Russian activist slams investigators’ latest statements on Hermitage fund
Ekho Moskvy
15 November: The Russian Interior Ministry’s statement that lawyer Sergey Magnitskiy, who died in 2009 in a pre-trial detention centre, participated directly in the embezzlement of budget money to the tune of R5.4bn [around 174.6m dollars] is “the height of cynicism”, Zoya Svetova, a member of the public oversight commission for Moscow’s places of compulsory detention, has said on air on Ekho Moskvy radio station.
She said she viewed the accusation as “a response to the campaign which is currently being conducted by the investment fund Hermitage Capital”, where Magnitskiy worked. “Its aim is to expose Interior Ministry personnel involved in the theft of an enormous sum of money – R5.4bn – from the Russian budget,” Svetova said, adding that this embezzlement had been investigated by none other than Magnitskiy.
“In the Russian law-enforcement system, it often happens that a victim suddenly becomes the accused,” she said.
The public oversight commission carried out its own investigation following Magnitskiy’s death, Svetova said. “We spoke to staff at the prison and with doctors, and I continue to assert that he was indeed reduced to death there – it was done intentionally,” she said
“Tomorrow it will be a year since the day Magnitskiy died, and in all European parliaments and the US Congress a film about his case will be shown,” she said. “It tells why Magnitskiy died, the conditions in which he was held in the Russian pre-trial detention centre, because his death still has not been investigated, and there are very great suspicions that he died from a lack of medical assistance, or was perhaps even murdered,” she added. срочный займ на карту unshaven girl female wrestling www.zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com займ онлайн на карту без отказа
Silence over Russian ‘martyr’; Lawyer’s family hope film will help win justice for man who died a year ago after fighting corruption
The Sunday Telegraph
14 November 2010 – In the eyes of his supporters, he was a martyr in the fight against corruption, who paid the ultimate price for exposing Russia’s biggest-ever tax scandal. In the eyes of the authorities, though, Sergei Magnitsky was a criminal suspect himself, whose death while awaiting trial in a “dungeon-like” prison merited no further investigation.
Now, exactly a year after he was found dead in a squalid jail cell, Mr Magnitsky’s mother and colleagues are to mount a challenge to the Kremlin’s silence with a documentary to be shown to British parliamentarians on Tuesday.
“So far nobody has explained what happened,” said Natalya Magnitskaya, his mother, who has accused the Russian judiciary of “destroying” her son. “I do not understand why this has happened to him. He always respected the law.”
Mr Magnitsky is believed to have uncovered one of the biggest tax frauds in Russian history, perpetrated by a gang of police officers who allegedly plundered the state’s coffers to the tune of £144million.
Those same policemen then turned on their accuser and jailed him, in what friends claim was an attempt to pressure him into denouncing one of his clients, an investor in Russia who had fallen out with the Kremlin.
In the event, Mr Magnitsky did not crack but his health did. He developed a severe pancreatic condition while being held in Butyrka prison, in Moscow, a notoriously spartan Tsarist-era jail that once held the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Three hours after being transferred to another facility, he died aged just 37.
“They put him in dungeon-like conditions,” added Jamison Firestone, the boss at the law firm where Mr Magnitsky worked. “Cells without windows, humidity, they turned off his hot water, and the sewage.”
Since he died, Mr Magnitsky’s story has become a diplomatic flashpoint between Russia and its foreign partners. President Dmitry Medvedev has been forced to change the law to ensure that people charged with white-collar crimes are not jailed before they have even been tried.
Yet the official investigation into his death, which is still open, has gone nowhere. Nobody has been arrested or charged.
Instead, the police officers whom Mr Magnitsky believed defrauded the state, and then tried to cover it up by jailing him, were handed top government awards last week.
The awards were unrelated to the Magnitsky case and came after two of the officers involved in the case were promoted.
Mr Magnitsky’s former client William Browder, a London-based businessman who is chief executive of Hermitage Capital Management, said that the plaudits beggared belief. “They are circling the wagons and protecting their own,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.
