The fact that big politics is only a definite, and perhaps even far from the first, derivative of the global economy is a fact that today can be confidently taken as the basis of reality.
There are enough examples in history of how the most ambitious tasks of not only local, but also planetary geopolitics are achieved with the help of money supply management tools. In this material, let us imagine a separate story with a single person, whose name over the past few years has become something of a household name: for some, into a symbol of fraud of impressive proportions, for others, into a symbol of the arbitrariness of power. This name is Sergei Magnitsky. And although they say that it is either good or nothing about the deceased, obtaining information about the personality of this person and, especially, about the type of his activities on the territory of our country clearly does not hurt. All the more it does not hurt, considering that the vast majority of people who use the name of Sergei Magnitsky as a kind of icon of the struggle for democracy, and are one hundredth of a part unaware of what exactly Sergei himself and the company he represented in Russia were doing. …
However, you will have to start not with Sergei Leonidovich himself, but with people from several other areas of flight.
Year 1998.17 August. The Russian Government is forced to declare a technical default on all major types of securities and to expand the so-called currency corridor. The upper bar of the corridor was designated as 9, 5 rubles for one US dollar. However, the ruble did not want to remain in its corridor and after 1, 5 months it was at the level of 16 units per dollar. The economic situation in 1998 can be called no less severe shock for the domestic economy than what happened during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A few days before the announcement of a technical default by Moscow, the management of the International Monetary Fund decides to urgently issue the Russian Federation with another "salvage" loan in the amount of 4.8 billion dollars. The money was debited from the account of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, but due to some super-mysterious circumstances they did not come to the Russian treasury to rectify the situation, but to the Republic National Bank. Subsequently, the FBI, in which they became interested in why the money did not help Russia at least for some time to stay afloat in 1998 and avoid a severe crisis, conducted an investigation and even established the account number to which billions of dollars were received. This number is 608555800, and the RNB bank itself belonged to one of the most influential financial magnates of the nineties - Mr. Edmond Safra. At the same time, the billionaire himself with a Brazilian passport decided to cooperate with agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and presented the entire criminal scheme for money laundering, which was implemented through his bank by representatives of the Russian economic and political elites. Safra, who was trying with all his might to announce that his bank was the first to encounter such fraud (I want to believe it, - author's note), began to give very loud testimony, which made some people in Russia seriously jittery. In particular, the billionaire Safra announced that after the money intended to save the Russian economy entered one of the accounts in his bank, they began to be diverted in various shares to other banks (by no means Russian), where the money was cashed.
Safra himself claimed that employees of the Russian Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation were involved in the laundering of that same $ 4, 8 billion. Obviously, the American billionaire was not even going to consider himself involved in this grandiose financial carousel.
Be that as it may, the FBI considered that Safra's statements had good reason to remove all suspicions from the banker himself and to direct their views to Russia. After his exhaustive testimony, the billionaire calmed down and went to his estate in Monaco to catch his breath and, if possible, plunge into the azure waters of the Mediterranean Sea. However, it did not work out for a long time to enjoy the rest with Edmond Safra. On December 3, 1999, Safra died unexpectedly. More precisely, they obviously helped him die … Of course! As they say, with that kind of money, clean, and, in addition, alive … Well, no, someone decided …
Safra was found dead in a huge mansion on the Cote d'Azur. Death occurred as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning, which was actively released during a fire. In other words, the mansion of Safra was set on fire, and the billionaire, who knew how to get out of the water dry and whole from the fire throughout his life, this time went to the forefathers … an attack was made. Despite the fact that two deep stab wounds were found on Maher's body, Maher (the former "green beret") became one of the main suspects in the murder of his employer. As a result, in 2002 he was sentenced to 10 years, of which he served half of the term. Even after his release, Ted Maher repeatedly stated that he did not commit the murder of his boss and considers him the best employer in his entire life.
And were there any motives for the murder of Safra from an ordinary nurse who took care of the billionaire? Maher obviously did not receive any bonuses from the murder, unless we take into account the fact that completely different people could use it, for whom the death of the banker was much more profitable.
Whoever was really responsible for the death of a banker who had a Brazilian passport and ran several Western financial institutions (both in Europe and the United States), it is obvious that his death is related to his financial activities. Obviously, Safra made his huge fortune, including not disdaining to use the very money laundering schemes that he once told the special services about, naming the names of Russian politicians and economists. And not only, by the way, Russian ones … He called many, but he stubbornly considered himself innocent … In such cases, they usually say: "I'm not guilty, they themselves came …"
But, in all likelihood, the bank headed by Mr. Safra was a kind of financial loophole through which, to put it mildly, not the most transparent operations were carried out. By the way, certain interest is aroused by the fact that the Safra clan sold the same "highlighted" RNB just a few months after the economic collapse in Russia and the grandiose scandal with the "loss" of almost 5 billion dollars.
