Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Secretary of State and Special Aide met with Russian human rights advocates in Moscow

Kommersant.

Recently Russian human rights advocates had a meeting with Under Secretary of State William Burns and Special Aide to the US President for Russia Michael McFall. The human rights advocates complained of the dispersals of peaceful meetings by Moscow authorities and specified that one of their comrades-in-arms, head of the ‘For Human Rights’ movement Lev Ponomarev who was also invited to attend the meeting, was in custody. The human rights advocates insisted that the American officials highlighted the problem to be discussed in public, but they doubt their request was treated with due attention.

Russian Prosecutors Cover Up Facts of Magnitsky’s Death, Ex-Partner Says

Bloomberg, by Lucian Kim

Prosecutors are obscuring the facts surrounding Sergei Magnitsky’s death in a Moscow prison, the tax lawyer’s former employer said after a prosecutor indicated there was no evidence of physical or psychological abuse in the case.

Those statements are “proof of a high-level, state- sponsored cover-up,” Jamison Firestone, co-founder of the law firm Firestone Duncan, said today in an e-mailed statement.

The November death of Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer advising Hermitage Capital Management, caused outrage over prison conditions in Russia. Firestone, who has since fled Russia, says Magnitsky was punished for testifying against police officers involved in a $230 million tax rebate scam.

Strange Days for Activist Engagements

DealFlow Media

In addition to the usual governance disputes, there have been some strange and even alarming activist developments recently.

Russian officials are demanding permission to search Hermitage Capital founder William Browder’s home in London, according to a report from The Moscow Times. Browder, a “crusading minority shareholder”, was barred from Russia for national security reasons in 2005, according to the report.

Hermitage’s efforts to combat alleged government corruption led to the death of the fund’s attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, in a Russian prison last year. In April, an 83-year-old Russian political activist was threatened with physical violence for criticizing the government’s handling of the matter. Further more, Hermitage alleges that Russian officials embezzled $230 million from Russian companies Hermitage and HSBC invested in.

Hermitage Capital slams top Russian investigator over probe into lawyer’s death

BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union

The Hermitage Capital Fund has expressed indignation at the statement of the head of the Investigations Committee under the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation, Aleksandr Bastrykin, on the lawfulness of the criminal prosecution of the fund’s lawyer, Sergey Magnitskiy, who died at a Moscow remand centre [in November 2009].

Diplomatic row looms as Russia investigates UK hedge fund

The Independent, by Robert Verkaik, Home Affairs Editor

Russian officers leading a discredited investigation into a British-based hedge fund have switched their inquiries to London, threatening to provoke a diplomatic row.

The case has been blamed for the death of an anti-corruption lawyer who was imprisoned after accusing Russian government officials and others of theft and tax fraud.

Sergei Magnitsky, 37, a lawyer commissioned by Hermitage Capital Management to defend allegations of tax evasion, was awaiting trial for alleged conspiracy when he died of heart failure last year at Matrosskaya Tishina detention centre in Moscow, after being denied access to medicine. This prompted an international outcry.

Russian officials blacklisted after tax fraud investigation

The Telegraph, by Philip Aldrick

Some of Russia’s most senior law enforcement officials have been blacklisted by foreign banks for their alleged connection to the suspicious death of a prominent lawyer waging a campaign against corruption in public life.

The deputy general prosecutor Viktor Grin, deputy interior minister Alexei Anichin, and Viktor Voronin, head of the economic espionage unit at the Federal Security Service (FSB) – the successor to the KGB – are among 60 Russian figures to have been classified “high risk” for banks.

Top-level Russian officials seen escaping president’s anti-corruption strictures

Text of report by the website of Russian business newspaper Vedomosti

The report of Konstantin Chuychenko, chief of the Control Department, on malfeasance in the purchase of tomographic scanners from federal budget funds gave rise to the righteous anger of the president (“shameless, crude theft”). The president demanded systemic measures, including firings at all levels.

Are systemic results and the said firings to be expected? Previous high-profile corruption sagas indicate that there is an invisible barrier, beyond which the president’s instructions lose strength and slip through the cracks. What sort of barrier is this? Most simply put: is there, for example, an official level which it is not possible for the president to reach, get an inquiry going, dismiss, that is?

New Inquiry in Magnitsky Case

The Moscow Times, by Alexander Bratersky

Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said he knew nothing about online videos accusing senior police officers linked to the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky of possible corruption.

But Nurgaliyev said he had ordered his ministry’s internal affairs department to examine whether the officers had committed wrongdoing, forcing the department to take up a case that it had refused to consider in June.

Videos accusing police investigators Pavel Karpov and Artyom Kuznetsov of spending sums that far exceeded their modest salaries surfaced online in June and July, respectively. The Russian- and English-language videos, which became YouTube hits with several hundred thousand views, claimed that the expenses of Kuznetsov’s family in 2007 and 2008 amounted to $3 million, despite his monthly salary of $535, and that Karpov’s family had spent $1 million.

Commentator launches scathing attack on Russian government over prison deaths

BBC Monitoring

Text of report by Gazprom-owned, editorially independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy on 11 August

[Presenter] According to the Prosecutor-General’s Office, more than 4,000 prisoners died last year in Russian colonies from various causes. In the [same] year, 521 people died from various illnesses in remand centres. Our observer Matvey Ganapolskiy picks up the theme.

[Ganapolskiy] There are times when you have to write a piece of comment but are lost for words. Only swear words come to mind.