Panama Papers connect Putin’s musician friend Roldugin to murdered lawyer Sergei Magnitsky

The Panama Papers have revealed funds extracted from the Russian budget, originally uncovered by Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, were transferred to an offshore company belonging to Vladimir Putin’s close friend, musician Sergei Roldugin.

In 2007, Sergei Magnitsky believed he had uncovered the systematic theft of more than $230 million from the Russian state budget. His employer, Hermitage Capital, alerted the Russian government of the theft. Magnitsky was then imprisoned by the Russian authorities for aiding Hermitage Capital in tax fraud. The lawyer died in prison in 2009.

The Panama Papers show that until 2015, Sergei Roldugin, a professional cellist, controlled offshore companies with billions of dollars in transactions.

The Panama Papers are a trove of leaked documents from Panama-based legal services firm Mossack Fonseca. Whistle blower Edward Snowden called the Panama Papers the “[b]iggest leak in the history of data journalism.”

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which coordinated the huge effort into cataloguing the information contained in the Panama Papers, has recently put a searchable database of the leaked documents online.