Jonathan Russell, city diary editor for London’s Telegraph Group, has an interesting story on today’s Telegraph website. It is titled, “Ernst & Young ‘Covered Up Judge Bribe Case.’”
My write-up is based on Russell’s story, and his story is supposedly based on court documents. I have no personal knowledge of anything other than Russell’s story. I am not alleging anything, only summarizing what has been reported.
Russell writes,
Mr [Cathal] Lyons was a partner with E&Y’s Russian practice when the alleged wrongdoing came to light. It was originally investigated by James Mandel, E&Y’s general counsel in Moscow. In a witness statement supplied in support of Mr Lyons’s case, Mr Mandel said he suspected the payment may have been corrupt and wrote a report to that effect.
“I had the suspicion that this payment was not a proper payment for legal fees, but was an illegal payment possibly made to facilitate a positive outcome of a tax case,” he claimed in his witness statement.
He suspected that the €120,000 payment via a Russian law firm was made to influence a 390m rouble (£8.4m) court case brought by Russian tax authorities investigating a tax avoidance scheme E&Y was using to pay its Russian partners. E&Y was later cleared of liability in the case.
Russell continues,
Mr Lyons claims that after he reported his concerns about the case to E&Y’s global head office, his medical insurance was withdrawn and he was dismissed.
In his writ he says the dismissal flowed from “personal animosity against him rising from a discussion in late 2010 between the claimant and Maz Krupski [E&Y’s director of global tax and statutory] regarding alleged corruption by the practice.”
Mr. Lyons is suing for 20 years continuance of medical support, stemming from serious injuries sustained in a 2005 automobile accident. The medical support payments are valued at $6,000,000.
I will make an effort to retrieve relevant British court documents.
In an interesting coincidence, Jonathan Middup, partner at Ernst & Young (UK) Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, has a piece in Friday’s growthbusiness.co.uk titled, “The UK Bribery Act One Year On.” In this article, Middup “… looks back on the first year of the UK Bribery Act to see if the British perception of corrupt practice has changed.”
Debit and credit – – David Albrecht
Want more of The Summa? Sign up to receive email notification of posts. And please follow me on Twitter (@profalbrecht).
The Summa 
Leave a Reply