“Every step the interior ministry takes to cover up their crimes is more cynical than the last. It never ceases to amaze me just how evil these people can be.”
Last Friday, Transparency International, an anti-graft organisation, posthumously awarded Mr Magnitsky its Integrity Award.
“He battled as a lone individual against the power of an entire state,” said Sion Assidon, chairman of the awards committee. “He believed in the rule of law and integrity, and died for his belief.”
Meanwhile Benjamin Cardin, an American senator, has drawn up a list of 60 individuals he believes were complicit in the lawyer’s death and is pushing for them to face visa bans and asset freezes in Western countries.
At least two of the accused police have hit back, arguing that they are innocent and have been targeted in a smear campaign to deflect attention from Mr Browder.
Mr Browder, 46, who was born in the US but has since become a British citizen, is a controversial figure in Russia. The grandson of Earl Browder, the former leader of the American Communist party, he made his fortune during the 1990s by investing money in privatisations during the post-Soviet era.
However, the firm has made a point of exposing corporate corruption in companies it buys into, in the hope of improving managerial behaviour and share prices.
Once a supporter of Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, Mr Browder fell out of official favour after he started complaining about corporate governance in Russian energy giant Gazprom. He was denied a visa in 2005 and has been blacklisted as a threat to Rus-sia’s national security ever since.
In 2007, Russian police raided three of his offices carting off numerous documents. Baffled by the raids, he hired Mr Magnitsky to make inquiries.
The young lawyer quickly concluded that the policemen had used the company seals of two of the companies they had raided to steal the firms, and had then fraudulently demanded a tax refund to the tune of $230million (£143million). Mr Browder said he told all his lawyers, including Mr Magnitsky, to tread carefully.
“They started opening criminal cases against all our lawyers,” he says in the documentary about the affair. “I said: ‘Whatever is going on here, whatever you are doing, it is best to get out of harm’s way’.”
Mr Magnitsky was apparently unfazed and even testified against the police officers he believed had perpetrated the fraud.
It was a courageous act his family was later to regret. His mother said medicine she sent him for a stomach complaint was often held up, and that he was isolated.
He was repeatedly asked to denounce Mr Browder, who denies Russian accusations of tax evasion. Mr Magnitsky said he was only interested in denouncing the police officers he believed were corrupt.
His mother only learned of his death when she turned up at the prison gates to give him a parcel. “At first I didn’t believe it and thought they must be joking,” she recalled “My son was 37. He was full of energy and he was healthy.” “They put him in dungeon-like conditions. Cells without windows, they turned off his hot water займы на карту срочно микрозаймы онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://www.zp-pdl.com hairy woman
Film commemorates whistleblower’s death
The Express on Sunday
14 November 2010 – WESTMINSTER will unite with parliaments around the world on Tuesday to screen a film marking the first anniversary of the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in Russian police custody after exposing corrupt officials.
The film documents how Sergei testified against Russian officials who allegedly embezzled £142million of public funds in the largest tax refund fraud in Russian history.
Those he accused threw him in jail on false tax charges.
In a cramped and sometimes sewage-covered cell, Sergei developed health problems which went untreated, despite repeated requests for medical attention.
He died on November 16, 2009, aged 37, leaving behind a wife and two children.
The film Justice for Sergei will be shown at the European Parliament, in Germany, Estonia, Canada and the US.
“The main objective is to make sure everyone knows what really happened to Sergei,” says Bill Browder of London-based investment fund Hermitage Capital Management for whom Magnitsky was working at the time.
Despite an international campaign the Russian authorities have failed to punish those involved in his death.
And last week, Russia’s Interior Ministry granted awards to officers implicated in the tax evasion case.
