Russia tries dead man who dobbed in tax scam

Sydney Morning Herald

The defendant cage stood eloquently empty as the posthumous trial of the whistle-blowing auditor Sergei Magnitsky got under way in Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court on Friday.

Mr Magnitsky, who died in custody in 2009 after having exposed a scam by Russian tax officials, is accused of tax evasion, for which a six-year jail sentence could be handed down. His co-defendant, American-born investor William Browder, is being tried on the same charges in absentia.

The case is widely seen as an attempt by Moscow to justify itself following the adoption in the US of the Magnitsky Act, barring officials connected with the auditor’s death entering America.

Mr Magnitsky died in pretrial detention from a mixture of medical neglect and physical abuse but no officials have been brought to justice; indeed on Tuesday Russia closed the investigation into Magnitsky’s death for ”lack of evidence”.

Rather, the authorities believe they can show that Mr Magnitsky and his client, Mr Browder, evaded $US16.8 million in taxes.

The posthumous prosecution had nothing to do with Mr Magnitsky’s claims to have uncovered official corruption, the Investigative Committee said.

Mr Magnitsky’s mother Natalya and widow, also called Natalya, have expressed their anguish at the trial, saying it added to the loss they had already suffered.

But Judge Igor Alisov said the court had ”the right to examine the case against the dead man, including with the aims of rehabilitating him”.

The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute said the trial breached fundamental principles of law and human rights.

The last known trial of a dead person was when Pope Formosus was exhumed and propped up in a chair to face Catholic Church charges of perjury in 897.

The Magnitsky family and Mr Browder’s firm, Hermitage Capital, did not appoint lawyers as they felt that would legitimise the trial, so the state imposed a defence team.

The court-appointed lawyers, Nikolai Gerasimov and Kirill Goncharov, told reporters at an earlier hearing that, as members of the Moscow Bar Association, they were obliged to take on the job or risk losing their licences to practice.

In court, they tried to contest the legality of the trial and argued for the removal of prosecutor Mikhail Reznichenko on the ground that he had not given them enough time to study the 60 volumes of prosecution ”evidence”.

But Judge Alisov dismissed their complaints and announced that he would start hearing witnesses on March 27.

The judge himself has hardly looked enthusiastic about the trial but President Vladimir Putin made clear he wanted the posthumous prosecution when he said on live television in December that Mr Magnitsky ”was no angel” and his case needed further investigation.

In reaction to the Magnitsky Act, Russia banned American families adopting its orphans, plunging US-Russian relations to a level reminiscent of the Cold War.
hairy girls payday loan zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php buy over the counter medicines