Dead Men Tell No Tales
Russia is about to put a dead man on trial, the whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky who died in the custody of the police officials he’d earlier accused of taking part in what Magnitsky said was a huge 2007 Russian tax fraud. The $230 million swindle involved stealing the corporate identity of Hermitage Capital, a Western-run hedge fund and a legal client of Magnitsky’s firm (see “Crime and Punishment in Putin’s Russia,” April 16, 2011). When Magnitsky told Russian authorities in 2008 that corrupt tax and police officials seemed to have victimized Hermitage, it was him they arrested. Several weeks ago, Russian prosecutors set in motion a case that will blame Hermitage and Magnitsky for the frauds he alleged.
The prosecution may have trouble reconciling its theory of Magnitsky as mastermind with a newly-published investigation in Russia’s Novaya Gazeta. The newspaper reports that the same tax offices Magnitsky had fingered were the loci of apparent tax fraud even after the lawyer’s arrest and 2009 death in prison. Barron’s has reviewed prosecution documents that show the involvement of the FSB – successor to the KGB – in the activities that victimized Magnitsky and Hermitage, including the 2007 confiscation of Hermitage records and the 2008 arrest of Magnitsky.
“My investigation shows that after [Magnitsky’s] death, the very same tax office workers were continuing to steal from the people in the same exact way,” said Roman Anin, the reporter who wrote the Novaya Gazeta piece, in an interview with Barron’s. “This has to do with every single Russian citizen. If you add up the fraud from 2007 to 2010 committed by these tax officers, you would see that they stole the equivalent amount to the pensions of 20 million Russian citizens.” Barron’s tried, without success, to reach Russian tax officials responsible for what’s now alleged to have been a total of more than $700 million in fraudulent refunds.
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Updated Magnitsky Act Introduced in U.S. Congress
Sergei Magnitsky was a lawyer who represented Hermitage Capital Management – an UK-based investment fund company who specialised in Russian markets and prided themselves on exposing corruption and misconduct in Russian enterprises. In 2006 the CEO of the company had his visa annulled and was labelled a ‘threat to national security’ by the Russian government. Yeah, more like a threat to the pockets of corrupt businessmen and bureaucrats. Anyway, a year later, after the company refused to pay bribe money to ‘officials’, their Moscow offices were raided. As were the offices of Firestone Duncan, the law firm who represented Hermitage Capital and were Magnitsky worked. Documents and computers were seized. Hermitage had become a victim of ‘corporate raiding’ – a practice in which companies and assets are seized with the aid of corrupt law enforcement officials and judges. Well, the Hermitage case is really interesting (and quite frustrating) and you should go and look it up but we are here to talk about Magnitsky.
Sergei represented Hermitage on charges of tax evasion and fraud. Y’know, them things the government wheels out when they want to get rid of a business (or steal it) – I’m being cheeky today, excuse me. During his investigations he came to believe that tax fraud had been committed, but not by Hermitage. He discovered evidence that suggested that a group of criminals had stolen Hermitage documents and used them to illegally reclaim £140m of taxes from the Russian government – money that belonged not to Hermitage, but to the Russian people. If Magnitsky’s suspicions were true then the police, the judiciary, tax officials, bankers and the Russian mafia would’ve been implicated. His claims were initially dismissed but his main accusation, that Hermitage had not committed fraud but had in fact been victimized by it would eventually be validated.
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Bill Could Complicate U.S.-Russia Relations
Republicans and Democrats don’t agree about much on Capitol Hill these days, but there is one bill gaining bipartisan support. It’s legislation that would punish human rights violators in Russia by naming them and denying them visas to the U.S. But the Obama administration is not on board yet. U.S. diplomats worry it could complicate relations at a time when the U.S. needs Russia’s support most.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I’m Melissa Block.
Bipartisanship is rare on Capitol Hill these days but one bill is gaining support from both Republicans and Democrats. There’s a problem, though, the Obama administration is leery of it.
As NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports, the bill involves human rights abuses in Russia. And U.S. diplomats are worried it could complicate relations at a time when the U.S. needs Russia’s backing on a range of issues.
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U.S. Lawmakers Submit Updated Magnitsky Bill
22 April 2012
By Natalya Krainova
Fifteen ranking members of the U.S. House of Representatives have submitted a bill to impose visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The bill is an updated version of a similar one submitted to the chamber in April 2011, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission said on its website Thursday.
“Since Russian authorities have not provided justice to Mr. Magnitsky and his family, the United States should do what it can to hold individuals accountable for these heinous crimes,” Representative James McGovern said, Magnitsky’s former employer, Hermitage Capital, said in a statement Friday.
The updated bill doesn’t specifically name any officials, a Hermitage Capital spokesperson said. Neither did the previous version.
The earlier bill called for sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the detention, prosecution and death of Magnitsky and in the conspiracy to defraud the Russian Federation of taxes on corporate profits through fraudulent transactions and lawsuits against Hermitage.
Unlike the new version, that bill didn’t call for sanctions against officials implicated in other crimes.
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Washington must keep pressure on the Kremlin
Published: 4/22/2012 BY MIKE SIGOV
Russia has become a U.S. presidential election issue, with some American politicians exaggerating the challenge the country presents to the world’s leading power and others playing it down.
