EU urges action over Russian lawyer’s death
By Catherine Belton in Moscow
Herman Van Rompuy, European Council president, has called on Dmitry Medvedev to bring to a “credible” close an investigation into the death in jail of Sergei Magnitsky, the anti-corruption lawyer, before his term as Russian president expires.
Calling the case “emblematic” for “the state of the rule of law and judiciary” in Russia, Mr Van Rompuy said in a letter, dated April 18, to the Russian president and seen by the Financial Times, that bringing the investigation to “credible and thorough conclusion before the end of your term would be of symbolic relevance and send a very important signal for the future of Russia”.
Mr Medvedev came to power pledging to crack down on corruption and to boost the independence of the courts. But critics say the lack of progress in investigating Magnitsky’s death is symbolic of the president’s inability to take his pledges beyond the level of rhetoric over his four-year term. Mr Medvedev is due on May 7 to hand over the presidency to Vladimir Putin, his mentor who as prime minister had continued to be seen as Russia’s paramount leader.
The official investigation into Magnitsky’s death is due to be completed on April 24, more than two years after he died in jail in November 2009, sparking an international outcry. His death came more than a year after he alleged that a circle of interior ministry and tax ministry officials had conspired to defraud the Russian budget through a $230m tax fraud scam.
Read More →
EU president: ‘Magnitsky case is emblematic for Russia’
EUobserver
20 April 2012, BY ANDREW RETTMAN
BRUSSELS – EU Council chief Herman Van Rompuy has said in a letter to outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that Russia’s internatioinal reputation is at stake over the murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The one-page note, dated 18 April and seen by EUobserver, says: “The case of Mr Magnitsky has come to symbolise the state of the rule of law and judiciary in the Russian Federation for Russia’s friends and observers abroad. Bringing this emblematic case to credible and thorough conclusion before the end of your term would be of symbolic relevance and send a very important signal for the future of Russia.”
It comes one week before Russian investigators on 24 April are to say if a prison doctor caused Magnitsky’s death in custody in 2009 by “negligence.”
It also comes before Medvedev steps down in early May, five years after taking up office and promising to end “legal nihilism” in the country.
Magnitsky was jailed, starved of pancreatic medication and beaten to death when he exposed a tax-embezzling mafia involving top people in the interior ministry and the state security service, the FSB. Prosecutors have so far postponed the outcome of the probe 11 times. Last year – in a legal first – they launched a new case against the dead man himself.
Nobody in Brussels believes that a prison doctor is responsible.
Read More →
Magnitsky’s mother complains about inactivity of detectives
Interfax: Russia & CIS General Newswire
MOSCOW. April 19 (Interfax)
The mother of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in prison has complained to the Russian Investigation Committee about the dragging out investigation of her son’s death and disregard of the circumstances of his arrest and custody.
“In more that two years of the so-called investigation they have done nothing to collect and verify evidence for the crimes – the torturing and killing of Sergei Magnitsky,” Natalia Magnitsky said in a statement posted by the Hermitage Capital Fund.
The statement listed more than 50 investigative procedures, which detectives were supposed to make in the investigation of Magnitsky’s death in prison but never made.
“Inactivity of officials of the Russian Investigation Committee cannot be described other than a crime; as a result the responsible persons have been dodging penalty for 29 months, they have been able to conceal and destroy evidence, conspire to give false testimony, hide real circumstances of the crime and claim that prescription periods are over,” she said.
“Everything that happened to Sergei Magnitsky happened with the will of a large number of officials and against Sergei Magnitsky’s will,” she said.
Read More →
Cardin Expects ‘Macho’ Russian Response To Magnitsky Bill
Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty
By Richard Solash
April 19, 2012
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin (Democrat-Maryland) says he expects a “macho” response from Moscow should Congress pass legislation punishing Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
“We fully expect that there will be some reactions that are going to try to show [Russian] macho-ness rather than dealing with [human rights],” the senator said on April 19 at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think-tank.
Cardin last year introduced legislation that would ban visas for and freeze the assets of some 60 Russians connected with the Magnitsky case, which has become an international symbol of Russia’s human rights failings.
The lawyer died in jail in 2009 at the age of 37 after implicating top Russian officials in a complex scheme to defraud the government.
Independent investigations have found that Magnitsky was repeatedly denied medical care and beaten before his death.
Moscow is currently prosecuting only one low-level prison official in the case, amid allegations of a cover-up.
Independent of the legislation, the U.S. State Department last year imposed visa bans on implicated Russian officials.
In response, Moscow compiled a blacklist of U.S. officials it says violated the rights of two Russian citizens, a suspected international arms trafficker and a convicted drug smuggler.
Read More →
Co-Chairman McGovern Introduces Bill, with Co-Chairman Wolf as Original Cosponsor, Imposing Sanctions on Individuals Responsible for the Mistreatment of Sergei Magnitsky and for Other Gross Human Rights Violations
Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
United States Congress
THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012
Washington—Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission co-chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) today introduced the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, which would impose a visa ban and asset freeze on individuals responsible for the detention, abuse or death of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, as well as on individuals responsible for other gross violations of human rights.
