Former Russian Finance Minister Kudrin Tries to Explain Why $1 Billion Was Stolen
from the Russian Budget in Connection to the Magnitsky Murder on His Watch
and he Did Nothing
from Katie Fisher - 4.11.12 - JRL 2012-68

From: "Katie Fisher" <Katie.Fisher@hermitagefund.com>
Subject: Kudrin Tries to Explain Why $1 Billion Was Stolen from the Russian Budget
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012

file photoFormer Russian Finance Minister Kudrin Tries to Explain Why $1 Billion Was Stolen from the Russian Budget in Connection to the Magnitsky Murder on His Watch and he Did Nothing

11 April 2012 - In an extraordinary statement issued on his political website, former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin explained how it was not his fault that $1 billion was stolen from the Russian treasury on his watch between 2006 and 2010 through a corrupt scheme uncovered by Hermitage Fund's Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky (http://akudrin.ru/news/otvety-na-voprosy.html#.T4Szz3lJri8.twitter).

file photoIn his statement referring to the illegal approvals of tax refunds for millions of dollars, Mr. Kudrin said: "Employees of the Treasury cannot challenge the appropriateness of such a decision. Neither the leadership of the Treasury, nor, especially, the leadership of the Ministry of Finance interfere in this process."

This statement came in response to a series of 7 public questions to Kudrin from Andrei Illiarionov, an opposition politician, posted in his blog on 'Echo of Moscow' website (http://www.echo.msk.ru/blog/aillar/875912-echo/), challenging Alexei Kudrin after an independent investigation by a Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, uncovered that the same officers from the Federal Tax Service and the same organized criminals who were involved in the $230m theft that Sergei Magnitsky discovered, stole a further 11.4 billion Rubles in ($444 m) in 2009 and 2010. These thefts were in addition to another $240m that were stolen under the guise of "tax refunds" by the same group of officials and criminals in 2006 and 2007.

"It is remarkable that the man whose responsibility was to protect the finances of the Russian state could say that he shouldn't interfere when crimes were going on under his nose, in which $1 billion was stolen directly from the Russian treasury," said a Hermitage Capital representative.

Mr. Kudrin was also asked what he did when he learned about the theft of the $230m that Magnitsky discovered. He said: "I did not have this information in my possession then, but based on what I learned from the media reports at the time, I verbally asked the leadership of the Interior Ministry, if they were looking into it, and received an affirmative response? Neither the Ministry of Finance, nor I, at that time as Minister of Minister and Deputy P