A Return Visit to Earlier Stories: The Trouble with Russia

Barron’s

Russia’s official version of the prison death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky got a sharp revision on July 5, when a human-rights council appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev reported that Magnitsky had been illegally detained and had probably died from a truncheon beating inflicted by eight guards in November 2009 — and not from heart failure, as claimed by prison doctors.

When Magnitsky’s family received the body of the 37-year-old lawyer, it was bruised and his fingers were broken, said the report (“Crime and Punishment in Putin’s Russia,” April 18).

As recently as May 2011, Russia’s Interior Ministry said it had found no wrongdoing by investigator Oleg Silchenko, who had ordered Magnitsky’s arrest and pretrial detention on what Medvedev’s Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights now calls trumped-up charges.

The arrest followed testimony by Magnitsky that Hermitage’s Russian businesses had been hijacked by organized criminals, corrupt police and tax officials in a scheme that stole hundreds of millions from the government through fraudulent tax refunds. The human-rights inquiry said Magnitsky had been imprisoned by the very same prosecutors and Interior Ministry cops whom he accused of participating in the tax scam.

Our April story cited secret account records from Credit Suisse that document how millions of dollars found their way to the family of a tax official who approved $230 million in fraudulent refunds. Such corruption and the lawless treatment of foreign investors who had invested through vehicles like Hermitage explain the discounted valuation of Russian equities in comparison with other emerging markets.

Council member Kirill Kabanov told journalists that the wrongdoing in the Hermitage case involved many agencies, including the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Federal Security Service, the Ministry of Taxes and Collections and the Finance Ministry.

The report cited Silchenko, two other Interior Ministry investigators mentioned in Barron’s story, a Moscow district judge and a prison doctor.

What happens next is unclear. Hermitage founder William Browder welcomed the report, but said it would be “a farce” if doctors were prosecuted and not the officials who orchestrated the conspiracy. быстрые займы онлайн unshaven girls https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php займ на карту срочно без отказа