Sergei Magnitsky’s posthumous trial gets under way in Russia
Family of lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after being accused of tax fraud say macabre proceedings are a mockery of justice.
The posthumous trial of lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky got under way in Moscow on Friday after repeated delays. Against the backdrop of an empty defendant’s cage, judge Igor Alisov brushed aside objections from defence lawyers, who argued that the macabre proceedings were a violation of the Russian constitution.
Magnitsky is accused of co-operating with his employer and co-defendant, London-based investor William Browder, to defraud the Russian state of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes – charges which friends and family say are fabricated.
Russia’s supreme court approved posthumous trials in 2011 as a way of allowing relatives to clear the name of deceased family members. Magnitsky’s family refuses to participate in the current trial, criticising it as a mockery of justice.
Magnitsky’s lawyer, Nikolai Gerasimov, said: “There have been statements by Magnitsky’s relatives that he was not guilty, but they have not expressed a wish to defend his innocence in the courts of the Russian Federation.
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Why Russia’s Attempt to Convict a Dead Man Matters
Today — as though more evidence were required to demonstrate the upside-down state of human rights and the rule of law in Russia — the country’s prosecutors resume their efforts to convict a dead whistleblower of the very corruption he exposed. The posthumous trial of Sergei Magnitsky has properly been called “grim comedy” by a group of French legislators, and it is only the most recent — and patently absurd — element of the Russian government’s strategy to cover up fraud, theft, and human rights violations committed by its own high-ranking officials.
Magnitsky uncovered the scheme — which involved officials from six senior Russian ministries and deprived Russian taxpayers of over $230 million — while working in Moscow as a tax attorney for Hermitage Capital Management, an international investment fund based in London. In 2008, he testified against the officials responsible, and was subsequently arrested and detained at their behest without bail or trial. He refused to recant even as his health deteriorated, he was denied medical treatment, and he died in jail in November 2009 at the age of 37. An investigation into his death — and into allegations that he was badly beaten in prison — was abruptly dropped this week.
Russian authorities continue to insist that he was complicit in the fraud, and they have begun inventing new crimes of which to accuse him in an attempt to further undermine his credibility. Magnitsky is now under posthumous investigation for illegally purchasing shares of Russian energy giant Gazprom, despite the fact the transaction was approved years ago by the Russian Federal Securities Commission. As well, Russian law enforcement revealed last month that it may hold him responsible for the country’s 1998 default for supposedly interfering with a $4.8-billion transfer from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to the Central Bank of Russia. However, none of these transparently self-serving allegations change the truth that Sergei Magnitsky blew the whistle on widespread corruption among powerful people, and paid for it with his life. Indeed, given the ongoing legal proceedings and smear campaign, even that price now appears to be insufficient.
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Dead lawyer has a case to answer, judge in Sergei Magnitsky trial rules
A Moscow court yesterday began the first trial of a dead man in modern Russian history.
Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison three years ago after accusing police and government officials of stealing $230 million in a tax fraud, was put on trial for tax evasion despite the objections of his family, who have called it illegal and refused to have anything to do with the proceedings.
Nikolai Gerasimov, the late Mr Magnitsky’s state appointed defence lawyer, told Tverskoi district court that “there were no grounds for this prosecution to take place” and added that he had no business being there himself without the victim’s family’s approval.
However the judge Igor Alisov rejected each of Mr Gerasimov’s objections, stating that “the court has the right to examine the case against the dead man, including with the aims of rehabilitating him”.
Human rights activists, Mr Magnitsky’s family and his co-accused, the US born British businessman William Browder, who was also absent yesterday, have all described the trial as politically motivated.
They claim that it is an attempt to discredit the memory of Mr Magnitsky, whose name has become a touchstone for Russia’s deteriorating relations with the West. In December President Obama signed a law, now known as the Magnitsky Act, which introduced sanctions against a list of Russian officials linked to the lawyer’s death.
President Putin’s government retaliated with reciprocal legislation and a ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans, which has also been attacked by rights activists in Russia and abroad. buy viagra online hairy women https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php быстрые займы на карту
Elite Russians adopt the staycation habit
Annette Loftus, owner of a high-end Moscow travel agency, gets plenty of odd holiday requests from plenty of exotic people. She has had to organise a golf tournament at the North Pole, a buggy race on Bolivia’s salt flats and a getaway with an ice bar in the middle of a frozen Siberian lake.
