Mafia Whistle-Blower Found Dead In UK
Russian Mafia whistle-blower Alexander Perepilichnyy was found dead outside of his mansion in Britain.
Police described Perepilichnyy’s death as “mysterious,” saying that the whistle-blower collapsed suddenly outside of his home on November 10.
A police spokesman said:
“It is being treated as unexplained. A post-mortem examination was carried out which was inconclusive. So further tests are now being carried out.”
Perepilichnyy was giving Swiss prosecutors information about a fraud syndicate in Russia. Perepilichnyy had also provided information about the 2009 death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The Chicago Tribune reports that Perepilichnyy is the fourth person to die of “mysterious causes” with ties to the Magnitsky case.
William Browder, a former employer of Magnitsky, said that Perepilichnyy stepped forward in 2010 to provide evidence that several Russian officials had stolen more than $230 million. The information helped Swedish officials open their investigation into Magnitsky’s death.
Browder said:
“Alexander Perepilichny approached us in 2010 as a whistleblower with evidence about the complicity of a number of Russian government officials in the theft of $230 million which Sergei Magnitsky had uncovered. He provided us with copies of many of the original bank documents. In January 2011, Hermitage filed an application to the Swiss authorities seeking an investigation. It was announced in March that the Swiss prosecutor’s office opened an investigation and froze the assets in a number of accounts.”
Perepilichny also provided information and was a witness against the Klyuyev group, a notorious Russian group that had been implicated in tax fraud.
A source close to the investigation said:
“A healthy 44-year old man who is a major cooperating witness against a transnational crime group drops dead. The fact that he was turning against an organized crime group makes his death suspicious by definition. This has to be treated with the utmost seriousness.”