Mr Browder added: “It has been demoralising to watch Russian officials give awards to the murderers.” быстрые займы онлайн микрозайм онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/apply-for-payday-loan-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php hairy woman
Hero lawyer’s hellish reward; Sergei Magnitsky linked Russian officials to a $230m fraud and died in a Moscow prison
The Sunday Times
14 November 2010 – When Sergei Magnitsky was 10 years old he read a book by Dante and told his aunt Tatyana it was “very interesting on all corners of heaven and hell”. The bookish, earnest little boy grew up to discover his own corner of hell, Moscow’s notorious Butyrka prison. He died in custody a year ago this week, and his case has become an international cause célèbre.
Magnitsky, a respected lawyer working for a UK-based investment firm, stood up against the Russian state after uncovering a huge tax fraud perpetrated by a group of senior police officers and government officials. His reward was to be arrested on trumped-up charges of tax evasion, held in horrifying conditions, and denied medical care and contact with friends and family.
The last time his mother, Natalia, and aunt saw him was at a court hearing, where he heard that his period of pre-trial imprisonment was to be extended. “Normally Sergei would smile and say something,” says Tatyana. “At this hearing we could no longer smile and when he left he waved to us with a gesture of despair.”
With all requests to visit 37-year-old Magnitsky in prison refused, these court hearings were the only opportunity the two women had to set eyes on him. Four days later, Magnitsky was dead.
Last week, he was given a posthumous Transparency International award for integrity. The chairman of the awards committee, which honours those who fight corruption, said Magnitsky had “believed in the rule of law and died for his belief”.
At the same time, several of the officials implicated in the crime that Magnitsky uncovered — embezzling $230m (¤168m) from the Russian state — and in hounding him to his death received distinguished awards for service to their country.
Magnitsky’s friends and supporters have given up hope of justice in Russia, where attempts to investigate his death have been frustrated by cover-ups. Instead, they are trying to ensure those responsible are contained in Russia and are unable to travel or invest their ill-gotten gains abroad.
This week at Westminster, the European parliament, the US Congress and the parliaments in Canada, Germany, Estonia and Poland, a film about Magnitsky’s life and death will be shown to politicians to try to persuade them to introduce a visa ban on a list of named individuals involved in his case. “We would also like their assets frozen,” says Bill Browder, chief executive of Hermitage Capital Management, Magnitsky’s former employer. “The idea is to inflict as much suffering as we can.”
Magnitsky’s story gives a frightening insight into the reality of modern Russia. It begins in the early 1990s, as Russia was moving from communism to capitalism and the Klondike-like rush to grab a piece of the action as the state’s assets were given away to the private sector. A chosen few, such as Roman Abramovich, became billionaires practically overnight.
Browder, a financier from Chicago with a Russian grandmother, saw an opportunity in the emerging market and set up shop in Moscow: over the next 10 years, at the helm of Hermitage Capital, he was to become the biggest foreign investor in the country, with $4.5 billion tied up in Russian industries. But doing business there was never straightforward. “A couple of years in I realised they’d forgotten to create any rules. There were no property rights, nothing to stop people being ripped off. So I decided to fight corruption,” he says.
Browder’s clients made a lot of money, some up to 30 times their original stake. But his forensic team of accountants and lawyers repeatedly picked up anomalies in the companies in which they invested.
Browder believes he was able to get away with making repeated allegations of corruption against leading businessmen at the time because it suited Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s president, who, seeing oligarchs as rivals, wanted to curb their power. But at the end of 2003, Putin himself took action by arresting Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the country’s richest man. With the rich on side — the sight of Russia’s wealthiest man appearing in court in a cage had a salutary effect on anyone who felt like challenging the president — Browder was a nuisance.
In November 2005, flying back after a weekend in London, he arrived in Moscow to be told that his visa had been annulled. He was flown out the next day and has not seen his home of 10 years since then.
“People said, ‘Bill, it’s been great but we’d like our money back, please’,” he recalls. So he moved most of his staff to London, withdrew his investments in Russia, and left three firms ticking along there with no assets, hoping he could revive them if the atmosphere in Moscow changed.
