Investigator Removed From Hermitage Tax Case
Police have sacked the lead investigator in a high-profile tax-evasion case against Hermitage Capital CEO Bill Browder and the company’s late lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
Investigator Mikhail Shupolovsky will take over from Boris Kibis, who has been reassigned in a “redelegation of tasks,” city police said, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Browder and Magnitsky are accused of lowballing Hermitage Capital’s 2001 tax bill by about 500 million rubles ($15 million).
Browder and supporters say both the case and Magnitsky’s 2009 death in pretrial detention are punishment for accusations Magnitsky made against a group of tax and police officials whom he said embezzled a $230 million tax refund.
The case has attracted international condemnation, and U.S. lawmakers have attached Magnitsky’s name to a bill that would impose sanctions on human rights abusers worldwide.
“It will be interesting to see how this new investigator will compromise himself and the Russian state,” a Hermitage Capital representative said in e-mailed comments.
Read More →
Magnitsky – Browder tax evasion case assigned to new investigator
Russia’s Investigative Department reports that the Hermitage Capital tax evasion case is being reassigned to a new investigator. William Browder and auditor Sergei Magnitsky are named as the primary suspects in the case.
The department’s statement says the move was made to redistribute the workload between investigators. It also reminds that the criminal case against Browder and Magnitsky became a separate proceeding in December 22, 2011.
According to case materials, Browder, who was the head of the Moscow office of Hermitage Capital Management Limited and was the CEO of Dalnyaya Step and Saturn (which were registered in the Republic of Kalmykia) jointly with auditor Magnitsky submitted falsified tax returns in 2001 and therefore evaded taxes estimated at more than 500 million rubles ($15.84 million).
Read More →
How Not to Pass a Bill
Among the many things the House never got around to doing before shutting down for the summer was holding a vote on a bill that would have granted permanent normal trade relations to Russia.
Please don’t turn the page.
Yes, compared with its inability to pass a farm bill, this may sound like small potatoes. But it is a near-perfect illustration of the way the House Republican leadership has largely abdicated its responsibility to get useful things done — as opposed to, say, conducting votes to repeal Obamacare a few dozen times.
There wasn’t much controversy over the Russia bill. Business supported it because American companies could then take advantage of Russia’s imminent entry into the World Trade Organization. It would have required repealing the old Jackson-Vanik amendment, which links trade to the emigration of Russian Jews. But that’s been a nonissue for decades. The Senate was lined up to pass the bill quickly once the House acted.
Many Russian opposition figures, like Garry Kasparov, supported it for a different reason. It had been paired with something called the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. Magnitsky, you may recall, was the young Russian lawyer who tried to expose a huge tax fraud involving a number of high-ranking officials. His efforts led to his imprisonment, where he was grossly mistreated and deprived of medical treatment. And he died. The Magnitsky act would prevent his jailers — and other human rights abusers — from entering the country, and it would have frozen their assets as well.
Read More →
Fire fighting
Russia is on the verge of becoming a WTO member, but practitioners with in-depth, first-hand experience of the country’s legal, political and business infrastructure believe it is rotten to the core.
It is Russian Business Week 2010 and students in a crowded lecture hall at the London School of Economics (LSE) are on the edge of their seats as Roger Munnings, chairman of Russia’s Audit Committee Institute, stands up to deliver his keynote speech.
Before he begins he asks any Russian members of the audience to raise their hands: 200 hands shoot straight up. He then asks how many people wish to return to Russia to work after completing their studies: 190 hands quickly disappear.
Munnings carries on with his speech regardless, but when it finally comes to a close, one member of the audience cannot resist standing up and passing comment.
Maybe you weren’t paying attention when you asked for a show of hands,” he says, “but only 10 of 200 Russian LSE students want to return to Russia. These are the best and brightest students that Russia has to offer and they don’t want to go back home. Just what good news and a true picture of Russia are they supposed to be spreading?”
