ACF Calls for Investigation into Decision to Lift Distraint over Assets of Woman Guilty of Money Laundering
The Anti-Corruption Fund Foundation (ACF) has called for an investigation of the decision by the Commission for the Forfeiture of Illegally Acquired Property (CFIAP) to overturn a distraint on the assets of Elena von Messing, who was later sentenced on money-laundering charges.
In September 2017, the Sofia City Court found the Russian-born Finnish citizen Elizabeth Elena von Messing and her business partner Dmitry Abramkin guilty of laundering BGN 1.6 bln. The pair were sentenced to ten years in prison and fined BGN 628 mln. Collecting the financial penalty, however, turned out to be impossible.
As early as 2015, Ms. von Messing and Abramkin had succeeded in persuading CFIAP to lift the distraint on their assets, imposed at the start of the court proceedings. For more than two years, from 2015 until the end of the lawsuit in 2017, von Messing had full control over funds worth BGN 23 mln. There are reasonable doubts that von Messing seized this opportunity to export her assets outside Bulgaria. How did this situation come about?
CFIAP imposed distraint of von Messing’s assets in 2009, at the very beginning of the criminal proceedings against her and Abramkin. According to the investigators, the BGN 23 mln. was a part of BGN 1.614 bln., which was transfered via 441 transactions from Russian bank accounts into Ms. von Messing’s and Mr. Abramkin’s accounts in the period May 2007 – May 2008. During the same period, the pair made 3,376 transfers of equal total value to different bank accounts around the world. Much of the money was withdrawn in cash in Estonia and re-imported into Russia.
The distraint on Ms. Messing’s assets continued until 2015 when she and Mr. Abramkin petitioned CFIAP to lift it. The two based their request on a decision of Russia’s Investigation Committee. According to the accused, the decision proved that proceedings against them for participation in a criminal group had been terminated. However, Ms. von Messing and Mr. Abramkin did not provide a certified translation of the document. At its November 2015 meeting, CFIAP adjourned the proceedings against Ms. von Messing and ordered the lifting of all distraints on her assets. The commission did not take into account the fact that proceedings on money laundering charges against Ms. von Messing was still ongoing in the Sofia City Court.
In January 2018, Ms. von Messing petitioned the court to lift her ban on leaving the country, accompanying the petition with a document by German doctors who allegedly had confirmed she needed emergency treatment abroad. A check through the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (EUROJUST) established that one of the doctors had died nearly a year before the issue date of the document. The Sofia City Court ruled it was a possibly forged document that could serve to thwart penal proceedings. Therefore, the court ordered Ms. von Messing’s immediate arrest and a nationwide search for her commenced. To date, the Finnish citizen is still missing.
At the end of 2017, ACF launched an investigation into the von Messing case after receiving a copy of the 2015 CFIAP decision and reviewing media publications on the topic. To verify the authenticity of the document, the fund’s legal team requested information from the CFIAP under the Access to Public Information Act. Following a rejection, ACF challenged CFIAP’s refusal to supply the requested information in court and the first hearing was scheduled for March 2018.
ACF sent a report to public prosecution, calling for a full investigation of the circumstances surrounding the termination of CFIAP’s proceedings and the lifting of the distraint on Ms. von Messing’s assets.