Rights activists skeptical about Interior Ministry reshuffles
Interfax
Leading Russian human rights activists believe the recent reshuffles in the leadership of the Interior Ministry announced by President Dmitry Medvedev are not a sign of a thorough reform of the Russian law enforcement institutions.
“This looks more like an outbreak of some intra-clan rivalry rather than a real reform of the Interior Ministry,” Lev Ponomaryov, the leader of the organization For Human Rights, told Interfax on Saturday in commenting on the reshuffles.
“I am sure that a real reform should begin with the interior minister,” Ponomaryov said.
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European Parliamentarians Raise Questions in Magnitsky Case
Question for written answer
to the Commission
Rule 117
Werner Schulz (Verts/ALE) and Heidi Hautala (Verts/ALE)
Subject: Sanctions for Russian officials involved in the case of Sergey Magnitsky
Restrictive and targeted measures, such as those proposed by the European Parliament in its resolution of 16 December 2010 with regard to the case of Sergey Magnitsky, have recently been the subject of much debate and were touched upon in discussions on the need to review EU Neighbourhood policy, in particular in the light of the sanctions imposed on Belarus by the Council on 31 January 2011 and the need to curtail the severe human rights violations currently taking place in Southern Europe.
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NTV Gives Airtime to Magnitsky’s Fraud Claims
State-controlled NTV television has aired a lengthy report on the luxury lifestyles of officials implicated in the case of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky — two months after the story was first broken by Magnitsky’s supporters.
The 14-minute documentary, whose title roughly translates as “Fat Cats,” voices charges by Magnitsky’s supporters that Moscow police and tax service officials were involved in a 2007 scheme to embezzle $230 million in tax refunds originally intended for Hermitage.
“Fat Cats,” which aired late Monday, is based on series of exposés by Hermitage that claimed officials implicated in the case own assets worth millions of dollars that they could not afford on their salaries.
Magnitsky was jailed in 2008 after accusing officials in the $230 million fraud and died in pretrial detention of health problems 11 months later. His supporters say the case was fabricated as punishment for whistleblowing and that he was denied medical help.
While the allegations are not new, their appearance on national television is.
NTV in recent months has aired critical reports on now-ousted Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko that reflected what later became the government’s stance. In May, it aired a strikingly unbiased report on jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
But Magnitsky’s former boss, Jamison Firestone, suggested that NTV’s report on Magnitsky was part of a turf war at the tax service, not a signal of a looming crackdown on government officials linked to the case. Hermitage’s exposés were simply used by enemies of the officials involved in the case, he said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement. онлайн займы займы на карту срочно https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php buy over the counter medicines
Le bal des menteurs
Le Monde
Avis de tempête pour les policiers russes, désormais scrutés à la loupe. Depuis le 1er mars, date d’entrée en vigueur de la nouvelle loi sur la police, ils doivent se soumettre à des tests censés mesurer leur aptitude au métier. Il s’agit de moraliser la profession et aussi d’alléger de 20 % les effectifs du ministère, soit 1,2 million de personnes actuellement. Le processus est “long et douloureux”, selon le chef de l’institution, le ministre de l’intérieur, Rachid Nourgaliev.
Du simple agent de la circulation au ministre, tous passent à la moulinette de la “réévaluation”. Les candidats sont testés sur leurs capacités d’endurance physique, sur leurs liens éventuels avec le monde du crime, sur leur connaissance du code de la police, un manuel précisant que le policier doit être poli, sentir bon et refuser tout pot-de-vin.
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Surkov, McFaul talk corruption
First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, Vladislav Surkov, traveled to Washington D.C. to discuss child protection, migration and anti-corruption and prison reform efforts as part of the U.S. – Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Civil Society Working Group – while discussion of the ongoing controversy over the death of Sergei Magnitsky was apparently left off the table.
The Russian delegation, comrpised of officials and human rights activists, arrived in Washington on Tuesday, June 6. The participants were divided into subgroups, each of which dealt with one specific issue. “Some visited prisons, some focused on child abuse,” said Yana Yakovleva, a representative of Business-Solidarnost, a participating community organization aimed at protecting entrepreneurs. “Basically, it was a sharing experience and an exchange of views.”
