Jeffrey Galmond

Jeffrey Peter Galmond is a Danish Supreme Court lawyer and businessman. He is the owner of the law firm J. P. Galmond & Co. He owned large portions of the holding companies that owned the Russian mobile telecommunications operator Megafon. One of these portions was contested. Galmond had been accused of not being the true owner of the Russian assets, but of acting as a front to Russian minister of telecommunications Leonid Reiman. These claims were vigorously denied by Galmond.

Involvement with Leonid Reiman Galmond became acquainted with Leonid Reiman in the 1980s.

With headquarters in Copenhagen and offices in Hamburg, J.P. Galmond & Company established a presence in telecommunication, finance, and company law in Russia in 1989 and a representation office in St Petersburg in 1992 and in Moscow in 2000. In the early 1990s, Galmond met Leonid Reiman in Leningrad (St Petersburg), who was an executive with the Leningrad City Telephone Network (LGTS) that was renamed the St. Petersburg City Telephone Network (PTS) in 1993. Galmond later became Reiman's attorney. in which his employer had a 95% share and Galmond the rest. In 1997, Michael Cherney bought Mobitel from Grigory Luchansky. Then, First National Holding's share grew to 85%. In 2001, after Commerzbank through its First National Holding SA ended its share of Telecominvest, Galmond had several companies including IPOC International Growth Fund which was established in 2000 in Bermuda and Lapal Ltd., Albany Invest Ltd., and Mercury Import Ltd. in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) acquire the telecom holdings of Commerzbank's former interests. IPOC International Growth Fund was formed as a mutual fund, however, there were no investment from shareholders owning a stake in it: The only income IPOC received was from its subsidiaries.

IPOC International Growth Fund IPOC International Growth Fund, which controls several Russian telecoms, was competing against Alfa Group for control of a large share in Megafon. Both IPOC and Alfa Group used numerous 1929 Holding Company Schemes with shell companies in the British Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Cayman Islands, and Delaware.

Galmond's disputed 25% share in Megafon was held by Leonid Rozhetskin's LV Finance, a company which sold its share on 5 August 2003 for $200 million through several shell companies to Altimo a subsidiary of Alfa Group, the company fronted by Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman. But, Galmond had an agreement to purchase LV Finance's 25% share in MegaFon already in 2001. Alfa Group was at the centre of many disputes involving disputed ownership of telecommunications operations. These companies included Norwegian Telenor, Swedish-Finnish TeliaSonera, Turkey's Turkcell and others. IPOC International Growth Fund even launched a RICO suit in the United States against Alfa Group and its associates.

Early 2004 while Leonid Reiman was Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, Gossvyaznadzor stated that it is unclear how taxes are paid by VimpelCom OJSC and Impulse Design Bureau OJSC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of VimpelCom. Reiman suggested that the two merge. At the time, Alfa had a significant share in Vimpel. During the proceedings, Kroll, a private investigations firm, had surveilled the chairman of the Geneva panel.

On 9 March 2005, TeliaSonera, TeleComInvest, and IPOC International Growth Fund signed a shareholders' agreement in which they would actively pursue MegaFon's public listing.

From the spring to October of 2005, Richard Burt's Due Diligence in which the auditing firm KPMG was infiltrated for Alfa Group's benefit by Due Diligence in order to obtain information about KPMG's audit of the IPOC International Growth Fund.

In November 2005, The Financial Times reported that Jeffrey Galmond established through court documents that Leonid Reiman is the sole beneficiary of the Fiduciare Commerce Trust which indirectly controls OAO Telecominvest.

In 2006, the beneficial owner of IPOC International Growth Fund was found to be Leonid Reiman according to a Zurich ruling by the International Chamber of Commerce.

In February 2007, Galmond was accused by the Bermuda Minister of Finance, Paula Cox of minor infringements of local business requirements. She asked the supreme court to wind up IPOC International Growth Fund, a company owned by Galmond, along with several other companies associated with Galmond. Both Altimo and IPOC International Growth Fund jointly decided to "end all court actions and end legal claims against each other." At that time, IPOC through its holdings in TeleComInvest held a 39.3% share of MegaFon and Alfa Group through Altimo held a 25.1% stake in MegaFon. RTK-Leasing supplied equipment for the Russian post office which was considering support from Svyaz-Bank to create a Russian Post Bank because many Russian pensioners had accounts with Svyaz-Bank. In September 2008, VEB gained a 98% stake and control of Svyaz-Bank. From April 2004 until September 2008, Gennady Meshcheryakov led Svyaz-Bank. In June 2010, Svyaz-Bank sued Tigran Nersisyan's Borodino Group for failure to repay a 5.8 billion rubles loan.

Other work Galmond has also worked as a lawyer for companies associated with Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson's Icelandic conglomerate Baugur Group.

In June 1993, Björgólfur Guðmundsson, Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson and Magnús Þorsteinsson were among Galmond's first clients when Galmond was their attorney beginning with the establishment of their bottling company Baltic Bottling Plant in Saint Petersburg which was sold to Pepsi for 4 billion DKK in 1997.

Galmond today lives in Switzerland. He had sold all of the assets in IPOC International Growth Fund after its liquidation in 2008.

Controversy On 15 December 2011, the Frankfurt am Main prosecutor's office and German criminal authorities named Leonid Reiman as a suspect in a 1990s money laundering scheme involving Commerzbank, his longtime attorney Jeffrey Galmond, and four employees of Commerzbank. The case had begun as an investigation into the looting of Russia during the 1990s. In the first half of 1996, Reiman, Galmond, and Michael Boehmke, which both Galmond and Boehmke are attorneys with the Hamburg based firm Bollmann, Kisselbach & Partners, created agreements with Commerzbank. Galmond was the owner of First National Holding (FNH), a Luxembourg based firm, and Telecominvest holding had accounts at Commerzbank and both companies had secret trust agreements with Reiman as Commerzbank acted as the owner of FNH until 2002. FNH was formed on 11 May 1995 and was previously known as the Selz & Turban Holding SA, which was headed by a Luxembourg attorney and was owned by two shell companies located in Panama. In 2008, The Frankfurt court determined that Reiman was the beneficiary of Danco Finans which Galmond claimed ownership and through which trust agreements were held by Commerzbank.