The reader will say: but, excuse me, what has it to do with Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow pre-trial detention center, and some American banker who allowed money laundering through his bank? And in fact, very much to do with it. It was Edmond Safra who, in 1996, together with Bill Browder, became the founders of the very Hermitage Capital Mng. Fund, in which Sergei Magnitsky worked in a position associated with accounting work, and, by and large, with how to present accounting documents on the incredible income of the fund. so that these documents do not arouse suspicion among the tax authorities.
And to imagine, I must say, there was something! If we carry out even the most superficial analysis of the work of Hermitage Capital, it turns out that the fund surprisingly managed to get an annual profit of 250-300%! Moreover, the peaks of profitability were observed at the very time when the Russian economy was experiencing serious difficulties. A paradox?.. A coincidence?..
But how could a fund that invested in Russian economic projects earn three hundred percent per annum at a time when the Russian projects themselves, allegedly financed by the fund, either began to breathe, or simply collapsed … Agree, very strange patterns that do not fit in with the laws of the real economy. All this begins to dock only when the figure of Mr. Safra is recalled, who liked to provide opportunities for his financial organizations to divert large flows of financial resources "to the left."
Today, many say that the Hermitage Capital of Bill Browder and the deceased Edmond Safra began to appear on a kind of black list in official Moscow after Browder allegedly announced his foundation's opposition to corrupt officials in Russia. Apparently, in this situation, Sergei Magnitsky is also being presented to us as a fighter against corruption mechanisms in Russia. However, Mr. Browder (Magnitsky's direct employer) for some reason does not say that he began to speak loudly about his unexpected desire to counteract corruption in the Russian Federation only after the facts of the participation of Mr. Browder and Safra in obvious assistance to the Russian oligarchy, using financial structures in the form of Republic National Bank of New York and Hermitage Capital Mng. It was after familiarizing himself with the schemes by which these organizations worked in relation to Russia that Browder became banned from entry for the Russian Federation, and Mr Magnitsky found himself as a defendant in the case of using tools for money laundering.
Here we can say that, by and large, a mistake was made. After all, Magnitsky (just Magnitsky) ended up behind bars - a man who was a small cog in a large financial mechanism. It would be much more effective not to prevent Bill Browder from entering Russia, but, quite the opposite, to wait for him at the airport with a large loaf. And after "eating off" it would be possible to send him to certain places to find out the special circumstances of the activities of his super-profitable fund. After all, the West (the United States, for example) allows itself to judge Russian citizens by its own laws, detaining Russians even not on its territory at all, so why can't Russia follow the same path?
This peculiar oversight of the Russian special services today is precisely what leads to the fact that Bill Browder has become for the West and the domestic Russian apologists of the white ribbon a real mouthpiece in the fight against corruption. This shout, according to all the laws of the genre, and according to the methodology of its former colleague Safra, blames the fact that money from Russia went to dubious accounts not at all himself, not his deputies, not the semi-financier-semi-lurist Magnitsky, not, in fact, Safra himself, but completely different people. As a result, an ordinary accountant Magnitsky, who, obviously, took the most active part, let's say, in grassroots operations with the fund's money, on which he "slept", is now presented by certain sections of the public almost as the main fighter against financial arbitrariness in Russia; a fighter who was "killed in FSB dungeons" …
But the death of Sergei Magnitsky, if anyone is sure that it was purely violent, in fact could be much more profitable for Hermitage Capital itself and for Bill Browder personally. After all, Magnitsky, even from his, not the most grandiose height in this pyramid, could tell a lot about how through the fund money from Russia floated abroad, how, with the modesty of such an organization, it managed to bring multimillion-dollar profits to its founders. Could he, in all likelihood, talk about how Mr. Safra's RNB bank skillfully used its status to first attract funds intended for the Russian budget, and then use it against the very people who actively collaborated with the leadership of this financial organization.
By the way, in 1998, when Safra began to testify for the FBI against those who used his bank for money laundering, he called such a notorious surname in Russia as Mikhail Kasyanov. In the 90s (until his appointment as Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation in May 1999) Mikhail Mikhailovich worked closely with international financial organizations to settle Russian debts. Apparently, he settled it very skillfully …
In general, this whole story with Sergei Magnitsky is a real puppet theater, in which we see only small puppet figures above a large black screen, and these puppet figurines are trying to tell us something with the voice of those who hold them on the puppet legs “great truth. However, in order to find out this truth, you need not listen to the distorted puppet voices at all, but simply look behind the screen. And there the performance is much more interesting …
