Does the Trail to Magnitsky’s Killers Lead All the Way to the Top?

Minding Russia Blog

An interesting bit of news from a Financial Times blog with Davos gossip:

The most gripping exchange came right at the end when Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital – once the biggest foreign investors in Russia and now a bitter critic – asked the panel about the notorious death in police custody of Sergei Magnitsky, his lawyer and auditor.

The response of Igor Shuvalov, the deputy prime minister was – I think – meant to sound reasonable and reassuring. He described the case as “horrendous” and said that some people had already lost their jobs and been charged over it. But it was very difficult to get to the bottom of the case, because the “system” was protecting some guilty people.

This revelation even prompted one person to say he would not proceed with a big investment.

Anton Nossik, the prominent Russian blogger, had more to say at Live Journal:
[in my translation]

Olga Stepanova committed the crime that Magnitsky tried to stop. She was the one who, in a criminal group with a prior conspiracy approved the tax return of 5.4 billion rubles from money that Bill Browder’s companies had paid to the Russian treasury. If this criminal group had not known previously that Olga Stepanova had ordered to transfer these billions from the treasury to a one-day account in a shady commercial bank, all the rest of the actions would not make the slightest sense. It would not have been necessary to steal the founding documents of Makhaon, Parvenino and Rilend from the office of Firestone Duncan, they would not have to lose the case in Kazan in order to ascribe fictitious losses to these companies, they would not have to appoint the director of these three companies, put on trial for the murder of Markelov [another lawyer], or forge their founding documents or register one-day corporations.

[For the back story on the Magnitsky case, go to Browder’s site, The Untouchables–CAF].

If it were not for the precise knowledge that the tax inspection could seal the money, all the other actions in the chain would have been unnecessary. Unnecessary also would have been the arrest and murder of Magnitsky, if Olga Stepanova had simply refused to throw 5.4 billion ruble into the garbage using forged documents — as she was obliged to do under the law. So the complicity of Olga Stepanova in this organized crime group was a key condition for committing the crime at a very early and preliminary stage.

So let’s ask who is behind Olga Stepanova. This, thank God, is a very simple question and the answer is obvious.

Olga Stepanova’s “roof” [protection] is the notorious minister of defense, Anatoly Serdyukov, for whom Stepanova worked before he was appointed to the ministry, and for whom she later went to work when she left the tax inspection, when the Magnitsky murder scandal broke out.

As far as I understand (correct me, please if I am wrong), Anatoly Serdyukov’s “roof” [protection] is his own (and Shuvalov’s) immediate boss, Vladimir Putin. It is precisely this protection that enables the furniture-maker to preserve the post of minister of defense, despite the monstrous disatisfaction with his economic capers throughout the entire Russian army.

There is the entire chain, from Browder’s stolen companies to the “Papa of the Nationa” — just two links.

So if we are to understand Nossik correctly, Shuvalov, the deputy minister confronted about the story who said it was ‘horrendous” is in fact part of the cover-up himself, and is protected by Putin in all of this.

I have no independent knowledge of this myself, but I can say that it makes sense, given how hard it has been for the Kremlin to admit fault in this case.

The famous anti-corruption campaigner Navalny faced a libel case over claims from Vladlen Stepanov about Olga Stepanova just for uploading the film “The Untouchables” about Magnitsky to his blog — and lost. Nossik goes on to expose what he claims are corrupt dealings in the court system that helped cover all this up as well. unshaven girl займ онлайн https://zp-pdl.com zp-pdl.com hairy girl