Sky News: The trial of Magnitsky – “dancing on the grave”
Today the court will hear the case of the Russian whistleblower lawyer, accused of tax fraud. This is despite the fact that the defendant had died over three years ago! Sergei Magnitsky died in prison under suspicious circumstances. This is the first posthumous court case in Russian history.
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In Plain Sight: The Kremlin’s London Lobby
Although the US-Russian relationship continues to deteriorate in the face of a vengeful Kremlin ban on American adoptions of Russian orphans, Vladimir Putin is still pursuing a strategy of influencing—and infiltrating—European political establishments. Given the amount of capital that Russia and her billionaire oligarchs have invested in the continent, this policy is as much defensive as it is self-interested. The European Commission’s deadly-serious investigation into Gazprom’s monopolistic practices, the beginning of the end of German Ostpolitik, and the ongoing dispute with Russia over the Syria crisis hint at an imminent confrontation between Moscow and EU countries. And while state-owned media outlets turn out anti-American propaganda to match equivalent policy measures, for the time being, Russia is still very much committed to swaying European opinion by using both transparent economic appeals (especially in the energy sector, the Gazprom case notwithstanding) and also the kind of Le Carré–esque skulduggery that was supposed to have vanished with the Cold War.
One recent episode of Moscow’s see-through machinations involved a London-based lobby group Conservative Friends of Russia (CFoR). Launched in August 2012—in the garden of the Russian ambassador to Britain, no less—and shut down in December, CFoR’s brief existence might have gone unnoticed but for two developments. The first was the number of Tory parliamentarians who joined its governance, including Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Margaret Thatcher’s former foreign minister and the current chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee in the House of Commons. The second was the way CFoR, which presented itself as a “neutral” talk-shop about British-Russian relations, followed slavishly the talking points of the Russian Foreign Ministry. The chairman of CFoR, Richard Royal—a communications specialist at Ladbrokes, the world’s largest retail bookmaker, and a former aide to Tory MPs—even gave an interview to the founder of a notorious neo-Nazi group in Russia in which he spoke about the Caucasus, Russia’s counterterrorism policies, and other matters high on the agenda of any chauvinistic ultranationalist.
Several Tories I spoke to, including one of the MPs formerly attached to the organization, told me they had felt all along that CFoR was little more than a serially embarrassed front for “useful idiots” (his words). Sure enough, the final act of public relations seppuku came on November 23rd when CFoR sent out a press release clumsily attacking Labor MP Chris Bryant, who heads the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Russia in the House of Commons and who’s known for his tough line against the Kremlin. A photo Bryant posted on an online dating site ten years ago showing him in his underpants was leaked to the tabloid press. Without mentioning his hardheadedness on Russia’s lurch toward totalitarianism, CFoR deployed that image in a press release attacking Bryant’s stewardship of the APPG, which was up for renewal the following week. (He handily won reelection.)
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Magnitsky was a martyr, trampled by a corrupt system, says Boris Johnson in the Telegraph
In today’s Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson writes about the trial of Sergei Magnitsky, held after his death. Boris begins: “Today, in Moscow, there begins the trial of a 37-year-old accountant by the name of Sergei Magnitsky. Mr Magnitsky is accused of tax offences dating back perhaps 10 years.”
“What is astounding about this case is that Magnitsky is not only innocent of all charges. He is also dead. He died in prison in November 2009, after almost a year in which he was kept in squalor, denied family contact and deprived of medical treatment — detention that culminated in a savage and fatal beating by his captors.
It says something about the Russian state that it should now put this ghost on trial, in what must be the most grotesque parody of legal proceedings since the animal trials of the Middle Ages. It says something about Russian justice that Magnitsky — and his family — are now being persecuted by the very legal establishment whose corruption he exposed. And that message is that there are no lengths to which the Russian kleptocrats will not go to protect themselves and their ill-gotten loot, and to grind the faces of their enemies.
Magnitsky was a whistleblower. He uncovered a scam, a gigantic criminal conspiracy by which the Russian police and tax officials colluded with the judiciary and mafia to steal millions from the Russian state. When he refused to change his evidence and give in to his interrogators, they killed him – only eight days before they would have been legally obliged to bring him to trial or let him go.
