Moscow Court Rules That Probe Of Dead Lawyer Magnitsky Is Legal
Moscow City Court has ruled that investigations of deceased attorney Sergei Magnitsky are proper and legal and can continue.
The court on February 27 rejected an appeal by Magnitsky’s relatives to halt government investigations of the deceased attorney for the British-based Hermitage Capital Management.
Magnitsky, 37, was jailed after accusing Interior Ministry officials of involvement in a massive corruption scandal.
He later died in pre-trial detention in 2009 after suffering abuse and medical neglect.
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Baucus meets Medvedev ahead of Russia trade debate
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) is on his way back from Russia after meeting with outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev, just months before a congressional debate over whether to establish permanent normalized trade relations with Moscow.
The visit was highly coordinated with the Obama administration, according to an aide to Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
Baucus is anticipating a debate over granting Russia permanent normalized trade relations (PNTR) status — which would also require the repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment — sometime this spring or summer. By then, Russia will be a full member of the World Trade Organization, and U.S. businesses would be at a disadvantage in doing business in Russia if the PNTR issue is not resolved, according to Baucus.
“Expanding trade with Russia could mean billions of dollars of new opportunities for American businesses, ranchers and farmers and create thousands of jobs here at home. But Russia has to play by the rules, and having Russia in the WTO will help to make that happen,” the senator said in a statement.
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U.S.-Russian Trade Ties Face Some Political Snags
With relations between Russia and the United States on edge over Syrian policy and strident anti-American statements by the Russian government in response to political protests here, the Obama administration and its Democratic allies in Congress have begun an aggressive push to end cold-war-era trade restrictions and make Russia a full trade partner.
The seemingly incongruous and politically fraught campaign to persuade Congress to grant permanent, normal trade status reflects a stark flip in circumstances: suddenly, after more than 35 years of tussling over trade, Russia has the upper hand.
In December, Russia became the last major economy to win admission to the World Trade Organization — a bid that was supported by the Obama administration because it required Russia to bring numerous laws into conformity with international standards, including tighter safeguards for intellectual property. It was also part of the so-called reset in relations with the Kremlin.
But if Congress does not repeal the restrictions, adopted in 1974 to pressure the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration and now largely irrelevant, the United States will soon be in violation of W.T.O. rules. American corporations could be put at a serious disadvantage — paying higher tariffs, for instance, than European and Asian competitors, which would immediately enjoy the benefits of Russia’s new status.
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Ministers in joint attack on Russian corruption
Three former foreign secretaries will join forces this week to condemn “corruption and impunity” in Russia ahead of the presidential election on Sunday.
David Miliband, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind will urge the Commons to introduce travel bans and asset freezes against officials implicated in the death of a young lawyer fighting government corruption in 2009.
Mr Miliband will press the case of Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison after investigating the country’s biggest tax fraud, and make clear that he believes the episode “has rightly become a cause célèbre for what is wrong in Russia” .
In a warning shot at Vladimir Putin, days before he is expected to be returned as president, Mr Miliband will point out that “democratic spirit [in Russia is] stronger than many people thought”. The motion, put together by Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP and former Foreign Office lawyer, is backed by MPs from across the political spectrum.
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Georgian National Broadcaster
1TV.GE
Bill Browder speaks to Georgian National Broadcaster about the Sergei Magnitsky case. Browder was attending the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Winter meeting in Vienna where he gave a speech during the session on Democracy and Human Rights. He later hosted a side event where over over 45 parliamentarians from several national delegations heard him speak about the Magnitsky case the on-going cover-up of the crimes that lead to Magnitsky’s death in custody in 2009.
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Prosecuting the Dead
In 897 AD in what was called “the Cadaver Synod”, Pope Formosus was tried for various violations of Church laws. He was found guilty, his edicts were annulled, his robes were taken from him, and three fingers on his right hand were severed, before the former Pope was thrown in the Tiber River. Bizarrely, Pope Formosus had died of natural causes several months earlier. They prosecuted a dead man. Fast forward over a thousand years to 2012. Russia is about to put on trial a dead man, Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer, who died in prison from the effects of his imprisonment and torture by the Russian Government in November 2009.
Magnitsky’s death has caused universal condemnation by world leaders, international organizations, such as the European Union, as well as human rights groups. His crime was exposing a massive tax fraud scheme by the Russian government and officials within the Medvedev/Putin regime in the amount of over $230 million dollars. Not content to leave Magnitsky in peace, the Russian government has hounded his family and harassed his mother, Natalia Magnitskaya. They are even going to bring charges in absentia against Magnitsky’s former employer, William Browder, a British citizen, of the Hermitage Capital Fund.
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Russia reaches for the stars with its own Silicon Valley
Skolkovo’s facilities are designed to attract the best minds in science to Moscow, but investors are still warned to be wary.
Russia is planning another revolution. Moscow has pinned its future on transforming 400 hectares (1.5 sq miles) of nondescript farmland 20 miles west of the Kremlin into a base camp for the next generation of Mark Zuckerbergs.
By 2015 these desolate fields will be transformed into a city of 35,000 boasting some of the most advanced research centres in the world, if you believe the Kremlin’s plans. This is Silikonnovaya Dolina: Russia’s Silicon Valley.
It’s no pipe dream, according to promotional material handed out to British scientists, entrepreneurs and investors last week as part of a global mission to drum up interest in the Skolkovo Innovation Centre, President Dmitry Medvedev’s pet project.
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Russia’s Silicon Valley woos British investors
A delegation from Russia’s proposed ‘Silicon Valley’ development, Skolkovo, came to the UK this week in an effort to persuade UK businesses to invest in the high-tech hub being built on the outskirts of Moscow.
They faced awkward questions, however, about the political landscape that companies might face if they transferred operations to Russia. Denis MacShane, Labour MP for Rotherham, wrote to Lord Green, the trade minister, criticising the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry for hosting the conference, and pointing to the difficulties that many UK companies had faced in Russia.
“I believe the Government should add…an official health and safety warning so British businesses seeking to be involved in Russia do so with their eyes open to the risks they run,” Mr MacShane wrote.
He cited the case of Hermitage Capital, a hedge fund which was forced to leave Russia, and whose lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in jail after uncovering an alleged $230m corruption scheme by high-level officials.
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Can Enlightenment Come to Russia?
History is replete with tales of those whose enlightened view of the world became their ultimate undoing. It happened in the early 1400s to John Wycliffe who disregarded papal opposition and translated the Bible into the language of ordinary Englishmen. Wycliffe died of a stroke before he could be charged with heresy and burned at the stake, but that did not prevent a trial and conviction years later that resulted in his unearthed bones being cast into the River Swift. Unfortunately, two similar tales are playing out today in modern Russia, and we can only hope that the endings will be vastly different.
The first tale resurrected just last week when we learned that the Russian Ministry of Interior intends to put on trial the “bones” of Sergei Magnitsky, who suspiciously died in custody two years ago after he testified that Ministry officials embezzled $230 million dollars. This bizarre saga will break new ground as the first posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history. For those interested in rule of law, this is a particularly outrageous example of the “legal nihilism” that President Medvedev at first decried but has since accepted.
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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
