Journalist honored for reporting Russian graft
A Russian journalist who reported on the tax fraud uncovered by murdered lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been awarded the 2013 Knight International Journalism Award.
Roman Anin writes for Novaya Gazeta.
He began a series of reports in 2011 that told how a $230 million tax fraud uncovered by Magnitsky was orchestrated.
Anin also reported that similar frauds continued after Magnitsky’s death.
Magnitsky was jailed without trial after he said Russian officials were helping gangsters collect fraudulent tax refunds. He died after nearly a year in jail in 2009 after being denied medical attention.
One of Anin’s articles described how tax officials connected with the frauds were later promoted to senior positions at the Russian Defense Ministry.
Five journalists at Anin’s paper, Novaya Gazeta, have been murdered for their work since 2000, according to the International Center for Journalists.
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Hedge-fund magnate Browder says if he’s assassinated, you’ll know where to look
Hedge-fund magnate and outspoken Kremlin critic Bill Browder told CNBC on Friday that if he’s ever assassinated, there won”t be much mystery about who was responsible.
“At the moment, nothing keeps me protected…if I get assassinated, everyone will know who did it…It would effectively be a declaration of war with the West if they decide to kill me,” he said.
Browder, the CEO and founder of Hermitage Capital Markets, is an American who has been living in London since being kicked out of Russia in 2007 for accusing tax officials of embezzlement. Browder — a one-time fan of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a grandson of the former leader of the Communist Party U.S.A. — has been on an anti-corruption crusade against the Kremlin since the death of his tax attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, in a Moscow prison. Magnitsky is the namesake of the Magnitsky Act, which U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law last December, and gives the Treasury and State Department authority for cracking down on Russian human-rights abusers. That led Russia to retaliate by banning U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children.
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Guriev’s Exile Is a Huge Loss for Russia
When the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum opens next week, a traditional fixture of the event will be conspicuously absent: renowned economist Sergei Guriev.
During the forum, Russian officials will undoubtedly repeat the usual lines about the country’s untapped potential, its attractiveness as a gateway between Asia and Europe and its tremendous investment opportunities. But the other standard phrase used to pitch Russia at these forums — that the country has a “rich, educated human capital” — will sound particularly hollow amid Guriev’s forced exit from Russia.
Two weeks ago, Guriev announced from Paris, where his wife and two children live, that he would not return to Russia for fear of being named as a defendant in a possible third criminal case against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “There is no guarantee that I won’t lose my freedom [in Russia],” he told Ekho Moskvy on May 31. Guriev resigned as rector of the New Economic School, which he had turned into one of the country’s top graduate programs in economics, and from the boards of Sberbank and four other companies.
Guriev’s “crime” was co-authoring a 2011 report for then-President Dmitry Medvedev’s human rights council in which he explained why the second criminal case against Khodorkovsky was unfounded, a conclusion that had been clear even to the most casual observer. In addition, Guriev donated 10,000 rubles ($320) last year to the anti-corruption fund of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is currently facing criminal charges in an embezzlement trial that many consider to be politically driven.
When an investigator from the Investigative Committee appeared in Guriev’s office in April for a third round of questioning, the official unexpectedly pulled out a warrant to seize Guriev’s computer hard drive and asked him if he had an alibi, presumably for a third Khodorkovsky trial.
After this, Guriev concluded that he had quickly gone from being a “witness” in the Khodorkovsky criminal case to effectively becoming a “defendant.”
Shortly thereafter, he fled to Paris. Guriev feared that if he remained in Moscow much longer, investigators would pay another surprise visit, but this time with a new warrant to seize his passport and place him under house arrest.
Guriev’s exit is a tremendous loss for Russia — at least for its progressive elements that want to pull the country in a new, modern direction. Guriev, an internationally recognized economist and former visiting professor at Princeton University, could have worked in any number of Western countries over the past 15 years, but he decided to stay in Russia and try to build a more modern, liberal and democratic Russia. In addition to developing the New Economic School, his other main modernization projects included participation in Open Government, Skolkovo and the president’s human rights council.
As rector and professor at the New Economic School, Guriev’s goal was to train young Russians to become innovative leaders, managers, economists and financial experts capable of modernizing Russia. And he was tremendously successful in this role, with roughly 80 percent of New Economic School graduates working in Russia in top-level positions at leading financial, consulting, real estate development and manufacturing companies.
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Hedge Fund Manager Browder: If I Get Assassinated…
Bill Browder, chief executive and founder of Hermitage Capital Markets, told CNBC the Russian government is “apoplectic” over sanctions imposed on Russian officials that he has campaigned for, and if he gets assassinated, “everyone would know who did it.”
The well-known critic of the Kremlin has been living in London since he was kicked out of Russia for accusing Russian tax officials of embezzlement, in 2007.
