vikant LLC, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, to whom officials of the 28th Tax Inspectorate “returned” more than 800 million rubles from the budget. Russobank, where the money from the budget went, also did not comment on the situation.

After Vikant LLC received money from the budget, the company was reorganized and merged with a number of legal entities into Continental LLC from the urban-type settlement of Verkhnedneprovsky, Smolensk region.

On December 25, 2009, the same 28th Tax Inspectorate decided to refund VAT to the company BusinessConsult LLC in the amount of 509 million rubles. By this time, Magnitsky was already dead, and tax officials, who, according to investigators, were simply misled, continued to work in the 28th inspectorate. Let's see who misled them this time...

At the time of the reimbursement of half a billion rubles, the director of the company was Alexander Gimmerov from Moscow. Novaya Gazeta managed to contact him. Gimmerov told us that he was not the real director of this company. According to him, in 2009 he saw an advertisement that a certain law firm (he does not remember the name) needed employees. When he joined the firm, he was informed that he would act as a nominee director of various legal entities. “All this happened within three hours. They didn’t let me in; they gave me all the documents to sign at the door. Then they were immediately taken to a notary for certification, and from the notary to the tax office to register companies.” Gimmerov was paid from one to one and a half thousand rubles for each company. He knows nothing more about their activities and has not signed any financial documents.

After BusinessConsult LLC received the money, the company changed its legal address and moved to the same city of Tver, to the same Belyakovsky Lane, 46, office 33a . The existence of this company in Tver did not last long. In May 2010, 10 days after the “move,” the company was reorganized and merged with several other legal entities into Svet LLC with a familiar address: Yaroslavl, Nekrasova Street, 24.

On April 13, 2010, the 25th Tax Inspectorate decided to refund VAT to Tekhtorg LLC in the amount of 489 million rubles. Within a week, the Federal Treasury transferred this amount from the budget to the company’s account at Russobank. In April 2010, by the time of the compensation, it was already known that US Senator Ben Cardin was preparing a blacklist of officials involved in the murder of Magnitsky and the theft of 5.4 billion rubles. This list also included Elena Khimina, the head of the 25th Tax Inspectorate, from which part of 5.4 billion rubles was stolen in 2007. According to the official investigation, Khimina was also misled by scammers. Let's see how much more cautious Elena Khimina became in April 2010.

The Tekhtorg company was founded in September 2009. Its founder at the time of registration, VAT refund and to this day, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, is Yulia Zagornova from Moscow. Novaya Gazeta managed to contact her. “I have never worked as a founder or general director anywhere. About two years ago, my friend and I were sitting at McDonald’s and talking about how there was no work. Some man came up to us ( apparently he heard our conversation ), introduced himself as Andrei and offered to earn extra money. So I became a courier-registrar,” says Zagornova. According to her, this man called her from a hidden number, they met, she signed documents, then they were certified by a notary, after which Zagornova took them to the tax office, where she established a company in her name. The inspectorate gave her a receipt, she gave it to Andrey and received in return 1 thousand rubles for each company. “Some colonel from the authorities already came to me about all these companies registered in my name. He advised me to write an application to the tax office so that these companies would be excluded. That's what I did. I didn’t know that such frauds exist.”

We have provided only five examples of VAT refunds. In total, we found about 20 similar companies that refunded VAT in 2009-2010 for more than 11 billion rubles ( see table ). At the same time, let us remind you: we examined only cases of compensation over 100 million rubles; If we add to our list companies that returned taxes in smaller amounts, the total amount will be much higher. All these companies are united by common characteristics: they were registered with front persons, as a rule, from villages or remote towns of Russia; after compensation, the companies changed their legal address and moved to another constituent entity of Russia ( these addresses often coincide ); after the move, they were all liquidated, merging with other legal entities to confuse their tracks. All these refunds were made from the 28th and 25th tax inspectorates. From these same inspections, 5.4 billion rubles were stolen in 2007, as reported by Sergei Magnitsky, who was later killed in a pre-trial detention center.

Everyone knew about it

The former head of the department for the prevention of corruption and other offenses of the Federal Tax Service of Russia, Sergei Vasilenko, says that he knows almost all the companies listed in our table. Back in 2010, he informed his immediate superiors in his memos ( available to Novaya Gazeta ), which began with the following words: “The situation that has developed in the Federal Tax Service of Russia in Moscow is clearly criminal in nature. Most companies that have applied for a VAT refund use various schemes, which they implement with the help of banks (transferring money to the accounts of counterparties) and tax officials (fictitious control measures).” According to Vasilenko, the leadership of the Federal Tax Service did not react to his appeals, and he was soon forced to resign.

Vasilenko says that all these companies refunded VAT according to the so-called “inventory balance” scheme. “If a company bought some product and did not manage to sell it during the reporting period, then it has the right to refund the VAT included in the cost of the product it purchased.” Vasilenko’s words are confirmed by the balance sheets of the companies we studied: almost all of them during the reporting period had huge reserves (worth billions of rubles) of finished products and goods for resale. However, Vasilenko is confident that these firms could not conduct any real economic activity. “Their staff number was two or three people, and their turnover during the reporting period reached several billion rubles. And only during the reporting period, the one that is necessary for VAT reimbursement.” According to Vasilenko, all these companies allegedly rented the same warehouse; the presence of this warehouse was checked by the same employee of the Tax Crimes Department (TCD) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; after billions from the budget arrived in the accounts of these companies, they moved to the same tax office in Tver.

“We checked what happened to these companies in Tver. They did not rent any warehouses there, and did not provide any contracts for the transportation of their goods. This means that either they sold their goods and then must return the money to the budget, or no goods existed in nature,” says Sergei Vasilenko.

