Magnitsky affair: Russia has allowed suspected killers of a whistleblowing lawyer to escape with impunity, says damning report
Council of Europe investigation into death of tax specialist who uncovered a $230m fraud against the state rubbishes Russian version of events.
Russia has allowed the suspected killers of a whistleblowing lawyer to escape with impunity and instituted a high-level “cover up” of corruption which the international community must do more to counter, according to a damning report.
A six-month investigation into the death of Sergei Magnitsky by the Council of Europe found that the Moscow authorities had mounted “belated, sluggish and contradictory” investigations into the death of the tax specialist who uncovered a $230m (£149m) fraud against the Russian state.
Mr Magnitsky, who was working for British hedgefund Hermitage Capital Management when he uncovered the fraud in 2008, was arrested by the same tax investigators he had accused and held for a year in Russian prisons before dying from a serious untreated health condition following a beating on the eve of his death.
The 41-page report by a Swiss MP stops short of naming Mr Magnitsky’s alleged killers but in a move which will further heighten diplomatic tensions over the case, it describes that case as “emblematic” of corruption and human rights abuses in Russia and calls on the international community to consider further measures to pressure Moscow into acting on the case.
The United States has already imposed visa restrictions and frozen assets of 60 Russian officials linked to the death of Mr Magnitsky, provoking a retaliatory ban from Moscow on American citizens adopting Russian children.
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Europe may follow U.S. on Magnitsky sanctions
A report prepared on the death of Russian whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, presented Tuesday to a European body that promotes human rights, severely criticized Russia for failing to hold anyone accountable for his death in pretrial detention.
The report was prepared by Andreas Gross, a member of the Swiss parliament, for the 47 countries making up the Council of Europe and was given to the council’s human rights and legal affairs committee Tuesday. At a news conference in France, Gross said the report would provide material for the council’s Parliamentary Assembly to consider when it debates possible sanctions against Russia at its winter session.
Magnitsky, who died in Moscow in November 2009, accused Russian officials of using documents stolen from the Hermitage Capital investment fund to carry off a $230 million tax fraud. Instead of pursuing the officials, authorities charged Magnitsky with the fraud. Recently, Russia opened a new case against him — in death — and brought charges against Hermitage founder William Browder as well.
Gross, who interviewed numerous witnesses in Russia, told the news conference that high-level officials declined to talk to him. He said the evidence he accumulated, however, persuaded him that Magnitsky was innocent and responsibility lay with “a group of criminals, including the persons he had accused before these persons took him into custody, where he died.”
The report comes six months after the United States passed the Magnitsky law, which places financial and visa sanctions on certain Russian officials. Russia vehemently denounced the U.S. law, and on Tuesday Ilyas Umakhanov, the deputy speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, criticized the Gross report. He called it full of “flaws, contradictions and myths.”
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Swiss rapporteur denounces Magnitsky ‘cover-up’
Russian authorities have been accused of covering up the persecution and death of whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky, who exposed massive tax fraud, in a hard-hitting Council of Europe report by Swiss parliamentarian Andreas Gross.
In the first comprehensive independent report into the case, Gross concluded: “Corrupt officials must not be allowed to plunder State property whilst brutally silencing those standing in their way, with impunity.”
The cover-up surrounding Magnitsky’s death in custody in November 2009 and the crimes he was attempting to expose must be reversed and the true culprits held to account, Gross added.
Elected rapporteur for the case in November 2012, Gross presented the findings of his six-month review of the events linked to the lawyer’s death to the human rights and legal affairs committee of the Council of Europe on Tuesday.
Magnitsky’s former client Bill Browder, who is leading a global campaign for justice for the dead lawyer and who is facing legal action himself in Russia, welcomed the Council of Europe report.
“This report is a detailed and objective analysis which destroys the Russian government’s position on nearly everything they have said about Sergei Magnitsky’s murder on a line-by-line basis,” he told swissinfo.ch.
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Council of Europe slams Russia over ‘appalling’ Magnitsky case
Russia has been accused of a “high-level cover-up” of a “gigantic robbery” from the state exposed by Sergei Magnitsky, the anti-corruption lawyer beaten to death in jail, in a scathing report for Europe’s top human rights body.
The draft report says the fact no one has been punished for Magnitsky’s death or for the $230m theft of public funds he was investigating is “appalling”. It labels the Russian government’s response as “belated, sluggish and contradictory”.
It also says explanations offered by Moscow that were used to exonerate officials for their role in the theft, and then posthumously to blame Magnitsky himself for the fraud, were “unconvincing and doubtful”.
The 41-page report is the result of a six-month investigation by Andreas Gross, a Swiss member of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, responsible for enforcing the European Convention on Human Rights.
The report will step up the diplomatic pressure on Moscow over the case. It may also prompt European countries to examine similar steps to the US Magnitsky Act, which imposed visa bans and froze assets of 60 Russians allegedly linked to the crimes – though the report says such measures should be a “last resort”.
Russia responded furiously to the Magnitsky Act, banning US citizens from adopting Russian children and drawing up a tit-for-tat blacklist of US officials.
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PACE Draft Report Slams Russia on Magnitsky Case
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Tuesday released a draft version of a report on the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in which the advisory body slammed Russia for failing to punish anyone in connection with the case and recommended that European nations pressure Russia to investigate it further.
