Court refuses to include Human Rights Council’s report in Magnitsky case files

Interfax:Russia & CIS General Newswire

MOSCOW. April 16 (Interfax) – Moscow’s Ostankinsky District Court has upheld prosecutor’s refusal to take into consideration the conclusions set forth by the presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in the tax evasion case against Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Earlier, Magnitsky’s relatives petitioned to add the Council’s report to the case files.

Igor Vasin, a lawyer for Magnitsky’s family, who filed the petition on the relatives’ behalf, insisted that the report mentions persons who investigated criminal charges against Magnitsky but who were directly interested in a certain outcome of the case.

Prosecutor Boris Kibis argued that the report was irrelevant because it had nothing to do with the tax evasion charges.

Having heard the arguments presented by the sides, the judge ruled against the report.

The court also rejected lawyer Vasin’s request to replace the prosecutor.

Vasin claimed that Kibis was acting in the interests of certain persons, including Oleg Filchenko, the previous investigator of Magnitsky’s case, but the court stated that there was no proof of that.

Magnitsky, who had his birthday on April 8, was charged with tax evasion. He died in a detention center in Moscow on November 16, 2009. Later a criminal investigation was launched into his death.

The criminal proceedings against Magnitsky were quashed when he died but resumed after the Constitution Court ruled that their termination ran against the constitutional principle of presumed innocence, and that criminal actions against suspects who had died were to be resumed if their families wished so.

However, Natalya Magnitskaya’s lawyers object to the resumption of proceedings against Magnitsky, denying they have requested this, while Interior Ministry investigators dealing with the case are planning to pass over their findings to court.

On April 3, Moscow’s Ostankinsky Court upheld the resumption of proceedings against Magnitsky.

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