Free Alexei Navalny
The conviction and five-year prison sentence given on Thursday to Alexei Navalny makes Russia’s opposition leader a political prisoner and dissident. As any number of history’s disgraced dictators could tell Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin, jailing your opponents can bring unforeseen consequences. Think Mandela, Walesa, Havel and, at a not-so-distant time in Russia, Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky.
As the Putin regime bears down on the democracy movement, such comparisons might seem fanciful. Mr. Navalny, who came to prominence as an anti-corruption activist, had no chance against the Russian state. He offended President Putin by labeling his ruling clique “the party of crooks and thieves,” a nickname that stuck, and by leading large protests starting in late 2011.
The Kremlin then revived a local investigation into the alleged theft in 2009 of about $500,000 in timber from the Kirov district, which had been dismissed for lack of evidence. Mr. Navalny briefly worked in the northeastern city as an adviser to a then reform-minded local governor. During the trial, the defense wasn’t allowed to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses or call its own. Nearly all cases in Russia end in convictions, certainly all political cases.
Other opposition figures face different criminal cases, but Mr. Navalny’s was the most prominent political trial since at least the 1970s. The sentence takes him out of the running for mayor of Moscow, an opposition bastion, in September elections. It will also keep the 37-year-old father of two small children in jail beyond the end of Mr. Putin’s third term as president in 2018.
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If we kowtow to Putin, his disdain for us grows
The absurd trial of a dead man is one more reason to stand up to the bully in the Kremlin
Many in Moscow complain that Vladimir Putin no longer takes counsel, that he has gone rogue. But the critics are wrong in one important respect. At his side, whispering in his ear, is the ghost of Franz Kafka.
How else to explain the political decision to prosecute, and find guilty, a dead man, the whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky? He had uncovered a tax scam that went almost to the top and so, by the inverted logic of the Iron Law of Putinism, the corpse of Sergei Magnitsky had to be tried and found guilty of tax evasion, as he was last week. He will be unable to do time.
The absurdity of that trial has been compounded by Russian readiness to grant asylum to the renegade National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. Suddenly, cynically, the Russian authorities have decided that whistleblowers, if they are American, deserve the full protection of the State.
Today Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner, will hear whether he will be sent to jail for six years on convoluted embezzlement charges involving £400,000 of state-owned timber. It is wrong of course to anticipate the verdict of even such a plainly politically motivated trial. But I will eat my rabbit-fur schapka if Mr Navalny walks free and proceeds, as he hopes, to contest the September elections for Mayor of Moscow.
How will Britain react to his jailing? Almost certainly with head-shaking disappointment. Or perhaps just demure silence. The Magnitsky verdict was assessed by David Lidington, the Foreign Office Minister, as an “exceptional step”. That fell short in capturing the trial’s perverted essence. Britain, he said, was going to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. The nine-year jail term in absentia of William Browder, Magnitsky’s former employer and co-defendant, drew no significant comment from the Government, even though he is a British citizen.
As for poor Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB but also a British citizen, poisoned in London, he too is getting short shrift. First, the Foreign Office has withheld documents from Sir Robert Owen, the coroner, on grounds of national security. That made it next to impossible to determine whether the Russian state was involved in his killing (as Litvinenko claimed on his deathbed). Then, last week, the Government blocked the possibility of a public inquiry that would have allowed the coroner to study classified evidence in private. Russian officials are well pleased: Litvinenko’s dirty secrets about Mr Putin have been frozen out of the Anglo-Russian relationship.
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Conviction of Navalny: The Latest Human Rights Outrage Under Putin Regime
Freedom House strongly condemns the conviction of Russian corruption fighter and opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, in a trial and prosecution clearly staged to derail his political career. Navalny, 37, who became famous for investigations of government corruption on his blog, vocal criticism of the Russian government, and unconventional grassroots organizing activities, was sentenced today to five years in prison on charges of theft.
After a local investigation into the alleged theft in 2009 of 16 million rubles (about $482,000) from a Kirov-based timber company was closed for lack of evidence, the case was suspiciously reopened on the federal level by the Investigative Committee of Russia only weeks later. The case explicitly targeted Navalny in an obvious attempt to crush his presidential ambition and neutralize him as an opposition leader. Since Navalny rose to prominence in 2004, he has been known for his innovative public awareness raising initiatives and strident criticism of the ruling United Russia party and President Vladimir Putin, denouncing the former as “the party of crooks and thieves.” Weeks after the trial began, Navalny announced he was running for the powerful seat of the mayor of Moscow and clinched official registration as a candidate just a day before the verdict was handed down. During the proceedings, judge Sergey Blinov rejected Navalny’s request to have any defense witnesses testify; in contrast, over thirty witnesses of prosecution were allowed to speak in court.
