Denis Katsyv is a Russian and Israeli businessman based in Moscow and owner of Prevezon Holdings Limited. He was linked in a civil-assets case to money laundering through real estate investments in the United States, in violation of the Magnitsky Act of 2012; the case was settled in 2017 with the United States Justice Department by Prevezon agreeing to pay $5.9 million in fines. Katsyv has been represented by attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson who was investigating American-British financier Bill Browder for Katsyv, as well as with Donald Trump Jr. in the summer of 2016, during the U.S. presidential campaign of the latter's father, then-nominee Donald Trump.
Background
Katsyv is the son of Pyotr Dmitriyevich Katsyv, who was the Minister of Transport for the Moscow region from 2000 to 2012, 2012 to 2013 head of the main department for the Moscow region under Andrei Vorobyov, and from October 2014 to February 2019vice president of Russian Railways. He was educated and took advantage of business opportunities as Russia began to privatize. Early in the 2000s, Denis Katsyv participated in a scheme that, according to Israeli authorities in 2005, was a money laundering scheme involving millions of dollars among three companies, Follet, Hanway and Bastet, and the Israeli Bank Hapoalim. Martash Investments Ltd., which is a British Virgin Islands company owned by Alexander Litvak and Denis Katsyv and has bank accounts at UBS Bank in Switzerland and at Bank Hapoalim branch 535 in Israel, was a defendant in a money laundering case that paid 35 million Shekels to have the matter resolved. On August 12, 2012, Novaya Gazeta, Barron's, and the International Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime published articles detailing that Denis Katsyv had become the sole shareholder of Cyprus-based Prevezon Holdings Ltd. shortly after it received mysterious cash payments to its Swiss UBS bank accounts over two weeks in February 2008 from the two Moldovan companies Bunicon Impex and Elenast using the Alfa Bank hosted correspondent account for the Russian BankKrainiy Sever. Over $52 million was moved through Bunicon-Impex SRL and Elenast-Com SRL bank accounts throughout the 2008 winter with over $850,000 transferred to Prevezon Holdings' Swiss accounts on 8 and 13 February 2008. At that time, Katsyv's business partner Litvak was an owner of the Prevezon Cyprus properties in New York and had interests with Prevezon Berlin GmbH in Germany. During 2008, Prevezon and its business partner Africa Israel Investments, owned by Lev Leviev conducted several joint ventures in the United States and Europe. Some of the financing for Prevezon and its partner came from Deutsche Bank. In 2013, Bill Browder insisted that Prevezon had received over $1.9 million through his stolen Hermitage Capital Management companies to purchase New York properties. During 2013, Preet Bharara, prosecuting attorney for the Southern District of New York, seized four luxury apartments, two commercial properties and froze the assets of eleven firms including Prevezon Ltd. under the Magnitsky Act after the Magnitsky list was published in April 2013. In May 2017, Prezevon settled a case brought by the U.S Department of Justice for $5.9 million in fines. It was related to Russian tax fraud and money laundering originally uncovered by the late Russian lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky. Katsyv was represented by attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and law firmBakerHostetler in cooperation with research firm Fusion GPS, which was concurrently assembling opposition research against candidate Trump. He provided financial support to the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative, a lobbying agent against the Magnitsky Act that was co-founded by Nataliya Veselnitskaya in February 2015 in Delaware. Denis Katsyv was specifically named in testimony by American-British financier Bill Browder to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee of the 115th Congress on July 27, 2017 in regards to the Magnitsky Act.
