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A civil lawsuit in the United States that was notable for the unusual level of secrecy afforded to the parties by the judge has been dismissed.Bermuda-based KPMG Financial Advisory Services Limited and its two managing directors, Malcolm Butterfield and Michael Morrison, had been seeking $11 million in compensatory and punitive damages against Diligence LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based private investigative agency/risk management firm whose employees and advisers include former high-ranking officials within the CIA, FBI, US Government, UK Government and UK special forces.

A U. S.-based intelligence-gathering firm has failed to have a civil lawsuit dismissed in which it is accused of bribing an employee of KPMG (Bermuda) to disclose information about an investigation into alleged money laundering by a sham mutual fund group known as IPOC. Diligence LLC had asked the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss a complaint brought by KPMG Financial Advisory Services Ltd. and its Managing Directors, Malcolm Butterfield, and Michael Morrison, on the grounds that Bermuda was a more convenient forum and that an “indispensable party” is missing from the action, namely the Bermuda Government, which commissioned KPMG FAS to investigate IPOC.

A James Bond-like tale involving allegations of corporate espionage, bribery, corruption, and a Bermuda Government whitewash of a suspected $1 billion money laundering scheme is unfolding in a U. S. court. Among the cast of characters are Russia's Telecommunications Minister, Leonid Reiman; a Bermuda-based, so-called mutual fund in which Reiman appears to be the only investor and which he may have used to launder the proceeds of corruption, IPOC International Growth Fund Ltd.; IPOC's banker, fund administrator, custodian, and accountant, Bermuda Commercial Bank; IPOC's Bermuda representative and provider of various services, including directors and officers, Wakefield Quin; the firm appointed by Bermuda's Minister of Finance to investigate IPOC, KPMG Financial Advisory Services Ltd.; and Diligence LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based intelligence-gathering firm that is headed by a former officer of the U.K. Security Service known as MI5 and whose advisors include a former Director of the CIA and the FBI.