“This whole case reeks of political vindictiveness for Navalny’s corruption revelations and political challenge to Putin and United Russia,” said David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House. “That the verdict was announced right after Navalny was allowed to register as an official candidate for the mayoral seat speaks volumes about the shameless scheming of Russian authorities to silence the loudest and most resourceful voice of the Russian opposition.”
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How Putin Uses Money Laundering Charges to Control His Opponents
Last Thursday, Sergei Magnitsky was convicted of tax evasion. The only problem was he was not there to hear the verdict read. Magnitsky was killed in Moscow’s Butyrka prison in 2009, likely as a result of beatings and a lack of medical treatment. His crime was uncovering a $230 million tax fraud involving members of the government while working as a lawyer for William Browder (an American investor who was also convicted in absentia).
But Magnitsky’s conviction is not simply an example of the capricious nature of the legal system in Russia; it is a view into how the use of money laundering, financial laws, and Russia’s financial intelligence unit are used to control political dissent.
Recently, Putin launched a much publicized “de-offshorization” campaign aimed at fighting corruption and countering the flight of money from the country, much of it acquired illicitly. This initiative was launched in response to revelations that Russia was losing vast sums of money every year (estimated at $56.8 Billion in 2012), and that many state officials–from the heads of security agencies to the chair of the Russian Duma’s ethics committee–had significant overseas assets (including condos in Miami, worth an estimated $2 million). Much of this wealth was being sent to offshore tax havens in Europe and beyond. Russian holdings in Cyprus amounting to over $30 billion (largely the proceeds of corruption or deposited as a form of tax avoidance) also inspired this campaign. (This scheme of tax avoidance is called “round tripping,” whereby the proceeds made in Russia are registered with a shell company based in Cyprus, then repatriated to Russia avoiding taxes due to a taxation agreement between the two countries). These revelations gave Putin the expedient cover with which to launch “de-offshorization,” which included banning state officials from having overseas assets. The idea is that, by forcing Russian elites to hold their money inside the country, Putin can cement their loyalty by threatening their bank accounts.
As Russian Duma Deputy Dmitry Gorovtsov noted on the new law banning state officials overseas assets, “This law is about political, and not legal, control. It will be applied selectively and subjectively.”
The statement is particularly prescient due to the fact that corruption is an integral part of Putin’s rule, forming the foundation of his patronage system but costing an estimated $300 billion in an economy of $1.5 trillion, or 16 percent of its yearly GDP. Unsurprisingly, Russia was rated worst among countries surveyed for the perceived likelihood of paying bribes in Transparency International’s 2011 Bribe Payers Index. As NYU Professor Mark Galeotti notes, “Politics determines everything and corruption is mobilized as a weapon against enemies (and a treat for friends). Your abuses get publicized as a result of your losing influence within Putin’s court, not the other way round, reflecting the vagaries of factional politics in that court.”
Hence, Putin’s calls for action at the G8 summit in June on offshore tax havens, de-offshorization and the recent tightening of anti-money laundering laws are aimed at strengthening his ability to control the elites of the country and to shore up his political base.
But patronage is only one aspect of the tandem that underpins the stability of the Kremlin; the other is coercion. Supporters are kept in line through an implicit threat to throw them in jail and to seize their assets should their loyalty be called into question. The ability to provide financial incentives–through the acceptance of dubious business practices–acquires their support, the threat of jail and repossessing their assets ensures it. A silent agreement between Putin and business elites was reached in the aftermath of Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky being thrown into jail in 2003 for attempting to challenge Putin politically (Khodorkovsky was also charged with additional money laundering and fraud charges in 2010 as he was nearing the end of his first sentence). As William Partlett of Columbia University and the Brooking’s Institute said about the incident, “The message to other oligarchs was clear: follow the rules or face devastating legal consequences.”
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Edward Snowden Was Blatantly Used By Vladimir Putin Trying To Whitewash Past Human Rights Abuses
Edward Snowden’s press conference last Friday may have generated sympathy for the youthful-looking 30 year old without a country, but Snowden was merely a prop. The purpose of the press conference was not to humanize him, but to humanize Vladimir Putin’s government as a haven for human rights activists fleeing governments that abuse human rights (read, United States).