Magnitsky’s tragedy was to be hired by a US-born British citizen called Bill Browder, who runs Hermitage Capital Management — a fund that used to be one of the biggest investors in Russia. Bill Browder’s misfortune was to fall out with Vladimir Putin, and in a big way. To understand the Magnitsky affair, you have to go back to the collapse of communism and the decision of a semi-inebriated Boris Yeltsin to allow the assets of the Russian people, and incalculable wealth, to fall into the hands of about two dozen more or less cunning and opportunistic businessmen — the oligarchs.”
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Chaos in Moscow court for trial of dead whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky as legal team fail to show
There was mayhem in a tiny courtroom in Moscow today after one of the most controversial trials in recent Russian history – that of the deceased whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky – failed to start.
The case was prevented from proceeding after the lawyers for the late defendant did not show up. Mr Magnitsky, who died in prison in 2009 after being beaten and refused medical treatment, will be judged in the first posthumous trial in modern Russia.
He is accused of tax evasion, along with his former employer, William Browder, a US-born British investor.
Mr Browder has been banned from entering Russia and is being tried in absentia. He is the head of the investment fund Hermitage Capital and was accused of tax evasion after falling foul of the Russian government. Mr Magnitsky was investigating these charges in 2008, and discovered that the disputed tax payments had been stolen by police and tax officials. When he reported these findings, he himself was thrown into jail.
Mr Magnitsky’s family and lawyers have refused to participate in the trial, so the court has appointed lawyers to represent the deceased defendant. These lawyers have been told they could risk being debarred if they did not take on the case, but nevertheless were not present at court yesterday. It is unclear if their no-show was a political statement, as they were not available for comment, though the lawyers had told the court they needed more time to read the case documents.
Earlier, Mr Magnitsky’s widow had called on all of the participants to boycott the trial. “I think that if any of its participants have a conscience – and this is key not only in human morality, but also in Russian criminal law – they have a duty to refuse to participate in this blasphemy,” said Natalia Zharikova.
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Russia adjourns dead lawyer trial to March 22
A Moscow court on Monday put dead Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on trial for tax evasion in defiance of his family’s complaints it was “desecrating” his memory, but swiftly adjourned the process to March 22. Duration: 00:33
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No defendant and no lawyers in Sergei Magnitsky trial farce
The Russian trial of a dead whistleblower was hit by new farce today as state-appointed lawyers failed to show up on day one of the case.
Sergei Magnitsky is being tried posthumously for tax evasion, a move that has led to international criticism of the Moscow authorities.
Before his death aged 37 while in detention in 2009 — which his family and friends believe was murder — he uncovered alleged £154 million corruption among the same senior interior ministry officials who ordered his arrest. The trial has already been dubbed “farcical” and “Stalinist”.
Lawyers appointed by the Russian state failed to appear. They are representing the dead man and his co-accused, William Browder, the London-based head of Hermitage Capital Investment who is being tried in his absence.
The lawyers sent a petition to the court demanding more time to prepare the defence of Mr Magnitsky. They claimed they would need until May to read 60 volumes of “evidence” against the men. The judge ruled the trial would go ahead on March 22 despite objections from lawyers representing the Russian authorities.
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The Man Behind Putin’s Adoption Ban Once Tried to Investigate Russia’s Spy Agency
Children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov is now the face of Putin’s Magnitsky retaliation law, but in a past life he was an anti-FSB advocate.
For a man known as Russia’s Judge Judy, Pavel Astakhov has had more luck causing a diplomatic crisis than any family court judge ever had. Appointed Russia’s child right’s commissioner in 2009 by former President Dmitry Medvedev, Astakhov’s domestic and international profile has risen steadily since, culminating in his patronage of the new state law banning U.S. citizens from adopting Russian orphans and describing his critics as “pedophiles” who are either “blind or stupid.”
The measure is built right into the so-called “Dima Yakovlev Law,” the Duma’s broad answer to the newly passed Magnitsky Act, which blacklists and sanctions Russian officials credibly accused of gross human rights violations. Dima’s Law has been hysterically presented in the Russian state-controlled media as a necessary corrective to a spate of American adoptive parents mistreating or even killing their wards, with Astakhov taking center stage as a Cassandra against the “export” of the some 60,000 native sons and daughters who’ve found homes in the United States since 1991.
