Russia opens macabre show trial

Sydney Morning Heald

Russian authorities, in a legal twist bizarre even by their standards, are pushing ahead with the trial of anti-corruption whistle blower Sergei Magnitsky posthumously for alleged ”tax evasion”.

The prosecution of a dead man – a first for Russia, something that not even Joseph Stalin did – promises to be as shocking and puzzling from the Western perspective as last year’s inquisition of the punk rockers of Pussy Riot.

The trial, scheduled to begin on Monday in Moscow, will feature two empty chairs facing the judge, one for the dead lawyer and one for his former client, London-based investor William Browder, who will be tried on the same charges of ”tax evasion” in absentia.

The Kremlin, operating from its own logic, needs to discredit these two men in order to shore up its position, both domestically and internationally, political analysts and lawyers say.
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Mr Browder’s firm, Hermitage Capital Management, was the largest investor in Russia until the fund manager started exposing massive corruption, irritating the Russians so badly that they declared him a ”threat to national security” and expelled him in 2005. Mr Browder wound up his business in Russia and evacuated his staff.

”I didn’t want to end up like Khodorkovsky [Mikhail, the jailed billionaire oil tycoon],” he said. ”I thought that was the end of it but it turned out to be the beginning of the worst possible nightmare.”
He said that after he left Russia, his offices were raided and seized documents were used to fraudulently re-register some of his companies.

He hired Magnitsky to investigate. The lawyer discovered that the scammers, unable to steal assets because they had already been liquidated, applied instead for a refund on $US230 million of taxes Hermitage Capital had paid.

”They didn’t steal from us but from the Russian state,” Mr Browder said.
”It was the largest tax refund in Russian history. It was approved in one day, on Christmas Eve 2007. It could only have been done with the complicity of senior officials.”

For exposing this scandal, Magnitsky was arrested by subordinates of the police and tax officials he had accused. Held without trial for nearly a year, he was beaten and denied medical care for pancreatitis, which led to his death in 2009, at the age of 37.

Last December, a Moscow court acquitted former prison medical officer Dmitry Kratov, the only person tried in connection with Magnitsky’s death.

But by lobbying in Washington, Mr Browder was instrumental in persuading the Americans to adopt the Magnitsky Act, which bars Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses from entering the US.
The EU is considering similar sanctions.

The death of Magnitsky was ”an open and shut case of murder and torture,” Mr Browder said.

”The Russian government chose to cover it up. Why should they [Russian officials] behave like cannibals at home and then come and dine in our fine restaurants in the West?”

In reaction to the act, Moscow has banned American families from adopting Russian orphans, citing 20 deaths among 60,000 adopted Russian children in the US.

And now begins the posthumous trial at which the late Magnitsky and Mr Browder will be charged with evading $US16.8 million in taxes.

Having banned Mr Browder, a British citizen, from Russia, the authorities want to see him in court. They have written to the British Home Office for co-operation in summonsing him but the British government has turned them down.

”Our legal team is refusing to take part,” Mr Browder said. ”Nobody wants to dignify such an outrageous miscarriage of justice.”

Magnitsky’s mother, Natalya Magnitskaya, has appealed to lawyers not to legitimise the trial by appearing for the defence on Monday. Undeterred, the state has imposed a defence team.
Amnesty International said the trial opened ”a whole new chapter in Russia’s worsening human rights record”.

Calling it ”a sinister attempt to deflect attention from those who committed the crimes”, it said Magnitsky’s rights would be violated because he could not defend himself.
Konstantin Kosachev, head of the State Duma’s international committee, said Russia was as interested as the West in getting to the bottom of the Magnitsky case.

Sanctions went against the ”presumption of innocence” and the West should await the verdict of a Russian court, he said. займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно hairy girl https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php срочный займ на карту