The audience member was none other than Jamison Firestone, managing partner of both Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan and London-based FD Advisory. His probing comment earned him an overwhelming ovation from the student body.
Read More →
US Congress postpones signing Magnitsky Act
The US Congress has postponed its final vote on the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012.
The law, which has already overcome several major hurdles in the US Congress, was scheduled to go to the floor vote on 3 August before Congress broke for summer recess. However, the house announced at the end of last week that it would delay both voting on the law and on passing the bill to grant Russia Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) until Congress resumes in September.
The Act is part of a bill to repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, which the US introduced to prevent the former Soviet Union, and other countries that restricted the emigration of their citizens, from enjoying PNTR with the US. The PNTR bill was approved by the House Ways and Means Committee two weeks ago.
WTO rules stipulate that member states must grant each other unconditional trading rights. As a result, this repeal is highly desired by US companies, which, after 22 August, when Russia finally joins the World Trade Organisation, will trade with Russia at a disadvantage to other WTO members until PNTR is granted.
In spite of the delays, the upcoming votes mark a key turning point as the US government finally bows to pressure by campaigners to name and shame those involved in the Magnitsky ordeal and similar human rights violations in Russia. Magnitsky, a partner at Moscow-based law firm Firestone Duncan, died in a Moscow prison on 16 November after being held without trial for almost a year on charges of tax evasion.
Read More →
Russia Bills Fall Victim to America’s Broken Political Process
In spite of the fact that the U.S. economy continues to suffer and Europe is imploding, the U.S. Congress has left Washington for its traditional five-week summer recess. Among the plethora of legislation that Congress failed to address prior to its departure were two bills concerning Russia — the establishment of permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) and the ‘Magnitsky Act.’ This failure means that the review of these bills will not take place until next month at the earliest — when Congress has only eight working days — or perhaps even during its ‘lame duck’ session following the November elections. Many business stakeholders and politicians from across the country have expressed concern that the failure to pass the Russia PNTR legislation would have grave consequences for U.S. manufacturers and further complicate strained Russia/U.S. relations.
The PNTR bill is being addressed at a crucial time, with Russia becoming a member of the WTO on Aug. 22. Many U.S. companies believe that with more than 140 million consumers and a rapidly growing middle class, Russia will provide an expanding marketplace for U.S. goods and services. According to the President’s Export Council, U.S. exports to Russia rose by 40 percent in 2011 to around $11 billion, and it is projected to double within five years. Following its accession to the WTO, Russia will have to comply with WTO rules on reducing tariffs, applying nondiscriminatory treatment to imports, eliminating export subsidies and adhering to intellectual property rights and digital trade laws — areas that previously concerned U.S. businesses. As a founding member of the WTO, the US will not be required to make any trade adjustments.
The PNTR bill will also address the concerns of some policymakers in Washington by including additional provisions regarding the promotion of the rule of law in Russia. Some provisions advocate the specific protection of American investors, particularly supporting the claims of some investors in the Yukos Oil Company — once Russia’s largest company — that was dismantled and sold by the first Putin administration. Others encourage anti-bribery measures by promoting the expansion of civil society organizations in monitoring and reporting suspected instances of corruption. While major political concerns seem to have been addressed in the bill, U.S. business representatives still fear that the bill will not be passed into law before the presidential elections, putting American companies at a disadvantage in the Russian market.
Read More →
Mixing Human Rights and Trade Relations: Dealing with Today’s Russia
After trying for some two decades, Russia will join the World Trade Organization, or WTO, later this month. For the Kremlin, it’s a hugely symbolic moment. Russia has joined the club.
Russia’s entry to the WTO should make it easier for nations to trade with them. By some estimates, the US could double its exports to Russia in the next five years.
But there’s a catch: A Cold War law remains on the books, which prevents normal trade relations between the two countries. It’s a law that many US businesses, ranchers and farmers want removed immediately. American Unions want Congress to take a tougher stance with Russia. The World’s Jason Margolis has more.
To understand why US companies won’t be able to trade freely with Russia anytime soon, we need a brief history lesson.
