Bank Menatep
[4][5][6] In 1986, the Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity for Youth - TSMNTP (Russian: Межотраслевой Центр Научно-технических программ — ЦМНТП) was created in Moscow by Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
[14] From May, 1989 to 1990, Khodorkovski held the position of chairman of the board of "Commercial Innovation Bank of Scientific-Technical Progress", renamed in 1990 "MENATEPinvest".
From 1992 to 1993, Andrei Loginov,[15] was Deputy Head of the Board of the Commercial Innovation MENATEP (Bank of Scientific-Technical Progress).
From 1991 to April 1996, Vladislav Surkov held key managerial positions in advertisement and PR departments of Bank Menatep.
[50] Valmet, a Geneva-based global trust business, founded by Christian Michel, agreed in early 1989 to advise Khodorkovsky's group of young businessmen.
Valmet later held the key to the Group Menatep fortune, holding shares via nominee ownership schemes and organizing the transfer of vast sums of money via its network.
[63][64][65] Following the arrest of Yukos' former chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky in October 2003, Stephen Curtis, a British lawyer, was appointed managing director of Group Menatep Ltd. in November 2003.
[75] Fellow members of the Advisory Board were former US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Eizenstat, former Executive Editor of The Economist Dudley Fishburn, former German Federal Minister of Economics Otto Graf Lambsdorff and Margery Kraus, founder and CEO of APCO Worldwide.
[76] In March 2006, a syndicate of Western banks, led by France's Societe Generale, filed a petition in the Moscow Arbitration Court for Yukos to be declared bankrupt.
[77] On August 1, 2006, the Moscow Arbitration Court declared Yukos oil company bankrupt after being hit with claims for $30bn in disputed taxes.
Two weeks later, the Russian prosecutor general’s office said that it was pursuing a criminal investigation against four executives who managed the Yukos oil company from outside Russia before it was declared bankrupt.
Among those executives was British lawyer Tim Osborne, director of the holding company GML, formerly Menatep, which owned a majority of Yukos stock.
[citation needed] In April 2007, The Times reported that British lawyer Tim Osborne was accused of a criminal offence by the Russian Government.
[79] Osborne was accused under articles 160 and 174 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation of embezzlement, misappropriation of assets and money laundering.
At that time, Osborne was a managing director of GML (formerly Group Menatep), an investment vehicle and the biggest shareholder in Yukos.
[81] About 70 percent of GML was owned in 2007 by Leonid Nevzlin, who inherited Khodorkovsky’s stake in 2003, with the rest split evenly between four other Yukos partners.
[81] In July 2014, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ordered Russia to pay about $50 billion in damage following the accusation of violating the EU Energy Charter when it redistributed the Yukos’ assets.
Moscow-based political risk analyst Eric Kraus explained that Khodorkovsky was found guilty by both Russia and the European Court of Human Rights.
[82] In November 2014, Russia announced that it is appealing the $50 billion Yukos verdict, on the grounds that the case did not come within the mandate of the Arbitration Court in The Hague.
[84] However, in November 2021, the Dutch Supreme Court cancelled the $50 billion arbitration award Russia was ordered to pay Yukos shareholders, throwing the case back for appeal and likely years more litigation.
In late 2002, Ernest Backes gave the BND insight into a dossier on Yukos and the principal shareholder of the Russian company, Group Menatep, containing incriminating evidence against Khodorkovsky.
In early 2003 Backes handed over a copy of his dossier on Yukos and Menatep to the BND who finally sent it in February 2003 from Pullach to the Federal Chancellery in Berlin.
Meanwhile, Putin traveled to Berlin to open the Russian Culture Days on February 9 and meet with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
[91] When asked by the German magazine STERN in 2007, Schroeder denied having handed over the Backes dossier to Vladimir Putin during his visit to Berlin in February 2003.
[92] The German foreign intelligence agency subsequently invited Backes and another ex-banker, Swiss citizen André Strebel to further talks.
In June 2003, Backes and Strebel met with two agents from BND Department 5 ("Organized Crime - International Terrorism") in the Munich Maritim Hotel.
This was on condition that the BND would get access to the extensive archives, which Backes and Strebel had built up in the course of their work for various banking and clearing systems.
and of Bank Leu in Geneva, related to claims of fraud against the Russian company Avisma and money-laundering by Menatep in Switzerland.
[97] On April 26, 2006, 20 Minutes revealed that "in May 2005, MEP Paul Van Buitenen was shocked by Frits Bolkestein's presence on Menatep's international consultative council, a Russian banking establishment, and by his work for Shell, a British-Dutch petrol company, two firms 'maintaining secret accounts in Clearstream'... Van Buitenen, also Dutch, then asked for 'clarification' to the European Commission and the opening of a parliamentary investigation.
The Commission's president, José Manuel Barroso, replied that these facts 'do not bring up any new question' and that it is not known 'if Menatep made contact with Bolkestein while he was in these positions'.
