Putin hounds Russian whistleblower in his grave

Sunday Times

THE mother of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian anti-corruption lawyer who died in custody after accusing officials of embezzling £140m, has condemned a decision to put her late son on trial as illegal and morally reprehensible.

In Russia’s first posthumous prosecution of its kind, a court is to try Magnitsky on tax evasion charges more than three years after he died in a Moscow prison, where he was beaten and denied medical help.

“Maybe they’re planning on bringing the sentence to my son’s grave. There’s no limit to these people’s cynicism,” said Natalia Magnitskaya. “To put a dead man on trial is not only shocking beyond words; it’s also a travesty of justice. These people have no conscience. I’ll be boycotting this trial and urge all Russian lawyers to do the same. It’s perverse.”

Magnitsky died in prison in November 2009 while awaiting trial on tax evasion charges. His family and friends say the charges are trumped up and were brought as revenge after he reported a gang of corrupt officials and criminals to the police. The case was closed when he died.

Under Russian law, proceedings against a deceased person can be resumed only at the request of the defendant’s family to clear their name. But Magnitsky’s family strongly opposed reopening the case in protest at Russia’s notoriously biased and politicised judicial system.

“After Sergei’s death the case was reopened and sent to trial, not at our request but by prosecutors,” said Magnitskaya, 61, who has ignored several court summonses. “It’s blatantly illegal.

“And to make matters worse they expect me to help them legitimise this travesty by appearing in court. They falsely accused my son, jailed him, did everything to break him and then caused his death. Where do they find the courage to put him on trial now?”

The proceedings, which are due to start on January 28, will further strain US-Russian relations. After lobbying by William Browder, a US-born British financier who was a client of Magnitsky’s Moscow law firm, President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act into law last month.

The law bars dozens of Russian officials from entering the United States or holding financial assets there. The blacklist also includes the names of officials alleged to have violated human rights in Russia.

A furious President Vladimir Putin retaliated by signing a law that bans Americans from adopting orphans from Russia. This has been attacked by some of Putin’s critics as the most shameful measure he has passed since he came to power nearly 13 years ago.

Moscow and Washington have exchanged barbs over the Magnitsky Act and Russia’s response to it. “It’s most upsetting that this terrible ban on US adoptions should in any way be associated with my dead son’s name,” said Magnitskaya.

Putin said recently that the lawyer had died of a heart attack, ignoring evidence by the Kremlin’s own human rights council that he was severely beaten before his death. Photographs taken at his funeral show bruises and cuts to his wrists and hands.

Putin then attempted to discredit Magnitsky by saying that “he was no human rights campaigner but someone who defended the interests of a foreigner who is wanted by Russian prosecutors” — a reference to Browder.

Two days after Putin signed the adoption ban, a prison doctor standing trial for negligence over Magnitsky’s death was acquitted. No other official has been prosecuted over the £140m theft or his death.

“Millions were stolen and my son died but three years on the only person on trial is Sergei,” said his mother. “How can that possibly be?”

Magnitsky was arrested in November 2008 by the same interior ministry officials he had accused of orchestrating the fraud, in which companies once owned by Browder were used to make bogus tax claims.

In jail the father of two had developed pancreatitis. In what his friends and family say was an attempt to coerce him into retracting his accusations, he was denied medical help. During his detention he complained in writing about his treatment more than 450 times.

When Magnitsky’s condition worsened he was transferred to another Moscow prison, supposedly for treatment. Instead he was beaten, placed in a straitjacket and put in an isolation cell where he died of heart failure the same day, aged 37. He had been incarcerated for a year.

Despite promises of an inquiry, the interior ministry has presented service awards to several investigators who had been implicated by Magnitsky’s friends in his arrest and death. Swiss authorities have opened a money-laundering investigation into some of the Russians behind the tax scam.

They had relied largely on evidence provided by Alexander Perepilichny, a whistleblower who sought refuge in Britain three years ago.

Last November Perepilichny, 44, collapsed and died after jogging near his home in Surrey. An initial post-mortem examination proved inconclusive, raising fears he might have been killed. Toxicologists are carrying out tests to determine whether he had been poisoned.

Magnitskaya, who said she has little confidence that justice would be done in her lifetime, was allowed to see her son only once in the year he spent behind bars.

Unaware that he had died the night before, the former teacher went to the prison to leave a food parcel for her son.

“I stood in the queue. When my turn came I was told that he had been moved to another prison. I went there, queued again and asked the female officer at the gate if my son was there. Matter-of-factly she said yes, but he became very ill and died last night.

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