Former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who is charged with making false statements about a bribery scheme he claimed involved President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, has been indicted on new tax-related charges.
Smirnov was indicted with seven counts of filing false tax returns and three counts of tax evasion. He was accused of concealing over $2 million of income he earned from multiple sources between 2020 and 2022.
The indictment states that Smirnov used the money on personal expenses for himself and his domestic partner, including a “$1.4 million Las Vegas condominium, a Bentley, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of clothes, jewelry and accessories” purchased at high-end retailers in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Smirnov allegedly received payments through Avalon Group Inc., a Delaware-based company that prosecutors referred to as his “alter ego.” The indictment states that Smirnov listed himself as the CEO and sole officer of the company in a State of Delaware Annual Franchise Tax report, but the company never filed a U.S. corporation income tax return.
Prosecutors alleged that Smirnov also “co-mingled” the money on his partner’s bank account. He allegedly concealed the funds by filing false tax returns for himself and under his partner’s name, which included “fictitious” income and expenses, according to the indictment.
Smirnov’s attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, said on Tuesday that the defendant “intends to vigorously fight these allegations with the same intensity as he has fought the original indictment.”
The tax indictment was filed ahead of Smirnov’s Jan. 8 trial in a separate case charging him with fabricating bribery allegations against the Biden family, which had previously been delayed.
According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Smirnov reported to an FBI agent that officials at a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, had informed him in 2016 that they had engaged in a bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
Smirnov alleged Burisma officials admitted hiring the president’s son to protect the company from “all kinds of problems,” including stopping an investigation by Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general, in exchange for $5 million each to the Bidens.
The DOJ said the claims he reported to the FBI agent in June 2020 “were fabrications.” It alleged that Smirnov had transformed his “routine and unextraordinary” business dealings with Burisma into bribery allegations against President Biden after expressing bias against him and his presidential candidacy.
Smirnov has denied the allegations in that case.
Hunter Biden is scheduled to be sentenced in December for two separate criminal cases accusing him of a scheme to avoid at least $1.4 million in taxes and lying on a federal form when he bought a gun in 2018.
