Two famous electronics companies. In fact, I used to work for Westinghouse (“You can be sure if it’s Westinghouse”). But that’s not the story here. Instead, it’s the usual tax evasion, with a twist.
>From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette comes the story of Soviet nuclear reactors, theft of over $9 million in aid money from many countries, and tax evasion.
Mark Kaushansky is a former Soviet refugee, having emigrated from the Ukraine in 1979. He landed in Monroeville, Pennsylvania and went to work for Westinghouse. In the 1990s he met up with renowned Russian atomic scientist Dr. Evginey Adamov. Dr. Adamov was arrested in Bern, Switzerland at the bequest of the US Department of Justice, but was extradited to Russia. According to Kommersant, Dr. Adamov hasn’t admitted guilt in his trial for “…grand fraud of the organized criminal group and with the office abuse that led to enormous offenses.”
Mr. Kaushansky, though, has pleaded guilty to nine counts of tax evasion. The government alleges that he’s bilked the IRS out of $5 million. Defense attorney Fred Theiman is quoted by the Post-Gazette as saying, “A lot of assumptions made by the government are perfectly rational, perfectly logical and perfectly wrong.” The IRS says that the pair used shell companies that never filed tax returns to hide money. A judge will have to decide how much Mr. Kaushansky’s companies didn’t pay. I’ll let you know more when Mr. Kaushansky is sentenced.
Meanwhile, a Sylvania, Ohio attorney was sentenced after being found guilty of evading $321,000 in taxes. Joseph Weisberg will have five months at ClubFed to think about the errors of his ways. Mr. Weisberg used his client trust account to hide his income, and that’s not a good idea at all.