Since then, he has repeatedly accused Russia of corruption and has been involved in a high-profile battle with the Russian state over the death of his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was investigating fraud among Russian officials.
In April, Russia issued an arrest warrant against Browder on charges that he stole shares in gas giant Gazprom fifteen years ago and requested Interpol, the global police agency, to launch a manhunt for the investment banker.
Interpol refused the request but Browder said he feels under constant threat.
“At the moment nothing keeps me protected…If I get assassinated, everyone will know who did it….It would effectively be a declaration of war with the West if they decide to kill me,” he told CNBC in London.
Browder’s colleague Magnitsky was imprisoned and taken ill, and he died later in hospital. Browder has since sought to bring the Russian state to trial over Magnitsky’s death.
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Honour for journalist who helped expose high-level Russian corruption
Evening Standard
A Russian journalist has won a prestigious award for helping to expose high-level corruption in the country.
Roman Anin, who writes for the Russian daily newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was presented with the 2013 Knight International Journalism Award for his investigative reporting of a case uncovered by a lawyer who later died in police custody.
Sergei Magnitsky exposed the biggest known tax fraud in Russian history, a theft of $230 million from the national treasury by Russian officials and organised criminals, which ended up in off-shore accounts and shell companies throughout Europe.
After exposing the crime, Mr Magnitsky was arrested, tortured to retract his testimony and died in custody. Since his death, Russian authorities have exonerated all officials he named from any wrongdoing.
In 2011, three years after the crime was exposed, Mr Anin began writing a series of explosive reports about the theft uncovered by Mr Magnitsky and how the crimes continued after his death.
Four of his colleagues have been murdered but Mr Anin continued to document corruption among the Russian elite. The Knight award recognises excellent reporting that makes a difference in the lives of people around the world, said the International Centre for Journalists, which made the announcement.
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Fright follows flight
A growing number of Russians want to emigrate; but even those who leave have cause for fear
Sergei Guriev admits that his wife was right. Two years ago she left for Paris, saying that it was not safe to live under the regime of President Vladimir Putin. Now the leading Russian economist is joining her. The trigger was a request from the authorities to seize his emails, apparently in preparation for a case against him. His crime is unclear: it may have been giving an expert opinion about the legal status of Yukos, once Russia’s largest oil company, which was spectacularly dismembered in a Kremlin-sponsored raid ten years ago.
Guriev’s departure is part of a trend. Garry Kasparov, the chess champion and opposition leader, says it is too risky to return to Russia. Friends of Alexei Navalny, another opposition leader, fear he has left it too late: he faces jail on trumped-up fraud charges.
The mixture of lawlessness and repression is chilling. Overall, nearly a quarter of Russians want to emigrate. The figure is striking: 22%, up from 13% in 2009. The survey is by the Levada centre, Russia’s best-known opinion pollster, which the authorities are harassing because it receives some money from abroad and is therefore a “foreign agent”.
The unhappiest are the middle classes, who should be the biggest beneficiaries of the boom of the past 13 years: 45% of students and 38% of entrepreneurs want to leave, with the highest figures in Moscow and other big cities. So far emigration is a ripple, not a wave. About three-quarters of the discontented say they will stay put. Only 1% of those surveyed are actually taking practical steps to go.
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Open Letter on the Case of Sergei Magnitsky
To the Chairman of the Council of Judges of the Russian Federation
Dmitry Anatolyevich Krasnov
From Natalya Nikolayevna Magnitskaya
07 June 2013
Open Letter on the Case of Sergei Magnitsky
Dear Dmitry Anatolevich,
From media reports, I have learned that on 22 April 2013, the Council of Judges of the City of Moscow issued a decree which directly affected the Constitutional rights and freedoms of my son, Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky, who died 16 November 2009 in the Matrosskaya Tishina Prison pre-trial detention center.
This decree, titled “On the Unfounded Inclusion in the ‘Magnitsky List’ of Judges of Courts of the City of Moscow” concerns the actions of four judges of the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow: E.V. Stashina, S.V. Ukhnaleva, S.G. Podoprigorov, and A.V. Krivoruchko regarding my only son. By the decisions of these judges, the members of the investigative group of the Russian Federation Interior Ministry Investigative Committee and officers of the operational convoy were provided conditions for the unlawful criminal prosecution of my son, his detention in custody for a year, and his torture and murder in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center.
Given the existence of indisputable evidence of the death of my son as a result of forcible actions, law-enforcement agencies to this day have not undertaken to establish the true reasons for his death and have not exposed those persons guilty of his death.
Despite the fact that the content of the decree directly affects the interests of my son, and in connection with his death, affects my interests, representatives of the council of Judges of Moscow who prepared this document did not consider it necessary to learn my opinion and take into account the facts and evidence which I possess.