Then, there was the mysterious caller who asked for “a holiday in a non-Interpol country” on behalf of his boss, who he would not name. She turned the last one down – first of all, she said, non-Interpol countries are very few, “and I would not be willing to run a trip in any of them”. Second, there was “the moral issue . . .”.
Recently Ms Loftus has seen more requests like the last one – clients with, as she puts it, “jurisdictional issues”. For a small but growing number of elite Russians, travel opportunities are increasingly limited. The trend was epitomised by the US Magnitsky act, which late last year imposed a US visa blacklist and asset freezes on roughly 60 Russians suspected of human rights violations. Its open-ended wording leaves open the possibility that the list of names will lengthen. The E U looks set to eventually pass similar legislation.
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Sergei Magnitsky trial: ‘it’s not illegal to try a dead man’, says judge
A Moscow judge has refused calls to halt the posthumous prosecution of Sergei Magnitsky, ruling on the first day of the trial that it was not illegal to try a dead defendant.
Mr Magnitsky, a lawyer whose case became an international cause célèbre, died in a pretrial detention centre in the city in 2009 aged 37 after being arrested by senior Russian police officers whom he had accused of colluding with tax officials in a £140m fraud. He was denied vital medical treatment and beaten in custody.
In November 2012, prosecutors charged the dead man himself with tax evasion, citing a recent Russian Constitutional Court decision that suggested a deceased defendant could be tried if his family requests it in order to clear his or her name.
Mr Magnitsky’s widow, Natalya Zharikova, 40, said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph this week that she and his mother had repeatedly informed authorities that they did not want such a trial, making it illegal.
That view was supported on Friday by the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association, a lawyers group, which issued a statement saying the posthumous trial was “unlawful and breaching both domestic and international covenants”.
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Sergei Magnitsky’s posthumous trial gets under way in Russia
Family of lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after being accused of tax fraud say macabre proceedings are a mockery of justice.
The posthumous trial of lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky got under way in Moscow on Friday after repeated delays. Against the backdrop of an empty defendant’s cage, judge Igor Alisov brushed aside objections from defence lawyers, who argued that the macabre proceedings were a violation of the Russian constitution.
Magnitsky is accused of co-operating with his employer and co-defendant, London-based investor William Browder, to defraud the Russian state of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes – charges which friends and family say are fabricated.
Russia’s supreme court approved posthumous trials in 2011 as a way of allowing relatives to clear the name of deceased family members. Magnitsky’s family refuses to participate in the current trial, criticising it as a mockery of justice.
Magnitsky’s lawyer, Nikolai Gerasimov, said: “There have been statements by Magnitsky’s relatives that he was not guilty, but they have not expressed a wish to defend his innocence in the courts of the Russian Federation.
“There was no reason for this trial. I think that the reason for the revival of this investigation was an incorrect understanding of the ruling of the supreme court.”
Magnitsky died in a Russian prison in 2009 after reporting to the authorities a $230m (£151m) tax fraud carried out by officials on Browder’s firm Hermitage Capital. The Kremlin’s human rights commission later found signs he had been badly beaten shortly before his death.
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Sergei Magnitsky Uncovered Russia-To-Cyprus Money Laundering, And Look What Happened To Him
The latest eurozone crisis comes down to controversy over bailing out a Cypriot banking system that is flooded with Russian black money.
The EU-proposed “haircut” solution — with a 9.9 percent levy on large deposits in Cyprus — received zero votes in Cyprus’ parliament and Russian president Vladimir Putin called it “unjust, unprofessional and dangerous.” Attempts to find a compromise have foundered.
In any case, it is clear that powerful people in Russia want to preserve the ability to use Cyprus as a tax haven, alleged money-laundering vehicle, and backdoor into the eurozone.
Just look at what happened to Sergei Magnitsky, the Moscow-based lawyer who was imprisoned and died mysteriously in jail after calling attention to Russian corruption, including alleged money-laundering in Cyprus.