Gennady Shantin, a former senior investigator for particularly important cases at the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who once investigated crimes related to VAT refunds, says that investigating such cases is not very difficult. “If we are talking about fictitious organizations, then the falsity of the contracts is proven. That's all." According to him, any tax specialist can easily determine the fictitiousness of a company that has submitted an application for a VAT refund. “It’s easy to get through. They have a program. Let’s say that some company “Volos” submits an application for compensation, and this company is registered in the name of Mr. Petrenko, who lives somewhere in Tyumen, and 350 more similar companies are registered in his name. Any normal tax official, seeing this, will say: “No, guys, get out of here.” Well, whoever is interested will say: “I didn’t know, I didn’t notice,” says Shantin. He believes that “the possibility of corruption crimes would be reduced significantly if there was a real fight against fictitious companies. That’s what they exist for: to evade taxes and cash out money, and this is the breeding ground for corruption itself.”

Benefit-bank

The main bank in Sergei Magnitsky’s investigation into the theft of 5.4 billion rubles was the Universal Savings Bank (UBS), to which Dmitry Klyuev, previously convicted of attempting to steal shares of the Mikhailovsky Mining and Processing Plant, was directly related. All the money stolen from the budget in 2007 went to the UBS. In 2008, the bank was liquidated.

If you look at our table, you will see that the current “leader” in the list of banks to which billions were transferred from the budget as VAT refunds is Benifit Bank CJSC. Of the 11 billion rubles that left the budget in 2009-2010, 5.5 billion went to the accounts of companies in Benifit Bank. Novaya Gazeta found that the liquidated UBS and the existing Benifit Bank have a lot in common, which suggests that both banks, in whose accounts fixed assets that were withdrawn from the budget were accumulated, belong to the same people.

Firstly, both UBS and Benifit Bank had a single branch in Makhachkala ( Dagestan occupies one of the leading places among other Russian regions in cashing out money ), which was located at the same address and which was headed by the same person - Magomed Alibekov.

Secondly, the head of UBS at one time was Shamil Mutaev, who is currently a shareholder of Benifit Bank.

Thirdly, the chief accountant of Benifit Bank, according to its website, is Olga Khasanova. In the case of the attempted theft of shares of the Mikhailovsky GOK, there is her testimony: she admits that since 2002 she worked in various companies owned by Dmitry Klyuev. In 2004, Olga Khasanova moved to UBS to the position of head of the financial control department.

“The fact that, despite the huge scandal that broke out after Magnitsky’s death, the same criminal group continued to steal billions of rubles from the Russian budget under the guise of tax refunds for several years, leaves no stone unturned from all the lies that law enforcement agencies are spreading today about Sergei Magnitsky,” says a representative of the Hermitage Capital fund. In his opinion, Magnitsky “revealed one of the most secret sources of financing corruption in the highest echelons of power, and it was for this that he was killed.”

Benifit Bank did not answer questions from Novaya Gazeta about what relation Dmitry Klyuev has to the bank and why exactly this bank discussed companies to which billions of rubles were transferred from the budget.

Proposal to the President-Elect

Novaya Gazeta listed all the cases of VAT refunds we discovered in its request to the Federal Tax Service. The Federal Tax Service answered us: “In August-September 2010, an unscheduled thematic inspection on VAT refunds was carried out in relation to a number of capital inspections, according to the results of which, in particular, the head of the 28th inspection O.G. Stepanova was given a disciplinary sanction in the form of a warning about incomplete job performance. The documents prepared based on the results of this audit on November 13, 2010 were transferred by the Federal Tax Service to the Department of Economic Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Based on the results of the consideration of materials dated December 08, 2010, a criminal case was initiated against unidentified persons for committing fraudulent actions when recovering VAT from the Federal Tax Service Inspectorate 28 in Moscow.”

Also, a representative of the Federal Tax Service of Russia told Novaya Gazeta that “at present, the Moscow Federal Tax Service has taken a number of measures aimed at strengthening control over VAT reimbursement from the budget by territorial inspectorates of Moscow.” According to the reporting submitted to Novaya Gazeta, until 2010, the volume of VAT refunds was constantly growing, however, after Mikhail Mishustin joined the Federal Tax Service, judging by the schedule, the volume of VAT refunds decreased in 2011 by 9% ( by 11 billion rubles in monetary terms ), and VAT receipts increased by 23% ( by 109 billion rubles in monetary terms ).

Some of the materials of the criminal case referred to by the Federal Tax Service of Russia are at the disposal of Novaya Gazeta. From these materials it is clear: the investigation of the criminal case is being sluggish, several investigators have changed over the past two years, the case has been transferred from one department to another, and unidentified persons from the tax inspectorates who stole tens of billions of rubles from Russian taxpayers have still not been identified.

Although, it would seem, everyone responsible for VAT refunds has long been known. The former head of the 28th Tax Inspectorate, Olga Stepanova, together with three of her subordinates ( all of their signatures were on the decision to reimburse 5.4 billion rubles in the Magnitsky case ) in 2010 went to work at Rosoboronpostavka to her former boss Nadezhda Sinikova, who headed the Federal Tax Service in Moscow from 2004 to 2010. Now former tax officials, from whose departments tens of billions of rubles in taxes went, are in charge of the defense order ( the amount of funding is 20 trillion rubles ).

...At the end of last year, Vladimir Putin announced the need for a “decisive tax maneuver” that would direct fiscal policy towards solving the problems of the country’s industrial development. In this regard, Novaya Gazeta has a proposal to the elected President of Russia. If all cases of illegal tax refunds stolen from Russian citizens are objectively investigated, then the need for a “tax maneuver” may disappear by itself. At least, if you set the goal of returning to the treasury at least the money that we wrote about in this investigation, then there will be enough for several million Russians to retire. And how many lives can be saved...