From the text of the decree of the Moscow Council of Judges, it follows that they ignored the conclusions of two independent experts’ organizations that established the violation of my son’s rights and the lack of a proper judicial review of the lawfulness of the actions of members of the investigative group who detained him as a hostage, with the purpose of concealing his testimony which had uncovered the participation of officials of the Interior Ministry and tax agencies in the embezzlement of 5.4 billion rubles from the Russian budget.
The Moscow Council of Judges, citing the study of the “personal files” of judges E.V. Stashina, S.V. Ukhnaleva, S.G. Podoprigorov and A.V. Krivoruchko did not find any grounds “to doubt in any form the lawfulness and conscientiousness of the actions” of their colleagues, despite the outrageous violations of the law in the decisions they took, based on falsified evidence by the members of the investigative group. In justifying the detention of my son in custody, the investigators, without possessing evidence, submitted tampered reports of operations officials which contained deliberate lies and falsifications. In spite of the requirements of the Code of Criminal Procedures and the violation of the functions imposed on them by the Russian Federation Constitution to exercise judicial oversight, these judges did not once submit to doubt the false testimony submitted by the biased investigation.
The representatives of the Moscow Council of Judges should have known that their colleagues, Judges E.V. Tashina, S.V. Ukhnaleva, S.G. Podoprigorov and A. V. Krivoruchko rejected 40 complaints made by my son while he was still alive. Their decisions were appealed, including with an appeal to the Russian Constitution Court and the European Court of Human Rights, however he was not able to live to see their review.
In according with Art. 4 of the Rules for the Russian Federation Council of Judges, representatives of the mass media and other persons may be invited to participate in the work of the Council.
Taking into account that the issue affecting the constitutional rights and freedoms of my son represented by me was the subject of a secret discussion by the Council of Judges of Moscow, I urge:
1. That an open discussion be conducted at a meeting of the Russian Federation Council of Judges with my participation, regarding the grounds for including the judges of the City of Moscow in the “Magnitsky List,” and also with the participation of representatives and experts of the Presidential Council on Human Rights and the Public Observatory Commission of the City of Moscow, which have directly studied the circumstances of the detention of my son in custody, and also with representatives of the mass media.
2. According to the results of this discussion, that the appropriate decree taking into account the opinions of all interested persons be passed.
Respectfully yours,
Natalya Nikolaevna Magnitskaya
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Garry Kasparov: Out Of The Country, But Not Out Of The Picture
Garry Kasparov may be staying away from his homeland for a while, but he has no intention of steering clear of Russian politics.
The chess grandmaster turned opposition figure does not mince his words when he speaks of what he calls the “Hitleresque essence” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“These days, judges rubber-stamp sentences,” he told RFE/RL’s Russian Service by telephone from New York. “Police commanders give the order to beat and hound people, to arrest them. Governors in the regions can do whatever they like and act like all-powerful lords in their domains.”
In one of his first interviews since announcing last week that he “will refrain from returning” to Russia “for the time being” for fear of a politically motivated prosecution, Kasparov said that he is focusing his efforts on trying to get European countries to adopt sanctions against senior Russian officials implicated in human-rights abuses – similar to the so-called Magnitsky list adopted by the United States in 2012.
The U.S. law is named after whistle-blowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in custody in 2009 after exposing a massive tax fraud that implicated Russian officials.
According to Kasparov, such sanctions are effective at capturing the attention of Russia’s ruling elite.
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Edward Snowden: Russia offers to consider asylum request
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says any appeal for asylum from whistleblower who fled US will be looked at ‘according to facts’.
Russia has offered to consider an asylum request from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, in the Kremlin’s latest move to woo critics of the west.
Snowden fled the United States before leaking the details of a top-secret US surveillance programme to the Guardian this month. He is currently believed to be in Hong Kong, but has reportedly changed hotels to keep his location secret.
Fearing US retaliation, Snowden said at the weekend that “my predisposition is to seek asylum in a country with shared values”, citing Iceland as an example. He defended his decision to flee to Hong Kong by citing its relative freedom compared with mainland China.
Snowden is not known to have made any asylum requests, including to Russia. Yet speaking to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said: “If such an appeal is given, it will be considered. We’ll act according to facts.”
Peskov’s comments were widely carried by the Russian media, which have largely ignored Snowden’s revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) was secretly empowered with wide-reaching authority to collect information from the US mobile provider Verizon and to snoop on emails and internet communications via a data-mining programme called Prism. Russia’s feared security services are widely believed to maintain similar powers.
Peskov’s comments on potential asylum opened the floodgates on support for Snowden. Robert Shlegel, an influential MP with the ruling United Russia party, said: “That would be a good idea.”
Alexey Pushkov, head of the Duma’s international affairs committee and a vocal US critic, said on Twitter: “By promising asylum to Snowden, Moscow has taken upon itself the protection of those persecuted for political reasons. There will be hysterics in the US. They only recognise this right for themselves.”
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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