In the 1970’s, Soviet Jews, many of whom faced persecution, were prevented from emigrating from the USSR. Svetlana Boym was one of them. She’s now a professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
BOYM: “I was born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. I came to the United States as a refugee. The reason I was able to enter the United States and exit the former Soviet Union was thanks to the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.”
The “Jackson-Vanik Amendment” was passed by Congress in 1974. The Amendment denied equal trading rights to countries restricting emigration. It was designed to put pressure on Soviet leaders to open their borders. Many argue it worked. Some 1.5 million Soviet Jews were able to leave.
Read More →
Russia’s Failure to Protect Freedom of Religion
Has Russia truly changed its ways on human rights? Certainly its new law restricting public protests fuels grave and widespread concerns. Moreover, in at least one key area, religious freedom, Russia has not changed in many respects. This assessment should provoke serious discussion as the United States faces decisions about its relationship with its former Cold War foe.
Russia is poised to enter the World Trade Organization later this month. To reap trade benefits from its entry, the United States would have to exempt Russia from the trade restrictions of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which includes Russia due to its past restrictions on the right to emigrate during the Soviet period.
What should the United States do? It should continue to hold Russia accountable.
Over the past decade, the Kremlin has exploited legitimate security concerns about violent religious extremism by restricting the rights of nonviolent religious minority members. Its major tool is an extremism law. Enacted in 2002, the law imposes sanctions on religious extremism, which it defines as promoting the “exclusivity, superiority, or inferiority of citizens” based on religion. The law now applies to peaceful actors and actions. In addition, individuals who defend or sympathize openly with those charged also may face charges.
Once a higher court upholds a prior ruling that religious material is “extremist,” the material is banned, with convicted individuals facing penalties ranging from a fine to five years in prison. As of June, the government has banned 1,254 items, according to the Sova Center, a Russian nongovernmental organization.
Russian citizens who preach that their particular faith is superior to others are potentially liable to prosecution. As written, this dangerously broad law can easily entrap peaceful members of religious groups, including those among the country’s Muslims, who number from 16 million to 20 million, simply for alleging the truth or superiority of their beliefs.
Read More →
President Vladimir Putin’s cruel tyranny is driven by paranoia
Apologists for the Kremlin are struggling. The Russian regime’s dogged defence of the blood-drenched Syrian dictatorship, and its persecution of the Pussy Riot musicians for their stunt in Moscow’s main cathedral, display its nastiest hallmark: support for repression at home and abroad.
Mr Putin’s return to power has eclipsed the liberal-sounding talk of his predecessor as president, Dmitry Medvedev. Russia’s leader has in recent weeks signed laws that criminalise defamation, introduce £6,000 fines for participants in unauthorised demonstrations, require non-profit outfits financed by grants from abroad to label themselves as “foreign agents”, and create a new blacklist of “harmful” internet sites.
Now comes the prosecution of Pussy Riot, a bunch of feminist performance artists made famous by their imprisonment and show trial. Their “crime” was to record a brief mime show at the altar of the cathedral of Christ the Saviour. They then added anti-Putin “music” (featuring scatological and blasphemous slogans) to suggest that they had actually held a concert there.
Many might find that in bad taste and would accept that police can arrest those using a holy place for political protest. But the three women on trial (who all deny involvement) have been in custody since March. They face up to seven years in prison on a charge of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility”. It all smacks of a grotesque official over-reaction and the growing and sinister influence of the Orthodox hierarchy.
Also a distant memory is Russia’s “reset” with America, which was supposed to herald a new era of cooperation. Since Mr Putin’s return, Russia’s foreign-policy rhetoric has been venomously anti-Western. It recently warned Finland, with startling bluntness, to stop working with Nato. The hostility is still largely a one-way street. Western companies grovel before Mr Putin (he recently kept oil-industry chiefs waiting for hours in an airless room with no chairs; they uttered not a squeak of complaint).
Read More →
-
To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