But haunting the transit lounge was the ghost of a real whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who in 2008 uncovered a $230 million tax fraud scheme by Russian interior ministry and tax officials. In Kafkaesque fashion, prosecutors charged Magnitsky with the crimes he had exposed and sent him to one of Russia’s most notorious pre-trial detention centers. He was then tortured, denied medical care, and, in 2009, died an excruciating death at age 37. Nonetheless, Russian officials tried the dead man in Tverskoy District Court and, the day before Snowden’s press conference, convicted the corpse of masterminding the tax evasion scheme.
The verdict was retaliation against the United States government for adopting the “Magnitsky list,” banning officials involved in the tax fraud from entering the United States or maintaining bank accounts here (Moscow had also retaliated by banning Americans from adopting Russian children). The Putin government followed up the dead man’s guilty verdict with the Snowden press conference.
The Magnitsky-Snowden events are hardly without precedent in Russia. Together, they echo the 1930s Soviet show trials, where surviving Old Bolsheviks, supporters of exiled communist Leon Trotsky, and senior Red Army commanders, were convicted in highly publicized “trials,” often with the aid of confessions obtained by torture (thousands were executed or sent to the gulag). The purpose was to purge Stalin’s enemies and terrorize potential opponents, while presenting the trials as fair and just proceedings.
Recently, Nina Khruscheva, the great grand-daughter of Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev, whose famous 1956 speech to the Communist Party’s Twentieth Congress exposed Stalin’s brutality, wrote in Foreign Policy magazine that “Russia’s legal institutions are still run along the lines of Stalin’s ‘show trials.’” These legal proceedings include the prosecutions of anti-corruption lawyer, opposition activist, and blogger, Alexey Navalny; former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky; and the punk band Pussy Riot. Some human rights activists were simply murdered, including Chechen Natalia Estemirova in 2009 and Dagestan publisher Gadzhimurat Kamalov in 2011. And, in no small irony, Leonid Razvozzhayev, a political activist, was abducted in Kiev last year while seeking advice on political asylum from the UN High Commissioner on Refugees.
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Punishing Magnitsky One More Time
Thursday’s ruling by Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court that convicted the late Sergei Magnitsky, the Hermitage Capital lawyer who died in pretrial detention in 2009, of tax evasion charges shows how far Russia is willing to go to discredit itself.
Simultaneously, the court found Hermitage Capital CEO William Browder guilty of colluding with Magnitsky to create an illegal tax-break scheme using two of Hermitage Capital’s subsidiaries in the republic of Kalmykia. On Thursday, Browder was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison for allegedly failing to pay more than $15 million in taxes in 2001.
Following Magnitsky’s death in November 2009, the case against him was dropped. Nonetheless, the case was resumed in August 2011, loosely based on a Constitutional Court decision stating that posthumous trials in Russia can be held when the family of a dead person requests to clear their relative of charges. But Magnitsky’s relatives never requested the trial against Sergei for the obvious reason that they don’t trust the authorities’ impartiality or their motives. What they did request and demand was an investigation into the cause of his death and a fair, honest trial against those who perpetrated the crimes against him.
But the Investigative Committee closed that investigation early this year, claiming that no crimes had been committed. The deputy head of the prison where Magnitsky was being held was acquitted, and the prosecutor who brought charges for criminal negligence against a prison doctor, who was responsible for Magnitsky’s health while in detention, suddenly withdrew his charges in early April, claiming that there was no corpus delicti.
Even before Magnitsky’s arrest, Hermitage Capital had informed the authorities that government officials had used a fraudulent tax-refund scheme to steal $230 million in state funds. After that, the officials implicated in the crime organized Magnitsky’s arrest and his inhumane conditions in a pretrial detention center. No charges were ever filed against those individuals.
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Britain should rise above Russian money and power
By blocking a public inquiry into Litvinenko, the UK plays to the most cynical Putinesque instincts.
Edward Snowden seems like a bright chap. So he will probably have noticed the irony of voicing his complaints about persecution by the US legal system from the confines of Moscow airport. There are few governments in the world that abuse the law, for political purposes, with the ruthlessness and cynicism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The ironies do not stop there. Mr Snowden’s original motivation, as a whistleblower, was to expose over-mighty American spies. Yet Russia is a state that is effectively run by its intelligence services. Mr Putin is a former KGB operative. Spies and their cronies dominate his inner circle. Indeed Russia – which has become Mr Snowden’s temporary protector – is the perfect illustration of his argument that a state in thrall to its intelligence services would be a frightening place.
Over the past fortnight, three different cases have highlighted the country’s dangerous contempt for justice. In each insta
nce, the victims were Russians or former citizens – but the implications are global.
