Daily Archives: November 30, 2021

U.S. Embassy Moscow: A Scheme to Evade Taxes While Renouncing U.S. Citizenship Results in $500M+ Penalty

November 30, 2021 By in Americans Abroad, Court Cases, Federal Agencies, U.S. Missions Tags: , , , ,

 

On October 29, USDOJ announced that Oleg Tinkov, aka Oleg Tinkoff, the founder of Russian Bank was sentenced for felony tax conviction arising from scheme to evade exit tax while renouncing his U.S. citizenship. Defendant Paid Over $500 Million in Taxes, Interest, and Penalties

The founder of a Russian bank was sentenced today for his felony conviction for filing a false tax return. As required under his plea agreement, prior to sentencing, Oleg Tinkov, aka Oleg Tinkoff, paid $508,936,184, more than double what he had sought to escape paying to the U.S. Treasury through a scheme to renounce his U.S. citizenship and conceal from the IRS large stock gains that he knew were reportable. This includes $248,525,339 in taxes, statutory interest on that tax and a nearly $100 million fraud penalty. Tinkov was additionally fined $250,000, which is the maximum allowed by statute, and sentenced to time served and one year of supervised release.

Tinkov was indicted in Sept. 2019 for willfully filing false tax returns, and was arrested on Feb. 26, 2020, in London, United Kingdom (UK). The United States sought extradition, and Tinkov contested on medical grounds. In public records, Tinkov has disclosed that he is undergoing a UK-based intensive treatment plan for acute myeloid leukemia and graft versus host disease, which has rendered him immunocompromised and unable to safely travel in the foreseeable future.

On Oct. 1, 2021, Tinkov entered a plea to one count of filing a false tax return. According to the plea agreement, Tinkov was born in Russia and became a naturalized United States citizen in 1996. From that time through 2013, he filed U.S. tax returns. In late 2005 or 2006, Tinkov founded Tinkoff Credit Services (TCS), a Russia-based branchless bank that provides its customers with online financial and banking services. Through a foreign entity, Tinkov indirectly held the majority of TCS shares.

In October 2013, TCS held an initial public offering (IPO) on the London Stock Exchange and became a multi-billion dollar, publicly traded company. As part of going public, Tinkov sold a small portion of his majority shareholder stake for more than $192 million, and his assets following the IPO had a fair market value of more than $1.1 billion. Three days after the successful IPO, Tinkov went to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia, to relinquish his U.S. citizenship.

As part of his expatriation, Tinkov was required to file a U.S. Initial and Annual Expatriation Statement. This form requires expatriates with a net worth of $2 million or more to report the constructive sale of their assets worldwide to the IRS as if those assets were sold on the day before expatriation. The taxpayer is then required to report and pay tax on the gain from any such constructive sale.

Tinkov was told of his filing and tax obligations by both the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and his U.S.-based accountant. When asked by his accountant if his net worth was more than $2 million for purposes of filling out the expatriation form, Tinkov lied and told him he did not have assets above $2 million. When his accountant later inquired whether his net worth was under $2 million, rather than answer the question, Tinkov filled out the expatriation form himself falsely reporting that his net worth was only $300,000. On Feb. 26, 2014, Tinkov filed a 2013 individual tax return that falsely reported his income as only $205,317. In addition, Tinkov did not report any of the gain from the constructive sale of his property worth more than $1.1 billion, nor did he pay the applicable taxes as required by law. In total, Tinkov caused a tax loss of $248,525,339, which he has paid in full with substantial penalties and interest as part of his plea, together with tax liabilities for other years.

Read in full here.

 

 

@US2Somalia’s Muna Mohamed – 2021 Foreign Service National of the Year

November 30, 2021 By in Awards, Foreign Service, Locally Employed Staff, State Department, U.S. Missions Tags: ,

 

 

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FSGB Grievant Asks @StateDept “Which Surnames Qualified as “Hispanic Surnames” #Census #Google

November 30, 2021 By in Discrimination, Diversity, Foreign Service, Grievance, Realities of the FS, State Department, Trends Tags: , , , , , ,

 

Via Record of Proceedings
FSGB Case No. 2020–053 | October 22, 2021

I. BACKGROUND
The background of this case is described in detail in the June 17, 2021, Order: Motion to Compel issued by the Foreign Service Grievance Board (“FSGB” or the “Board”). That Order required the Department to provide additional responses to grievant’s initial discovery requests including grievant’s Interrogatory #1 which sought disaggregated statistics on rates of tenure for Foreign Service Generalist career candidates with Hispanic surnames who were considered for tenure during a specified five-year period, as compared with the tenure rate for other candidates.

On July 7, 2021, the Department responded to grievant’s Interrogatory #1.

