In the process, though, our lawyers made a shocking discovery. The people who had stolen our holding companies had also forged documents to claim those companies owed $1 billion to three empty shell companies. The shell companies then sued our stolen companies in three separate Russian courts for that fictitious $1 billion. Lawyers working for the criminals represented both plaintiffs and defendants, who pleaded guilty. Corrupt judges then approved the fraudulent claims with no questions asked in five-minute hearings. We didn’t know what they would do with these fraudulent claims, but because
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