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Russian Media Shine Spotlight on Stepanov’s Mother
The government television channel NTV devoted a third of its Saturday investigative show Russian Sensation to the Barron’s story on Olga Stepanova, a Moscow tax official whose husband Vladlen Stepanov (who claims they’re divorced) acquired a suburban Moscow mansion, a villa in Dubai and a well-stocked secret bank account at Credit Suisse (ticker: CS) when Olga’s office handled several of Russia’s biggest tax scams.
The schemes also victimized the hedge fund firm Hermitage Capital and led to the death in police custody of Hermitage’s whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky (see Barron’s, “Crime and Punishment in Putin’s Russia,” April 16, 2011).
After our expose, Stepanov launched a campaign of counter-publicity in which he took out newspaper ads claiming he’d legitimately earned the Credit Suisse account’s Eur. 8 million, now frozen by Swiss prosecutors in a money laundering inquiry (see Weekday Trader Extra, “After Swiss Freeze Millions, Stepanov Swings Back,” May 31, 2011).
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The Vegetable Summit
Leaders of the European Union and Russia are meeting Thursday and Friday in Nizhny Novgorod for yet another summit. President Dmitry Medvedev already meets his two EU counterparts, European Council President Herman van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, twice a year at EU-Russia summits, as well as at numerous other international meetings such as the Group of Eight and G20 gatherings. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also meets Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, about once a month at various meetings. Thus, it is no surprise that both sides are ready to consider reducing the bilateral summits to once a year, which would be the same frequency as the EU summits with the United States, China or India.
Summits rarely produce breakthroughs, and this one will likely not be an exception to the rule. The dwindling number of journalists who follow these summits will have little to report apart from EU efforts to overturn the Russian ban of vegetable imports from the EU following the E. coli health scare in Germany.
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Congress goes after Russian officials for human rights violations
President Barack Obama is set to meet with Russian President Dmitri Medvdev on May 26 in France on the sidelines of the G-8 meetings. In advance of that meeting, Congress has unveiled a new bill to force the administration to sanction Russian officials for human rights violations.
“One of the core foreign policy objectives when we came into office was the Russia reset,” Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call on Friday. “It has been one of the most productive relationships for the United States in terms of the signing and ratification of the New START treaty, cooperation on nuclear security, cooperation with regard to Iran sanctions and nonproliferation generally, the northern distribution network into Afghanistan that supports our effort there, and our discussions with Russia about expanding trade ties and their interest in joining the WTO, as well as Russia’s increased cooperation with NATO that was manifested by the NATO-Russia meetings in Lisbon.”
But Rhodes didn’t mention what most in Congress see as Russia’s backsliding on issues of democracy, freedom of the press, and human rights. A large group of senators introduced a bill on Thursday afternoon that they hope will force the administration to address this issue. Called the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011, it is named after the anti-corruption lawyer who was tortured and died in a Russian prison in 2009. The bill targets his captors as well as any other Russian officials “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of human rights.”
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Sergei Magnitsky charges fabricated, says Russia inquiry into Moscow lawyer’s death
In a landmark investigation into the cell death of Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, a special Kremlin commission is likely to publicly implicate members of Russia’s Interior Ministry and FSB.
The metal cage used for prisoners in courtroom No 14 at the Tverskoi regional court was empty during a recent hearing, its door wide open, when the court considered the arrest of Ivan Cherkasov, a senior executive at British investment fund Hermitage Capital.
Mr Cherkasov, who lives in London, said he has no intention of returning to face charges of tax evasion he says are false. He said his arrest was an act of revenge by members of the Russian security services.
Just days before, an independent commission set up by President Dmitry Medvedev said that the charges in the case of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky were fabricated and that Interior Ministry and FSB security service officers were at least partly responsible for Mr Magnitsky’s death in Moscow’s Butyrka prison in 2009.
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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
