Magnitsky relatives: Russian diplomat lied to EU parliament
The mother and widow of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian anti-corruption activist who died in prison, have accused a Russian diplomat of lying to the European Parliament about his case.
The women – Natalia Magnitskaya and Natalia Zharikova – spoke out in a letter on 25 February to the parliament’s subcommittee on human rights.
They said that Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian foreign ministry’s special envoy on human rights, misled MEPs at a hearing in Brussels on 20 February when he told them that Magnitsky’s own relatives want him to be tried posthumously in order to clear his name.
According to a transcript of the hearing, Dolgov said: “The court cannot close the case unless the relatives, or people who represent the interests of the deceased, make it clear that they are not against the closing of the case. The relatives of Mr Magnitsky made it absolutely clear that they are against closing the case without his acquittal.”
Russian authorities accused Magnitsky, an accountant, of financial fraud after he exposed a scam by tax officials to embezzle hundreds of millions of euros from the Russian treasury.
He died in pre-trial detention in 2009.
But prosecutors are now re-opening the fraud case against him in what his relatives see as an attempt to smear his reputation and to intimidate them to keep quiet.
“[Dolgov’s] statements are hard to characterise other than [the] lie and hypocrisy of an official,” Magnitskaya and Zharikova said.
“We suddenly learned from the media that a criminal case was resumed posthumously … The initiative to resume the criminal case belongs to deputy general prosecutor Victor Grin though he is not a ‘close relative’,” they noted.
“Our position about the unlawfulness of this proceeding has been stated in over 25 formal complaints,” they added.
Dolgov is not the first Russian diplomat to claim they want the dead man to be tried.
Russia’s EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov, in an interview with EUobserver on 28 June last year, also said: “If the immediate relatives of the deceased declare officially that they want the case closed, then it is closed. None of Magnitsky’s relatives have said a word about that.”
The Magnitsky affair has become a cause celebre in US-Russia and EU-Russia relations.
For their part, 10 French MPs and senators, including senior figures from President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party, in a joint communique on Thursday (28 February) urged him to raise the issue on his visit to Moscow the same day.
They compared Magnitsky’s prison diaries – which detail the abuses that led to his death – to the writings of Soviet-era dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
They said the posthumous trial is a form of “repression” and a “sinister comedy … which must be stopped.”
“This affair, both tragic and touching, stands as a symbol of human rights violations in Russia,” they added.
Hollande did not refer to Magnitsky in his public remarks in Moscow.
He told a press conference with Russian leader Vladimir Putin: “We have not come here to judge, but to observe and to seek progress [on human rights].” онлайн займ займ на карту онлайн www.zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php займы на карту
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6 Responses to “Magnitsky relatives: Russian diplomat lied to EU parliament”
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When in grad school 20 yrs ago I was required to take a Comparative Culture class. I’d traveled a fair amount overseas from the US by the time I took that class, as well as been taught, “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” I’d been raised to be accepting of all cultures. I’d also been an analyst for a Japanese investment firm where I’d kept my mouth shut about my married bosses’ sleazing about with women they picked up in a karoake bar. The final day of the Comparative Culture class my professor taught the class a lesson I’ve never forgotten. He criticized China’s genocide of baby girls, because the majority of Chinese couples want their sole child to be male. My professor made the point that we should not be accepting of all cultural practices, & that many we encounter we will find morally reprehensible. We were told we should pass judgment and attempt to change cultures we find with unethical practices. Mr. Browder and Hermitage Capital have followed my professor’s lesson with their lobbying for the Magnitsky Act. Magnitsky Act is diplomacy and the current French strategy is for its politicians to put their heads in the sand. The French people would never tolerate Russian oppression enacted at home, and they should tolerate it nowhere outside France’s borders, too, nor welcome oppressors inside its borders even for just vacations.
My problems as an American living on US soil involved in an entrepreneurial venture the Russian government wants to control extend back more than 11 years. Trying to escape Kremlin sabotage we had operations in Germany, France and the UK in addition to the US. Putin had no respect for any of the aforementioned nations’ sovereignty. From my vantage point my opinion is that the Magnitsky Act–a get tough on Russian government corruption policy should have been enacted a decade ago. At this point any nation stonewalling Magnitsky legislation is being taken for an idiot by Putin. It’s time for the world’s democracies to stop being Putin’s morons.
We were Immtec Ltd & later Sentegra Ltd in UK, Sentegra GmbH in Germany, Sentegra SAS in France, & Immtec, Inc., Datainteractive, Inc. & Sentegra LLC in the US. We’re also the inventors of what National Institute of Standards & Technology calls “smart wallet” at this webpage: http://www.atp.nist.gov/iteo/biometrics.htm.
Things are so bad now I can’t find my business partner since Christmas & am afraid he’s dead.
My business partner is the inventor of the technology. I’m just its “tweaker” for government applications. The platform was designed for democracies. In Putin’s control he’d abuse it to end democracy worldwide. There has been so much trouble because of our refusal to sell to Russia’s top tyrant that we determined taxpayers of each nation need to own our shares. They can never go IPO on an exchange to give tyrants an opportunity to buy majority interests to seize control of the company. The inventors’ backgrounds are Capitalism & Common Sense.
I also for many reasons believe Putin & his crime ring orchestrated 911 and that it proved to be their rainmaker. If you know an attack is to happen then you know to load up in advance on Lockheed Martin shares because Lynne Cheney was on its board of directors at the same time her husband became Vice-President worrying if he could keep Putin happy to shield Halliburton’s Russian energy contracts. As could be expected the TSA contract was streamlined to LM. When the US DHS opened its doors it was required to obey Federal Acquisition Regulation & contacting be fair. It wasn’t! Lockheed was streamlined control of the DHS credentialing office & in breach of the 1998 Federal Inventories Reform Act it selected its own credential, refusing to give fair consideration to superior technologies. My partner & I are people of conscience. We would never give any party financial incentive to orchestrate a 911 revival the way it was possible with 911. We did what we had to do even though it was against or best financial interests.