Yet Astakhov’s peregrinations from post-Soviet legal eagle and intellectual celebrity into spokesman for Vladimir Putin’s most frivolously nasty anti-American measure is particularly fascinating given the fact that he doesn’t quite fit the prototype of Kremlin flack. He formerly defended Vladimir Gusinsky, the first billionaire oligarch and media mogul to have his empire confiscated by the state, under the direct threat of arrest or worse by a then-new-minted President Putin; he also represented Edmond Pope, an American businessman and retired naval officer, who was convicted of espionage, then pardoned.
Best known for his Court TV-style reality series (where the defendants are played by actors), a constant stream of self-help books on teaching Russians all about property rights, real estate and family law, and another constant stream of Grisham-esque legal thrillers, Astakhov has a Masters of Law from the University of Pittsburgh, making him one of the few top state officials to be partially educated in the United States. (Like most state officials, his eldest son studied in Britain and then New York City.) He was on these shores when al-Qaeda attacked on September 11, and has since taken to referring to America as his “second motherland.” He certainly has favorite holiday destinations. A few months ago, Seven Days magazine (think People) ran a J. Crew ad-cum-puff piece about Astakhov and his attractive family, explaining how his wife Svetlana not only gave birth to their youngest son in Nice, but then had the child baptized in Cannes. In what would have been cosmopolitan heresy for any other Russian official, Astakhov favorably compared the French Riviera’s ob-gyn and neonatal systems to those of his first motherland: “We really had the largest ward in the hospital: three rooms, a parental bedroom, a children’s room and a guest room. But all this, including the medical care, cost three times less than what it would cost in an elite Moscow hospital.” Even the food, he said, was better than back home.
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The Magnitsky Money: From Russia…And Then What?
What if $230 million went missing and no one wanted to get it back? That is the puzzling question posed by Russia’s years of unwillingness to investigate the well-documented fraud claims made by lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky.
At least half a dozen European Union countries, plus Switzerland, have been looking into where the so-called Magnitsky money might have gone. But Russia has done virtually nothing to investigate the allegations and documentation that Magnitsky brought to authorities before his death in pretrial detention in 2009.
Earlier this month, attention was focused on Moldova, which is looking into a complaint filed in June 2012 by Hermitage Capital Management, the firm that Magnitsky represented and which was also an alleged victim of the fraud.
‘Documentary Evidence’
Hermitage CEO William Browder — whom Russia has accused of fraud in an unrelated case — told RFE/RL’s Moldovan Service what he is seeking in Chisinau.
“We have given [the Moldovan authorities] documentary evidence that shows money flowing into accounts at Banca de Economii and then money flowing out from those accounts,” Browder says. “We’d like to have the information on who managed those accounts, who was responsible for opening those accounts, what kind of due diligence was done in terms of who was behind those accounts. And ultimately we’d like to have the police and the prosecutor prosecute any person in Moldova or elsewhere who was responsible for laundering this money through Moldova.”
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Push For Magnitsky Sanctions Intensifies In Europe
The battle over the Sergei Magnitsky case is moving to Europe. After being lobbied by activists for nearly three years, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in late 2012 to sanction Russian officials implicated in the prosecution and death of Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing Moscow lawyer who died in pretrial detention. The case has come to symbolize Russia’s perceived rights failings.
The U.S. law, which provides for asset freezes and visa bans on Russian officials who violate human rights, was never meant to be an end in itself. Instead, the legislation was a stepping stone to passing something similar in the European Union.
And that effort is now gaining momentum.
“Russians consider themselves, really, like a part of Europe — Europeans,” says Kristiina Ojuland, a member of the European Parliament from Estonia who has spearheaded the push. “And therefore it’s significant that Europe reacts, not only [to] the Magnitsky case, but in broader terms, reacts against this corrupt, black money that is flying into the EU countries.”
Asset freezes and visa bans in Europe would hit Russian officials considerably harder than similar sanctions in the United States. As Ojuland notes, Russian officials are fond of vacationing, shopping, and educating their children in EU countries. They are also more likely to keep money in European banks.
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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
