Concerns over the rule of law in Russia
BBC News
BBC News Russia Business Report covers the Sergei Magnitsky case and how government officials are now trying to blame the US$230 million tax fraud on the man who blew the whistle on the crime. Sergei Magnitsky alerted Russian officials to the tax fraud plot 3 weeks before it was executed, but instead of arresting the culprits and investigating the scam, Sergei Magnitsky was arrested and imprisoned by the very people who he had identified as players in the fraud scheme. He died one year later, in November 2009, while still in custody after suffering torture and denial of medical care.
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Leading Russian TV journalist’s programme reportedly censored
Ekho Moskvy
Moscow – The management of Channel One has edited out the traditional concluding commentary from [a leading Russian television journalist] Vladimir Pozner’s programme broadcast of Sundays. In this fragment the TV journalist wanted to recall the cases of Sergey Magnitskiy, Vasiliy Aleksanyan and Svetlana Bakhmina.
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DIFFERENT ANGLE
Are you Banking any of the 60 Russians that the EU wants to Sanction?
Kenneth Rijock
Financial Crime Consultant, for World-Check
The European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has recommended to the full European Parliament, in its Human Rights Report, that it adopt sanctions against sixty Russian officials, denying them visas for the Schengen area, and freeze their assets and bank accounts within the EU. These PEPs were reportedly implicated in the illegal detention, torture and death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky last year, and the $230m tax rebate fraud involving Hermitage Capital Management.
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Crime and unjust punishment in Russia
The Lancet
Tom Parfitt
A year after the controversial death in a Moscow detention centre of Sergei Magnitsky—a 37-year-old lawyer who was denied vital medical treatment—Russia is promising an overhaul of its antiquated prison system. But will the reforms bring real change to health-care provision?
It was 1830 h on November 16, 2009, when Sergei Magnitsky was transferred to the Matrosskaya Tishina detention centre in Moscow. The 37-year-old lawyer had been healthy when he was arrested a year earlier on fraud charges that colleagues said were trumped-up in revenge for his work for Hermitage, an international investment fund that passed evidence about corrupt officials to Russian media. Yet within 4 hours of arriving at Matrosskaya Tishina (Sailors’ Rest), Magnitsky was dead.
In the past year the Magnitsky Affair, as it is known in Russia, has become emblematic of the country’s woeful human rights record and its—sometimes wilful—neglect of the sick in prison. 6 weeks after Magnitsky was found lifeless in his cell, the public oversight commission (ONK) for Moscow’s pretrial detention centres published a scathing report describing the events that led up to his death.
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Russia Expresses Anger Over E.U. Visa Restrictions
New York Times
By ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW — Russian officials responded angrily on Thursday to a proposal that would deny European visas to a list of 60 officials who have been implicated in the death of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in pretrial detention in Moscow last year.
Konstantin I. Kosachev, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the State Duma, condemned the proposed ban as “Bolshevik tactics” and said Russia might be forced to “very harshly retaliate” if the proposal went forward.
He said such pressure “could have extremely negative consequences for the entire relationship between Russia and the European Union.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the move “direct interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state, and open pressure on the judicial system of the Russian Federation.”
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Dancing with the big boys
Warsaw – In its foreign policy Poland has chosen realism over romanticism
CRITICS and supporters of Polish foreign policy agree on one thing. Relations with Russia have been transformed in the past three years. But into what?
To the critics, a planned visit by Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, to Warsaw in December epitomises surrender, stemming from naivety or cynicism. They see Poland scampering after big countries such as Russia, France and Germany, rather like a teenager desperate to hang out with adults, heedless of the national interest. According to the leader of the opposition (and former prime minister), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland has become a Russian-German condominium. Some in his Law and Justice party blame Russian dirty deeds for the plane crash in Smolensk in April that killed his brother Lech, the Polish president, and scores of aides and officials. Two party members have just been in Washington, DC, trying to win American support for an investigation into what they believe is a huge cover-up.
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Russia and the Rule of Law
EU Russia Centre
by Anthony Brenton, a former UK ambassador to Russia
The inadequacies of Russia’s legal and judicial systems have recently been very much on display. The second trial of fallen oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which looks no less politically motivated than the first, is approaching its close. We have just marked the first anniversary of the death in custody of Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, imprisoned for a year without charge for exposing deep corruption in the Russian Interior Ministry. Yet another respected investigative journalist has been beaten up, and another opposition oligarch found himself subject to the aggressive attention of the Tax Police. Russia has fallen to 154th place (out of 178) in Transparency International’s ranking of countries in terms of the perceived corruption of their public officials (including police and judges), placing Russia well below eg Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Nigeria. Close to 30% of the cases currently awaiting attention by the European court of Human Rights now concern Russia, far more than for any other country.
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Documentary Commemorates Death of Sergei Magnitsky
By Marina Grushin, 24 Nov. 2010
In an unprecedented show of solidarity, lawmakers and human rights activists gathered in capital cities around the world Tuesday to condemn the rampant lawlessness and corruption in Russia.
Legislators in Washington, Ottawa, and cities across Europe hosted the events to commemorate Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison last year. On the one-year anniversary of Magnitsky’s death, his supporters premiered “Justice for Sergei,” a documentary chronicling the lawyer’s struggle against corrupt officials in Russia.
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Bill Browder: The Russians are out to kill me…
Evening Standard
London, A year ago last week, millionaire hedge fund boss Bill Browder received a chilling call at his north-west London home that would change his life for ever. The call was from Russia and it was to say that Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who had been held on trumped-up charges and tortured in a Moscow prison, was dead.
“It was the worst moment of my life,” recalls Browder. “I walked round my bedroom in a daze, full of dread. I’m the head of a $1 billion hedge fund, I always know what to do, but for the first time in my life I felt lost. Sergei was 37. He had a wife and two sons and everything to live for. Yet he had been tortured and died —all because of his refusal to falsely testify against me.
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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
