Senators Cardin, Wicker, Shaheen: Spoke on human rights violations in Russia and the case of Sergei Magnitsky
Morning Business
Feb 16 2012
10:46 AM
Colloquy: (Senators Cardin, Wicker, Shaheen)
Spoke on human rights violations in Russia and the case of Sergei Magnitsky.
Senator Cardin: (10:08 AM)
“Just last week as part of a bilateral Presidential commission, Attorney General Holder met with Russian Minister of Justice to discuss the rule of law issues. That same week, Russian officials moved in their criminal prosecution of Sergei Magnitsky. I remind you that Mr. Magnitsky has been dead for more than two years. Last may, I joined with Senator McCain and Senator Wicker and 11 other of our senators from both parties to introduce the Sergei Magnitsky rule of law accountability act. We now have nearly 30 cosponsors, and I urge more to join us and look at ways to move forward on helping halt abuses like this in the future. After exposing the largest known tax fraud in Russian history, Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax lawyer, working for an American firm in Moscow, was falsely arrested for crimes he did not commit and tortured in prison. Six months later, he became seriously ill and was consistently denied medical attention despite 20 former requests and then on the night of November 16, 2009, he went into critical condition, but instead of being treated in a hospital, he was put in an isolation cell, chained to a bed, beaten by eight prison guards with rubber batons for one hour and 18 minutes until he was dead. Sergei Magnitsky was 37 years old, left behind a wife, two children and a dependent mother. While the facts around his arrest, detention and death has been independently verified and accepted at the highest levels of Russian government, those implicated in his death and the corruption he exposed remain unpunished, in positions of authority, and some have even been decorated and promoted. Following Magnitsky ‘s death, they have continued to target others, including American business interests in Moscow. These officials have been credibly linked to similar crimes and have ties to Russian mafia, international arms trafficking and even drug cartels. The money they stole from the Russian budget was bartered through a network of banks including two in the united states. Calls for investigation have fallen on deaf ears, and in a turn of events, law enforcement officers accused by Magnitsky and those most involved in his murder are – and those that are accused by Magnitsky and those most complicit in his murder are moving to try him for the very tax crimes they committed. think of the irony here. He exposed corruption in Russia. As a result, he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed. Now, those who perpetrated the crime on him are charging him after his death with the crimes they committed. We cannot be silent.”
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Russia’s Perversion of Justice
From the gulags to the “doctor’s plot,” Russian history is replete with politically orchestrated show trials. But an upcoming case may achieve the unlikely feat of raising the bar for legal and political corruption. That is because the defendant in the case, attorney Sergei Magnitsky, has been dead for two years. What’s more, his trial is being sought by the very government and police officials who may have been complicit in his death.
Earlier this month, officials with the Russian Interior Ministry announced their plan to resubmit a tax evasion case that would see Magnitsky go on trial posthumously. Magnitsky first incurred these officials’ ire in 2007, when he was an attorney with of the Moscow-based American law firm Firestone Duncan and an outside counsel for the investment fund Hermitage Capital. In June 2007, police from the ministry raided both Firestone Duncan and Hermitage Capital’s Moscow offices on the pretext of tax evasion charges. In the course of the raid, they took away the official documents and seals of the fund’s Russian investment companies – despite the fact these documents were outside the scope of their search warrant.
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MP Denis MacShane warns against investing in Russia
A former minister for Europe has urged the Government to attach “health and safety” warnings to promotional material that encourages businesses to invest in Russia.
Denis MacShane, Labour MP for Rotherham, has written to Lord Green, the trade minister, in protest at a conference scheduled for today and sponsored by UK Trade & Investment that will promote Skolkovo, billed as Russia’s Silicon Valley.
Citing the damage caused to companies by “corrupt officials in Russia”, he wrote: “It seems irresponsible for British companies to be putting themselves in harm’s way without full disclosure about the tragedies that could befall them in Russia.