Grievant was dissatisfied with the response and on July 14, 2021, he requested clarification of how the Department determined which surnames were Hispanic. The Department responded the same day, explaining how it had determined which surnames were Hispanic.

On July 27, 2021, grievant made a follow-on discovery request, seeking a list of the surnames the Department determined to be Hispanic and a list of the surnames of the candidates who had non-Hispanic surnames and were denied tenure.

On August 25, 2021, the Department objected to grievant’s July 27, 2021 request. The parties met and conferred on grievant’s discovery request and the Department’s objection, without reaching agreement.

In a motion to compel, the burden is on the requesting party to prove the merits of the motion. FSGB Case No. 2016-027 (Order, dated October 28, 2016); FSGB Case No. 2011-013 (Order, dated September 28, 2011).

Excerpt:

B. SECOND MOTION TO COMPEL

Interrogatory #1
Interrogatory #1 states as follows:

Please provide disaggregated statistics on rates of tenure for minority Foreign Service Generalists as compared to white Foreign Service Generalists between March 9, 2014 and March 4, 2019.

Department’s Response:
On July 7, 2021, The Department provided the following data for Foreign Service Generalist Tenure Candidates reviewed from March 2014-March 2019:

Candidates with Hispanic Surnames – 108
3 denied tenure = 2.8%
105 recommended for tenure = 97.2%

Candidates with non-Hispanic Surnames – 1871
48 denied tenure = 2.6%
1823 recommended for tenure = 97.4%

Grievant asked the Department how it determined which surnames qualified as “Hispanic surnames.”

Department’s Response to Request for Clarification

The Department responded that it accessed publicly available 2010 Census data and “pulled the record of last names where more than 50% of respondents by that name identified as being Hispanic.” There were 199 Hispanic surnames on the Census list and the Department cross-referenced those names with the cumulative list of tenure candidates. The Department then looked at all of the remaining names and identified other Hispanic surnames that did not appear on the Census list. To confirm, the Department checked those names for Spanish/Hispanic origin via Google search. Lastly, the Department checked a random assortment of the remaining names on the list of tenure candidates to confirm that they were other than Hispanic.

Relevance of the Follow-On Interrogatory

In the instant case, grievant alleges that the CTB discriminated against him because of his Hispanic surnames. Grievant has not alleged that he has direct evidence, relying entirely on statistics. To establish a prima facie case based on statistics, grievant must establish that Hispanic surnamed candidates were tenured at a statistically significantly lower rate than non-Hispanic surnamed candidates. Accordingly, the surnames of the candidates who were tenured, and those who were denied tenure, clearly are relevant to grievant’s claim, just as the gender of candidates would be relevant to a claim of sex discrimination.
[…]
the Privacy Act does not prohibit disclosure of Human Resources information about comparator employees to a grievant if ordered by the Board.
[…]
The Board has determined that grievant is entitled to know what surnames are considered Hispanic for purposes of the Department’s discovery responses. At the same time, the other candidates deserve privacy regarding their tenuring decisions. To accommodate those competing interests, the Board will order the Department to respond anew to grievant’s Interrogatory #1, as set forth in Section IV, infra.

IV. ORDER

Grievant’s Second Motion to Compel is granted in part and denied in part, as follows:

1. Within 14 days of this Order, the Department shall email grievant the list of 199 Hispanic surnames the Department previously identified from the Census data.

2. Within 14 days of the Department’s email, grievant shall email the Department a list of any of the 199 surnames that grievant considers not to be Hispanic (“List A”), and a separate list of any surnames not on the list of 199 that grievant considers to be Hispanic (“List B”) and the source of the surnames. Grievant may use any source of surnames for List B, e.g., lists publicly available on the Internet. If grievant fails to email List A and List B to the Department by this deadline, grievant shall be deemed to have waived any further response to Interrogatory #1, and grievant’s discovery shall be considered complete.

3. Within 21 days of grievant’s email, the Department shall email grievant a revised response to Interrogatory #1, using the 199 surnames from the Census data after striking the surnames on List A and adding the surnames on List B, thereby creating List C. At that point grievant’s discovery shall be considered complete. The Department may not object to responding to Interrogatory #1 using List C. ….

4. The Board denies grievant’s request for the list of the surnames the Department determined to be Hispanic and a list of the surnames the Department determined to be non-Hispanic surnames and were denied tenure.

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Read more: 2020-053 – 10-22-2021 – B – Order re Second Motion to Compel_Redacted.pdf
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US Embassy Jerusalem: New @USAmbIsrael Tom Nides Now at Post

November 30, 2021 By in Ambassadors, State Department, U.S. Missions Tags: , ,

 

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