In June 2007, Hermitage’s office in Moscow was suddenly raided by the police, as was Firestone Duncan, the law firm it retained. Police seized the stamps, seals and certificates of the three companies Hermitage had kept going. In October 2007, Browder’s secretary got a call from a bailiff attached to a court telling her that one of the firms had a judgment against it for an unpaid debt. This was the first Browder had heard of any court hearing.
He got Magnitsky, one of Firestone Duncan’s staff, on the case: “Sergei was the ‘go to’ guy in Moscow on courts, taxes, fines, anything to do with civil law.”
What Magnitsky’s meticulous investigation uncovered over the next few months was at heart a simple scam. In 2006, Hermitage’s firms had made $1 billion profit and paid $230m in taxes. Stolen documents had been used to forge contracts claiming it owed $1 billion to shell companies and those claims had been ratified in a series of court hearings of which Hermitage had no knowledge. The firm had pleaded guilty, represented by lawyers it had never hired.
Magnitsky then discovered Browder no longer owned his companies, which had been re-registered to an organisation called Pluton, based in Tatarstan. The new owner turned out to be Viktor Markelov, who had been jailed for murder in 2001, then released two years later.
By June 2008 Magnitsky had turned up another odd thing: one of the companies had opened an account with a small, obscure, provincial bank. Why, since the company had no assets? The answer crystallised when he examined funds deposited at the bank, which suddenly shot up by $230m at the turn of the year. The fake debt had been used by the fraudsters to claim that Hermitage’s declared profit of $1 billion had been wrongly filed and that the company was therefore owed a tax rebate of $230m.
“The biggest rebate in Russian history was granted and paid out in one day — on Christmas Eve,” Browder says. “No questions asked, even though we had reported our companies stolen at the beginning of December. This was not our money, it was the Russian government’s money, so the authorities should have been motivated to do something. Instead, they opened a criminal case against our lawyers.”
Browder decided it was time to get everyone out. He would support them and their families if they fled to London. All but one took him up on his offer. “Sergei was a little different to the other guys,” he says. “He was an idealist. He knew the law and he believed it would protect him.”
Publicity about the case prompted an investigation by the State Investigative Committee, Russia’s equivalent of America’s FBI. “Sergei did the bravest thing any man can do in Russia: he testified against the police involved,” Browder says.
Magnitsky named two senior police officers. A month later, at the end of November, three of their subordinates arrested him, in front of his wife and two children. “He was refused even a telephone call to his family from prison,” Browder says. “From that day to the day he died, he never heard his children’s voices again.”
The lawyer was accused of conspiring with Browder to evade taxes. He was put in a cell with eight inmates and four beds, with the lights on 24 hours a day. He was told if he testified against Browder and withdrew his claims against the police he would be freed. “If he had taken them up on it, we would have understood,” says Browder. “We wanted him out any way we could. But to Sergei telling a lie would be more painful than physical suffering.”
Magnitsky was transferred to a cell with no heating and broken windows. He developed a respiratory tract infection. “Over the next few months he was held in a cell with no toilet, just a hole in the floor with sewage spilling everywhere,” Browder says. “They took away his means of boiling water, so he had no clean water to drink.
“In a prison like Butyrka the hardest thing is moving cells and getting new cellmates, as you have to work out who’s going to attack you. Sergei was moved 13 times.”
In 358 days in prison, Magnitsky complained in writing about his treatment more than 450 times. He developed pancreatitis and gallstones, which caused excruciating pain. Court hearings, despite being the only time he caught a glimpse of his family, were also an ordeal. He described being held for hours in a cell so crowded that he could stand only on one leg.
He wrote: “Justice… turns into a process of grinding human flesh to mincemeat for prisons and camps, a process in which people can neither effectively defend themselves nor even realise what’s happening. One can only think about when it will end, when one can get rid of this physical and emotional torture.”
His last hours were pieced together by his friends and investigators in Moscow. A cellmate banged on the doors and pleaded for help for five hours as Magnitsky lay doubled in pain. He was eventually transferred to Matrosskaya Tishina, a prison with medical facilities, but on arrival was put into a straitjacket and left in an isolation cell. One hour and 18 minutes later he died.
