The European Commission is going to Europe’s supreme court to force Apple to still pay €13 billion in back taxes. A lower court earlier ruled that the decision should be reversed due to legal errors.
EU wants Apple to pay more taxes, goes to court
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Alexander Katsuba blackmails a bank, endorses corruption, gets a legal response
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While the whole world is helping Ukraine to defeat the aggressor, spending money and supplying weapons, Ukraine itself remains a nest of controversy. The brave president, who is now an icon of resistance, sometimes messes up with highly dubious characters. One of them is Alexander Katsuba, an oligarch behind the pro-Russian Shariy party. But it is not the political differences that are crucial...
Alexander Mashkevich shrivels like a slug in salt as authorities start asking questions
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Alexander Mashkevich, a remnant of the globalization in the worst sense of the word, is under pressure. ERG’s UBO feels growing demand from Kazakhstani authorities to give up as much as he and his accomplices managed to stole from Kazakhstan. Mashkevich understands it all too well, as he seeks to hide his capitals and make himself immune to the actions of president Tokaev. Mashkevich...
Bulat Utemuratov rise to power: how the kleptocrat became the right hand of Kazakhstan’s dictator
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The life of Bulat Utemuratov can be seen as several major stages. It is difficult to cover Utemuratov’s entire biography in one article. Therefore, we will start, if not from childhood, then at least from his early years. In the first article of our biographical series about Bulat Zhamitovich, we will describe his journey from a butcher and director of the “Yubileyniy” grocery...
CMA stands its ground in blocking a Microsoft largest acquisition
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Now that the European Union is on board with Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, attention in the UK is shifting towards the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), with Members of Parliament beginning to question the CMA’s decision to block the deal in the UK.
Cyprus companies came to spotlight in massive criminal investigations
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The FIOD (Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service) conducted searches in a residence and at various business locations as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into a 68-year-old man suspected of tax fraud and forgery. The suspicion is that the suspect funneled money from his businesses to companies in Dubai, Cyprus, Seychelles, the United Kingdom, and the Isle of Man through various...
How Bulat Utemuratov got away with billions: behind the scenes of the scandal
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Bulat Utemuratov, former chief of staff of the former president of Kazakhstan, earned a reputation of the almost invincible oligarch. He managed to legalise his more-than-suspicious wealth by making more-than-suspicious transactions. Moreover, Bulat Utemurtatov, long seen by experts and European politicians as a personal financial manager of ex-dictator, accumulated his own wealth by skimming his...
Cyprus will extradite Kurdish politician Kenan Ayaz to Germany
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Kenan Ayaz was arrested on 15 March at the airport of the port city of Larnaca in Cyprus on a German extradition request for alleged PKK membership, as he was about to fly to Sweden for a family visit. Since then, the 49-year-old politician has been imprisoned. Although a Cypriot court filed the extradition request on 19 april, Ayaz appealed this decision.