MOSCOW, December 21 -- British financier and Hermitage Capital Management founder William Browder has been charged in absentia with organizing a crime syndicate. The Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court informed the media, adding that the motion for his arrest in absentia will be considered on December 21. "The court received a motion on imposing remand in custody on Browder in absentia. It will be considered at 11:00 Moscow time," the court’s spokesperson said. Browder is charged under Part 1 of Section 210 of Russia's Criminal Code ("Organizing a crime syndicate"). On November 19, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said criminal proceedings had been initiated against him over organizing a crime syndicate. It also said Browder would be put on the international wanted list, while his assets would be seized with their subsequent confiscation. Browder was convicted in absentia in Russia twice. On July 11, 2013, Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court found him guilty of large-scale tax evasion worth 522 mln rubles ($9 million at the current exchange rate) and sentenced him to nine years in jail. That verdict also barred him from doing business for two years. In July 2014, Russia put Browder on the international wanted list. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has repeatedly asked Interpol to issue an arrest warrant against him. On December 29, 2017, Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court sentenced Browder to nine years behind bars in absentia, having found him guilty of tax evasion to the tune of more than 3 bln rubles ($45.5 mln) and bankruptcy fraud. His business partner Ivan Cherkasov was sentenced to a similar prison term. The court also upheld a lawsuit against Browder and Cherkasov worth 4.2 bln rubles ($64 mln) and barred them from doing business in Russia for three years. Biography William Felix Browder (born 23 April 1964) is an American-born British financier and economist. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund that at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. He gave up his U.S. citizenship in 1998 to avoid paying taxes related to foreign investment. After having business in Russia for ten years, Browder was refused entry to Russia in 2005 as a threat to national security; he has said it was because he exposed corruption. Browder and Edmond Safra (1932–1999) founded Hermitage Capital Management in 1996 for the purpose of investing initial seed capital of $25 million in Russia during the period of the mass privatization after the fall of the Soviet Union. Beny Steinmetz was another of the original investors in Hermitage. Following the Russian financial crisis of 1998, Browder remained committed to Hermitage's original mission of investing in Russia, despite significant outflows from the fund. Hermitage became a prominent activist shareholder in the Russian gas giant Gazprom, the large oil company Surgutneftegaz, RAO UES, Sberbank, Sidanco, Avisma, and Volzhanka. Browder exposed management corruption and corporate malfeasance in these partly state-owned companies. He has been quoted as saying: "You had to become a shareholder activist if you didn't want everything stolen from you". In 1999, Avisma filed a RICO lawsuit against Browder and other Avisma investors including Kenneth Dart, alleging they illegally siphoned company assets into offshore accounts and then transferred the funds to U.S. accounts at Barclays. Browder and his co-defendants settled with Avisma in 2000; they sold their Avisma shares as part of the confidential settlement agreement. In 1995–2006 Hermitage Capital Management was one of the largest foreign investors in Russia, and Browder amassed millions through his management of the fund. In both 2006 and 2007, he earned an estimated £125–150 million. In March 2013, HSBC, a bank that serves as the trustee and manager of Hermitage Capital Management, announced that it would end the fund's operations in Russia. The decision was taken amid two legal cases against Browder: a libel court case in London and a trial in absentia for tax evasion in Moscow. In June 2018, HSBC reached a settlement with the Russian government to pay a £17 million fine to Russian authorities for its part in alleged tax avoidance.
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