No one told his family. His mother discovered he was dead when she arrived with a food parcel at Butyrka the next day and was redirected to Matrosskaya Tishina.
Before his funeral, Magnitsky’s body lay in an open casket. There was severe bruising to both his hands. An official autopsy mentioned a mysterious hole in his tongue. The family was refused permission to commission its own post-mortem report.
Extracts from his letters of complaint were published by a Russian newspaper and caused outrage. “His story touched so many people,” says Browder.
A year on, righting the wrong done to his friend has become Browder’s mission, taking over his life. “But this took over Sergei’s life, forever,” he says. “I owe him.” hairy woman buy viagra online female wrestling https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com онлайн займ
Investigators in Magnitsky Case Get Awards
The Interior Ministry has awarded officers connected to the investigation of a tax evasion case against Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in pretrial detention last year, Magnitsky’s supporters said Wednesday.
Interior Ministry investigator Oleg Silchenko, who was a leading investigator in the Magnitsky case, was named “Best Investigator,” while his superior Natalya Vinogradova was recognized as an “Honored Interior Ministry Official,” Magnitsky’s supporters said in a statement.
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Browder Urges U.S., Europe Visa Ban Over Russian Lawyer’s Death
Bloomberg. By Henry Meyer
Hermitage Capital Mananagement founder William Browder said, “We’re hoping for Russia to provide justice for Sergei Magnitsky.” Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Hermitage Capital Management Ltd., a $1.2 billion hedge fund firm, is urging countries in Europe and North America to sanction Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail.
Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer advising Hermitage, died almost a year ago after 358 days in pre-trial detention during which he said he was abused and denied medical treatment to force him to drop fraud allegations against Russian officials.
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Awards, but No Charges, In Russia Jail-Death Probe .
The Wall Street Journal. By Gregory L. White
MOSCOW—Just days before the one-year anniversary of the death of investment-fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail, Russia’s Interior Ministry issued decorations to several of the officials responsible for putting him there.
Lawyers and activists say the awards are the latest evidence that the full investigation into Mr. Magnitsky’s death that President Dmitry Medvedev ordered nearly a year ago is effectively stalled.
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Canada Mulls Ban on Magnitsky Foes
The Moscow Times
10 November 2010, Sixty Russian officials linked to the pretrial death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky may be banned from visiting Canada and face financial sanctions in the country, Magnitsky’s supporters said Tuesday.
The Canadian parliament’s international human rights subcommittee discussed the move at a hearing attended by Hermitage head William Browder last week, said a statement published on the “Law and Order in Russia” blog, which is maintained by Magnitsky’s supporters.
The United States, Britain and Poland are currently considering similar bills, with the Polish legislation capable of closing the whole Schengen zone to the blacklisted officials, among whom are investigators and prosecutors who kept Magnitsky in jail for 11 months until his death in November 2009.
Magnitsky, arrested on tax charges, died of health problems, but his supporters said he was intentionally denied medical help and the case against him was fabricated by corrupt officials whom he had accused of tax fraud. займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно hairy woman https://zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php займ онлайн на карту без отказа
Unyielding, An Oligarch Vs. Putin
The New York Times
I wish I had enough space to reprint in its entirety Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky’s closing statement, as his latest sham trial in Russiacame to an end earlier this week. I have never been so moved by the words of a businessman.
Not that Mr. Khodorkovsky is a businessman anymore. Once the most famous of the Russian oligarchs, he ran Yukos Oil, which under his leadership became the best-run, fastest-growing, most transparent company in the country — a gleaming symbol of hope for Russian industry. Mr. Khodorkovsky, however, has spent the last seven years in prison, much of that time in Siberia. Stripped of his company, which was sold off to politically connected insiders, Mr. Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, were convicted of trumped-up tax charges brought by prosecutors acting on behalf of Vladimir V. Putin, who had come to view Mr. Khodorkovsky as a threat.