Commission co-chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA); commission executive committee members Joseph Pitts (R-PA) and Chris Smith (R-NJ); and commission members Dan Burton (R-IN), Gerry Connolly (D-VA), and Ed Royce (R-CA) are original co-sponsors of the resolution. Other original co-sponsors include House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sander Levin (D-MI).
Mr. Magnitsky was wrongly arrested by Russian authorities and tortured to death after exposing the largest tax fraud in Russian history. The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act would end the impunity for those responsible for this crime, while also holding accountable individuals responsible for other gross violations of human rights against people seeking to expose illegal activity by Russian officials or to exercise fundamental rights and freedoms.
Read More →
Nocera Hits the Bulls-Eye on Magnitsky Act
Seth Mandel
04.17.2012 – 12:45 PM
President Obama has been decrying “the way Congress does its business these days” and promising to act “with or without this Congress,” so fed up is he by the lack of bipartisan solutions coming from the legislative branch. So the president, one would think, would be delighted that Congress has come together to produce a bipartisan, popular bill that would also give the president a strong foreign policy move while simultaneously beefing up his credentials on human rights and democracy.
I’m talking, of course, about the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011,” a bill that would sanction Russian human rights offenders. It is named after the Russian attorney who was detained without trial for investigating Russian corruption and then beaten and left to die in prison. It is intended to replace the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik amendment, aimed at getting the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration, but which is outdated and will likely be repealed now that Russia is joining the World Trade Organization. The bill was introduced by Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and has broad bipartisan support. But Obama staunchly opposes the bill. Today, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera adds his voice to the growing chorus of commentators, both liberal and conservative, who support the bill:
I have to confess that when I first began receiving press releases about this effort, which has gained traction in Europe as well as the U.S., I didn’t take it very seriously. Visa restrictions didn’t seem like much of a price for allowing an innocent lawyer to die in prison. But after watching the reaction of the Russian government, which has repeatedly and vehemently denounced the bill — and which is now, out of pure spite, prosecuting Magnitsky posthumously — I’ve come to see that it really does hit these officials where it hurts them most.
Read More →
Court refuses to include Human Rights Council’s report in Magnitsky case files
Interfax:Russia & CIS General Newswire
MOSCOW. April 16 (Interfax) – Moscow’s Ostankinsky District Court has upheld prosecutor’s refusal to take into consideration the conclusions set forth by the presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in the tax evasion case against Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Earlier, Magnitsky’s relatives petitioned to add the Council’s report to the case files.
Igor Vasin, a lawyer for Magnitsky’s family, who filed the petition on the relatives’ behalf, insisted that the report mentions persons who investigated criminal charges against Magnitsky but who were directly interested in a certain outcome of the case.
Prosecutor Boris Kibis argued that the report was irrelevant because it had nothing to do with the tax evasion charges.
Having heard the arguments presented by the sides, the judge ruled against the report.
The court also rejected lawyer Vasin’s request to replace the prosecutor.
Read More →
Turning the Tables on Russia
The New York Times. The Opinion Pages
By JOE NOCERA
Published: April 16, 2012
Who knew that what corrupt Russian officials care about, more than just about anything, is getting their assets — and themselves — out of their own country? They own homes in St. Tropez, fly to Miami for vacation and set up bank accounts in Switzerland. They understand the importance of stashing their money someplace where the rule of law matters, which is most certainly not Russia. Besides, getting out of Russia is one of the pleasures of being a corrupt Russian official.
As it turns out, a man named William Browder knows this. As does Senator Benjamin Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland. As do plenty of other senators, on both sides of the aisle.
As a result, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will likely report out a bill in the next few weeks that would force the State Department to deny visas, and freeze the assets, of Russian officials who are labeled “gross human rights abusers.” After that, it will be attached to an important trade bill that the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-controlled House need to pass later this summer. Which would make it a rare and welcome moment of bipartisanship in this rancorous political season.
Read More →
Khodorkovsky Wants U.S. Visa Ban Over Yukos Lawyer Death
By Henry Meyer – Apr 10, 2012
Former Yukos Oil Co. owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky is pressing the U.S. to impose a visa ban and freeze the assets of some 30 officials involved in the imprisonment of a company lawyer who died after being denied medical care in prison.
Vasily Aleksanyan, who had AIDS and developed cancer while in jail, was imprisoned for more than 2 1/2 years until December 2008. The European Court of Human Rights had demanded his release, saying that Russia violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights by denying him specialized treatment for AIDS. He died in October 2011 at the age of 39.
A group of U.S. senators last year proposed a bipartisan bill that would impose a visa ban and asset freeze on 60 Russian officials implicated in the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail, as well as others guilty of human-rights violations. Four senators last month said they wouldn’t support an Obama administration effort to repeal trade restrictions against Russia without support for the legislation.
“To ensure the deaths of both Aleksanyan and Magnitsky were not in vain, actions must be taken against those responsible for the abuses of their human rights,” Khodorkovsky’s defense team said in an e-mailed statement from New York. “This is the only way to achieve some justice for victims and to dissuade further tragedies in Russia.”
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