The 41-page report, written by PACE rapporteur Andreas Gross of Switzerland, is highly critical of the Russian government’s handling of the investigation into Magnitsky’s 2009 death in prison and calls on authorities to explain such circumstances as “the unavailability of CCTV footage of the arrival of Mr. Magnitsky to Matrosskaya Tishina prison on the day of his death” and “the existence of two different versions of the ‘death report'” on Magnitsky.
But the draft stops short of recommending that European member states follow the United States’ lead in enacting sanctions against Russians implicated in Magnitsky’s death or in a $230 million tax fraud that Magnitsky said he discovered.
“The Assembly invites all other member states of the Council of Europe to consider ways and means of encouraging the Russian authorities to hold to account those responsible for the death of Mr. Magnitsky and to fully investigate the crime he had denounced, in the interests of Russia and of all her hard-working and tax-paying citizens,” the draft report says.
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Magnitsky case: Russian authorities ‘brutally silenced’ critics
Russian authorities have been accused of allowing corrupt officials to “plunder” the state while “brutally silencing” their critics in a damning report by the Council of Europe.
Andreas Gross, a Swiss MP and chair of the Socialist Group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, made the accusations in an official report into death of the campaigning anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky four years ago.
The findings, in which Mr Gross claims “high level” state officials orchestrated a “cover up”, will inflame the diplomatic row over Russia’s handling of Mr Magnitsky’s death. The scandal has become a national embarrassment, damaging business investment and trade relations.
The US has already imposed visa bans and frozen the assets of 60 Russians linked to the alleged crime. In response, Moscow has barred US citizens from adopting Russian children.
Mr Magnitsky was working for UK hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management when he uncovered an alleged $230m fraud against the Russian taxpayer. After publicly naming the police involved, the same officers arrested him and threw him in jail on tax evasion charges. He was held for a year, dying after developing pancreatitis, being denied medical attention, and being beaten with “rubber truncheons”.
The Parliamentary Assembly was “appalled that Mr Magnitsky died in pre-trial detention and none of the persons responsible for his death have yet been held to account”, the report said.
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Council of Europe moots Magnitsky ‘smart sanctions’
A draft report for Europe’s top human rights watchdog advocates “intelligent sanctions” over the death of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison after he was arrested while trying to expose tax fraud nearly four years ago.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe report accuses the Russian authorities of a cover-up.
But its author, Andreas Gross, said US-style black-listing of Russian officials was counter-productive.
Washington passed legislation known as the Magnitsky Act last year, to withhold visas and freeze financial assets of Russian officials thought to have been involved with human rights violations. The law has been applied to 18 Russian individuals by name.
Russia, which is a member of the Europe-wide body, is invited to comment on Mr Gross’s findings before the report is submitted for approval in September.
Allegations that Magnitsky was tortured in custody have been rejected by Russian investigators, while attempts to prosecute prison doctors for negligence resulted in no convictions.
One trial which did begin this year is that of the dead man himself, who is being prosecuted posthumously for tax evasion.
Soon after the US Congress passed the Magnitsky Act in December, Moscow banned Americans from adopting Russian children, and it recently pressured the Irish Republic, a Council of Europe member, to back down from endorsing the American black list.
Parliaments in several other European countries have also been considering action, following the American example.
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Europol joins hunt on EU-Russia money laundering
The EU’s joint police body, Europol, is hunting down Russian mafia money laundered in EU banks.
Its operation was revealed in a report by an investigator in the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, Swiss MP Andreas Gross, out on Tuesday (25 June).
It says: “On 25 April 2013, a meeting took place at Europol in The Hague to exchange information and co-ordinate the investigation by anti-money-laundering experts of a number of countries concerned by transfers of funds originating in the tax reimbursement fraud denounced by Sergei Magnitsky.”
Gross notes the meeting “should … mark the beginning of a co-ordinated action by the competent authorities to follow the ‘money trail’ wherever it leads.”
He adds: “Russian authorities should be at the forefront of such an action, as it is the money of the Russian people that was stolen.”
The case concerns a fraudulent tax refund, in 2008, of $230 million organised by the so-called “Kluyev group” and the subsequent death of the man who exposed it – Russian accountant Magnitsky.
Europol declined to comment on the revelation, citing house rules on confidentiality.
But EUobserver understands the countries which took part in the April meeting are Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Switzerland.
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Draft PACE Report Slams Russia Over Magnitsky Case
A draft report from the Council of Europe accuses Russia of allowing corrupt officials to “plunder” the state while “brutally silencing” their critics.
Swiss deputy Andreas Gross, rapporteur for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on the Sergei Magnitsky case, presented the report to the council’s Human Rights and Legal Affairs Committee in Strasbourg on June 25.
PACE is expected to consider the 41-page document, titled “Refusing Impunity for the Killers of Sergei Magnitsky,” for approval in September.
Magntisky died in pretrial detention in 2009 after uncovering a massive tax fraud scheme by police and government officials.
“It’s a report about a person who discovered injustice — you can even say a criminal act — because he discovered that not only property had been stolen but, within the tax authorities, $230 million was stolen from the Russian state,” Gross told a news conference in Strasbourg.
The report says PACE is “appalled that Magnitsky died in pretrial detention and none of the persons responsible for his death has yet been held to account.”
It claims “high-level” Russian state officials orchestrated a “cover-up.”
The document says Magnitsky died “because he refused to give in to the pressure that corrupt midlevel officials had put on him in order to get away with their crimes.”
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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