Those seriously pondering the U.S. policy toward Russia may consider a human-rights bill that, if passed, would impose sanctions on corrupt Russian officials implicated in the prison death of a Russian lawyer. The bill also would target any other known corrupt bureaucrats, be it in Russia or any foreign country.
Neither a friend nor a foe, Russia has so far responded fairly well to the carrot-and-stick treatment. But the old carrot — a long-coveted accession to the World Trade Organization — is already being fed to Russia. And the old whip — the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment that denies Russia the most favored nation trade status — became outdated with the downfall of the Soviet Union and is bound to be repealed soon so that U.S. companies trading with Russia aren’t at a disadvantage.
The human-rights bill — the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011 — would freeze U.S. bank accounts and deny American visas to corrupt officials and human-rights violators anywhere in the world, Russia included.
Such a whip is bound to be effective. After all, it is not Russia’s proteges such as Iran, North Korea, or Syria where Russian bureaucrats like to keep their money, educate their children, or buy real estate but the United Kingdom and the United States.
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Obama Suckering America into Loving Russia
American Thinker
April 22, 2012 By Kim Zigfeld
Lies have consequences. And the lies told by the Obama administration about Russia for the past four years, lies which can be characterized only as Goebbels-like propaganda, have had devastating consequences indeed.
Polls show that from the moment Vladimir Putin took power, Americans began to think ill of Russia. Throughout the Gorbachev years, the American view of Russia as an enemy was waning, and when Boris Yeltsin took power for the first time, more Americans reported viewing Russia as a friendly country, or even an ally, than saw it as unfriendly or an enemy. By the middle of the Yeltsin term in office, the gap in Russia’s favor had become enormous.
But throughout the Putin years this process reversed itself, so that by 2008, significantly more Americans saw Russia as a threat than as a balm. In fact, the process began even before Putin, when Americans were shocked to see Yeltsin bomb his own parliament building and give virulent support to the genocidal maniacs in Serbia, which Russians look on as their “little brother.” To top that off, of course, Yeltsin named Putin, a proud KGB spy, as his successor.
Then Barack Obama took power and placed Michael McFaul in charge of his Russia policy, which soon came to be labeled as “reset.” McFaul and Obama deluged Americans with brazen lies for four years, telling them that Putin was no longer in charge of Russia; that a new generation led by Dmitri Medvedev, the new president, had taken power; and that this generation could be trusted and befriended.
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Prosecuting the Dead: Part II
JURIST Contributing Editor David Crane of Syracuse University College of Law says the enactment of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act will be an important practical and symbolic act showing that the US government acknowledges the long slide of the Russian people back into anarchy and lawlessness…
Russia has attempted to cover up, gloss over and sweep under the rug the fact that they seized a young Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky off the street, tortured him in a year-long detention without a hearing or trial and allowed him to languish and die in prison, all for calling the Russian government out on a vast tax fraud scheme in the amount of over $250 million.
Over these past few years, the Russian government has gone after Magnitsky’s former employer, Hermitage Fund, his boss, William Browder and even his mother in attempts to bring silence to a growing call for justice by the international community. Futile gestures and “investigations” have led to no real findings of fact nor an open hearing on those facts to determine accountability. Time and time again they have concluded no real harm and have tried to drop the case.
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Trendswatcher: Punk’s Not Dead – in Russia
© RIA Novosti.
Natalia Antonova 19:37 20/04/2012
People began using the phrase “punk is dead” before I was even born – but just when everyone starts believing it, someone comes along to prove them wrong. The latest people to do that, sadly, are the jailed members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samusevich will remain in pretrial detention in Moscow until June 24, while investigators continue looking into their alleged role in a so-called “punk prayer service” that took place within the Cathedral of Christ the Savior back in February – and outraged many Orthodox Christians. The “prayer” itself was directed against President-elect Vladimir Putin.
As a Christian, I find it hard to speak about the actions of Pussy Riot. I don’t think that such performances belong in church, even a church such as the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which has had a complicated history since first being destroyed by the Soviets and rebuilt following the fall of the USSR – for many Muscovites, this holy site is nowadays associated with what is known as “VIP-tusovkas” or “VIP-gatherings,” as opposed to with the Orthodox faith. Even bearing that in mind, and bearing in mind the fact that the Orthodox tradition has a long history of so-called holy fools that engage in mischief, I cannot support the performance of Pussy Riot. When I saw it on YouTube, I felt sadness, bewilderment, and hurt.
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Updated Magnitsky Act Introduced in U.S. Congress
An updated bill imposing a visa ban and asset freeze on Russian officials allegedly linked to the death in custody of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, as well as on “individuals responsible for other gross violations of human rights” in Russia has been introduced in the U.S. Congress.
Magnitsky, who worked for Hermitage Capital, a British investment fund, died in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center in Moscow in November 2009, almost a year after being arrested on tax evasion charges. He suffered from untreated pancreatitis and gallstones. Two former prison doctors have been charged with negligence in connection with his death, but a criminal case against one of them was recently dropped.
Just days before his arrest, Magnitsky claimed to have uncovered a massive fraud in which Moscow tax and police officials had allegedly embezzled $230 million in tax rebates by taking over Hermitage subsidiaries and using them to claim tax rebates. His supporters say the legal case investigators launched against him was a means for the same security officials he had accused to muzzle him and stop his activities.
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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