Magnitsky had been working for Hermitage Capital, a fund managed by American Bill Browder. After Hermitage’s offices were raided in 2007, Magnitsky began investigating and later testified that he had uncovered a huge scam by top police officials to embezzle $230 million in taxes from money that Hermitage Fund companies had paid in 2006.
Magnitsky alleged that the corrupt cops had used corporate seals and documents seized in the raid on Hermitage’s Moscow office and set up fake companies under the same names, which then received a full tax rebate.
Hermitage said that some $31 million of that money was then moved out of Russia using five Cypriot banks: Alpha Bank, Cyprus Popular Bank, FBME Bank, Privatbank International and Komercbanka.
The story quickly turned tragic. In November 2008, Magnitsky himself was charged with tax evasion and taken to prison. Kept in Moscow’s notorious pre-trial prisons, Magnitsky unexpectedly died in November 2009. His death was originally attributed to a an abdominal membrane rupture before officials changed that to a heart attack. Magnitsky is one of four witnesses in the case who have died in mysterious circumstances.
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Trailer of the Week: Political Trial Against a Dead Man
In what might well be the most macabre act in the already appalling human rights record of the current Russian government, the deceased lawyer Sergei Magnitsky is about to be put on trial in Moscow this Friday, although he was tortured to death in a Russian jail over three years ago.
In 2008, when Sergei Magnitsky was defending his client Hermitage Capital Management on a case of alleged tax evasion, he discovered a huge tax fraud of $230 million conducted by Russian authorities, tax officials, police and elements of organized crime. While investigating this massive theft of public money, he was arrested for allegedly colluding with Hermitage and jailed to wait for trial. This trial never came — Magnitsky died in his cell 8 days before the one-year-limit of custody without trial expired, having been denied medical care that he desperately needed after repeated beatings and torture, as was confirmed by a later independent inquiry.
Sergei Magnitsky is the first person to be tried posthumously in Russia after the laws were changed in 2011 to allow that. Magnitsky’s widow, Natalia Zharikova, has condemned the proceedings as “blasphemy” and urged those involved to refuse to take part.
Until this day, all those responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky have been cleared, and on March 19th the Russian officials announced that they are ending the investigation without finding any signs of crime. Yet on a global level, Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, has been successfully campaigning to end the impunity through the so-called “Sergei Magnitsky Act” which seeks to impose international visa restrictions and asset freezes on Russian government officials that are thought to be involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky. In the US, this act was passed into law by President Obama on December 14th, 2012. Russia retaliated by banning US citizens from adopting Russian orphans as well as placing restrictions on NGOs if they have “foreign agents” supporting them. Russian officials are reportedly currently doing wide-ranging checks of NGOs with foreign support in order to limit Western influence and silence dissidents.
Bill Browder, a recipient of the Cinema for Peace Award for Justice 2012 as well as presenter of the International Human Rights Film Award at Cinema for Peace Berlin 2013, now also campaigns to pass the act in the EU and elsewhere in the world. All this campaigning against Russian officials is a very dangerous task considering the harsh Russian tactics: Browder’s life has been threatened and one of the key witnesses in the tax fraud case died suspiciously in London a few months ago after giving information to Browder, reminiscent of the 2006 poisoning of the former KGB agent and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko.
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Trial of Dead Lawyer Magnitsky Begins in Moscow
The unprecedented posthumous trial of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky for tax evasion began on Friday as investigators denied he was arrested for uncovering major corruption by state officials.
This is believed to be the first time a dead person has been prosecuted in either Russian or Soviet history.
Magnistky, who worked for the British-based Hermitage Capital investment fund, was 37 when he died in a pre-detention facility in November 2009 almost one year after being arrested on charges of tax evasion. His arrest came after he had accused Interior Ministry officials of involvement in a $230-million embezzlement scheme.
His death sparked international outrage and spurred U.S. lawmakers into passing a bill that will allow for visa bans and the freezing of bank accounts for Russian officials suspected of rights abuses.
Investigators have justified the trial by citing a 2011 law that allows relatives of deceased people charged with crimes to attempt to clear their loved ones’ names.
Magnistky’s relatives say they are completely opposed to the process going ahead.
“I have never asked for this trial,” Magnitsky’s wife, Natalya Zharikova, told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper in comments published on Thursday. “How can you try a dead person?”
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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