Last week, a Russian court found Sergei Magnitsky guilty of fraud in absentia. In fact, Magnitsky was not merely absent, he was dead – beaten to death in 2009, while in the custody of the Russian police. His real “crime” was to have pursued corruption with too much vigour and then, after his death, to have become an international cause célèbre. America’s “Magnitsky” law bans officials implicated in his killing, from travelling to the US. This act has so angered and alarmed the Russians that they felt it necessary to “prove” that Magnitsky was a criminal by staging a show trial of a dead man.
Alexei Navalny is likely to be the next victim of the Russian system of injustice. Since the Moscow protests of 2011 and 2012, he has emerged as the most charismatic leader of the opposition to Putinism. Witty, brave, internet-savvy, and with a populist and nationalistic streak, Mr Navalny presents a clear political danger to Putinism. The Russian authorities have openly acknowledged that there are political motives behind his trial on ludicrous-sounding charges of embezzlement. This Thursday, he is all-out certain to be convicted – and probably imprisoned, joining other prisoners whose political activities have displeased Mr Putin.
A third miscarriage of justice took place last week, when it was announced in London that the British government is refusing to hold a public inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned in London in 2006. The UK tried for many years to secure the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, Litvinenko’s suspected killer, who is now a member of parliament in Moscow. There were tit-for-tat expulsions of Russian and British diplomats.
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The Disappearing Sense of Talking to Putin
Last Friday night (July 12), United States President Barack Obama took a deep breath and called Russian President Vladimir Putin, perhaps assuming that talking is better than trading invectives via press secretaries. No solution for Syria was invented (and none had been expected), and Obama’s initiatives on nuclear arms control received the usual lukewarm response. But the message the White House really wanted to convey was Washington’s firm determination to bring before a US court Edward Snowden, who has been camping for three weeks in the Sheremetyevo airport departure zone (Kommersant, July 13). Putin promised nothing but enjoyed the moment—not because he likes talking to Obama (which he does not) but because making a US president call him is no small achievement. And it took only a small gesture of allowing Snowden to meet with representatives of international non-governmental organizations (NGO), which to the Obama administration amounts to granting him a “propaganda platform” (http://ria.ru/analytics/20130713/949464534.html).
Deporting Snowden to the US is certainly out of the question as it would amount to a loss of face for Moscow. Yet, much more infuriating for Putin is the possible expansion of the “Magnitsky list” (Moskovsky Komsomolets, July 12). Last week, a court in Moscow issued a verdict finding former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison due to lack of access to medical attention, guilty of tax evasion. The court also sentenced William Browder (in absentia) to nine years in prison. Putin had probably assumed that this juridical trick would provide a closure for the acutely disturbing international scandal (http://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/69141). In fact, the opposite effect has been achieved as the government of the United Kingdom confirmed that 60 Russian officials involved in the Magnitsky case would be treated with particular prejudice if they applied for a visa (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, July 10). Putin’s subordinates are worried that other European states will follow suit and that a “Navalny list” might be introduced after the court verdict next week expected to convict oppositionist blogger Alexei Navalny on trumped-up charges—or indeed a “Pussy Riot list” (female punk rock group sentenced to several years in prison over an anti-Putin song they performed in the middle of a mass at a Moscow Orthodox Church) and on top of all that a “Khodorkovsky list” (former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, serving several prison sentences).
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Obama’s broken commitment to human rights in Russia
Like James “Whitey” Bulger, Vladimir Putin likes to make the bodies bounce.
Bulger is the reputed mob boss on trial for multiple murders in Boston. After Bulger learned that a confederate was singing to the FBI, according to some recent testimony, Bulger shot him, and shot him, and shot him, until “his body was bouncing off the ground.”
Putin is the president of Russia, who last week saw to the conviction for tax evasion of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who blew the whistle on massive corruption among Putin’s underlings. Magnitsky died three years ago, when he was beaten and denied treatment in prison. But Putin can’t stop shooting.
The ghoulish conviction is just one stop on a breathtaking rollback of rights and freedoms Putin has engineered since reclaiming the presidency in May 2012. The clampdown has been remarkable for its speed and comprehensiveness — and for President Obama’s apparent utter indifference to it.
Russia has been slipping since 2004, when Putin, in his first term, began dismantling laws that had allowed for political opposition. But in the past year, “the Russian government has unleashed a crackdown on civil society unprecedented in the country’s post-Soviet history,” as Human Rights Watch documented in a 76-page report this spring.
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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
