Catalogue of controversy
Over the years, IOS-created UK companies have featured in a string of complex money laundering schemes. A firm called Loginex Projects LLP was named in a civil fraud judgment in London against Mukhtar Ablyazov, the Kazakh dissident and businessman accused of embezzling $5 billion from BTA Bank in Kazakhstan in 2010, an allegation Ablyazov has denied.
Four other UK shell companies created by IOS — Castlefront LLP, Everfront Sales LLP, Jackwell LLP, and Unitronic LLP — played a key role in the laundering of proceeds connected to an alleged $230 million Russian tax rebate fraud exposed by a lawyer called Sergei Magnitsky.
When Magnitsky claimed the fraud had been carried out with the help of corrupt police officers, he was imprisoned for almost a year, without charges, and pressured to withdraw the accusations. Days before he was to be released, Magnitsky was found beaten and dead in his cell.
In 2020, Magnitsky’s former boss, Bill Browder, an investment fund manager turned anti-corruption campaigner, told a UK parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee that $3 billion in suspicious transactions had flowed through bank accounts held by the four UK companies, including funds from the alleged tax fraud discovered by the dead lawyer.
Meanwhile, the companies’ financial statements — filed at Companies House by IOS operatives — showed minimal business activity. “These suspicious transactions have been reported, yet no action has been…
