The U.S. Department of Justice announced that TCS founder and billionaire Oleg Tinkov has agreed to pay over $500 million and pleaded guilty in a 2013 U.S. fraud case that accused him of hiding assets to evade taxes. Tinkov, 53, concealed assets and income totaling $1 billion when he renounced his U.S. citizenship after the initial public offering (IPO) of TCS, according to an indictment revealed last year. After being arrested in February 2020 in London, he fought extradition to the U.S. while undergoing treatment for leukemia.
The alleged tax fraud amounts to half the value of the largest tax evasion case in America, which was brought against Houston software magnate Robert T. Brockman, accused in October of using a network of Caribbean entities to hide $2 billion in income. Tinkov has agreed to pay $506,828,377, which includes unpaid 2013 taxes, civil fraud penalties, fines, and interest, according to a statement from the Justice Department on Friday. Tinkov's net worth is estimated at $8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
In 2013, Tinkov falsely reported income below $206,000 on his tax return, even though he earned over $192 million from TCS's IPO on the London Stock Exchange in October of that year, according to U.S. prosecutors. Three days after the IPO, the billionaire went to the U.S. embassy in Moscow to renounce his U.S. citizenship, prosecutors said. Sentencing is scheduled for October 29 in Oakland, California.