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Our Friends the Russians: The State Department and John Kerry still believe in the ‘reset’
In its latest display of political retribution, the Kremlin is putting a human-rights lawyer and corruption whistleblower on trial for tax evasion. The notable news here is that Sergei Magnitsky died in police custody two years ago. His prosecution is a poke in the eye of the man’s family, the U.S. and the rule of law in Russia.
Magnitsky worked for an American law firm in Moscow whose clients included a Jewish rights group and the investment house Hermitage Capital. In 2008 he uncovered evidence of police corruption and embezzlement. The police promptly put him in prison, claiming he had helped Hermitage evade taxes. Eleven months later, he died.
A Russian government committee found that Magnitsky was beaten and denied treatment for pancreatitis and recommended that his prison doctors and interrogators be investigated. This didn’t happen. Instead, with the Kremlin’s blessing, the police last summer reopened the case against a dead man and have now announced plans for a trial.
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Magnitsky’s mother accuses investigators of repression
Natalya Magnitskaya, the mother of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a detention facility in Moscow in 2009, has asked the Interior Ministry to stop summoning her for questioning because it is causing her suffering, the press service for Hermitage Capital said.
“Yesterday, Sergei Magnitsky’s mother sent a statement to the Interior Ministry saying the Interior Ministry has been subjecting [Sergei Magnitsky’s] closest relatives to emotional torture for the past six months, trying to cause them to sign statements refusing his rehabilitation,” the press service for Hermitage Capital told Interfax.
The source said the complaint, which is addressed to S. Solovyov, the head of the Interior Ministry’s Investigations Unit for the Central Federal District, states that “the illegal investigative measures are causing me and the closest relatives of my son emotional suffering.”
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Magnitsky’s case will be sent to court immediately after defense lawyers study it – source (Part 2)
The tax evasion case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Hermitage Capital hedge fund lawyer who died in a Moscow jail in 2009, will be sent to court immediately after the defense of the late lawyer examines it, a source at the Russian Interior Ministry told Interfax on Friday.
“The pre-trail investigation is over. The case will be sent to court as soon as defense lawyers examine it,” the source said.
Posthumous proceedings against Sergei Magnitsky will be passed over to a court as Magnitsky’s legal representatives “refuse to consent to the termination of the criminal proceedings against him,” the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
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Citizen Dave: The Week in Review… death, taxes, Castro, and quiet Republicans
They say there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. Well, now it looks like taxes are even more of a sure thing than death.
It took the Russians, a country that knows something about the dark side, to figure that one out. Turns out Russian officials are going to retry a fellow named Sergei Magnitsky for tax evasion. The funny thing is that Magnitsky evaded life a couple of years ago. He’s dead.
But that’s not stopping the tax collectors in Moscow. Apparently, Magnitsky will be subpoenaed and forced to come back to life to appear at his trial. And it gets worse. If he loses, he has to stay alive long enough to work to pay back what he owes. Geez. Talk about an “evil empire.”
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Magnitsky’s colleague writes open letter to presidential candidates
Jamison Firestone, a colleague of late Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died at a Moscow jail, has called on the Russian presidential candidates to take charge of the Magnitsky inquest.
Today Sergei Magnitsky’s colleague has sent an open letter to all the Russian presidential candidates, urging them to put an end to the mocking of Sergei Magnitsky’s relatives by Russian law enforcement agencies, the company said in a statement obtained by Interfax on Thursday.
Despite the unprecedented public outrage both in and outside Russia, law enforcement agencies have not advanced in their investigation of these crimes, having blamed only ordinary doctors, or petty criminals and drug addicts, or Magnitsky himself, according to the letter sent to Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Prokhorov, Sergei Mironov, Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
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U.S. State Department urges Russia to punish those responsible for Magnitsky’s death
RAPSI
The United States continues to urge Russia to bring to account those responsible for the death of Hermitage Capital Investment Fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky, who was accused of corporate tax evasion in relation to his work for the Hermitage Capital investment fund died in an investigative isolation ward in November 2009. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, his death was caused by cardiovascular insufficiency.
The criminal case against Magnitsky was terminated by the Investigative Committee due to his death, but the Prosecutor General’s Office decided to resume the investigation.
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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