Magnitsky trial: Russia accused of ‘travesty’ over dead lawyer
“Absurd” and “a travesty” are some of the words used to describe Russia’s trial of the dead lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, set to open on 22 March.
The European Parliament says the trial “is a violation of international and national laws and clearly shows the malfunctioning of the Russian criminal justice system”.
The Russian interior ministry has accused Mr Magnitsky and the UK-based fund manager who employed him, Bill Browder, of tax evasion. Mr Browder will also be tried – but in absentia, because he believes his life would be in danger were he to return to Russia.
According to a ministry official, Boris Kibis, the Magnitsky case remains open because there has been no request from his relatives to halt it.
Legal experts contacted by the BBC said they could find no parallels for the Magnitsky trial – whether in Russia or internationally. They say there are dubious legal grounds for such a case.
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Trial of dead Russian whistleblower postponed
A Russian court on Monday postponed the trial of a dead lawyer who accused law-enforcement authorities of massive corruption and whose case sparked a dispute between Washington and Moscow.
Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was jailed in 2008 on charges of tax evasion. The charges came after he alleged officials and organized criminals conspired to claim $230 million in tax rebates. He died in prison the next year of untreated pancreatitis while awaiting trial. The Russian presidential council on human rights said in a 2011 report that Magnitsky had been repeatedly beaten and deliberately denied medical treatment.
The death attracted wide international attention. The United States last year enacted a law named after Magnitsky that allows sanctions against Russians considered human rights violators. Russia retaliated by banning Americans adopting Russian children.
The posthumous trial for Magnitsky was to open Monday.
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Russia delays trial of dead lawyer Sergei Magnitsky
Judge postpones hearing in controversial case of lawyer who died in detention while awaiting trial over alleged tax evasion.
A Russian court has postponed the trial of the dead lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in the latest move to drag out the controversial case.
Magnitsky, the first person to be tried posthumously in Russia, stands accused of tax evasion, alongside his former employer, London-based investor William Browder. Magnitsky died in pre-trial detention in 2009.
Browder has been banned from entering Russia. The head of the investment fund Hermitage Capital was accused of tax evasion after falling foul of the Russian government.
Investigating the charges in 2008, Browder’s auditor and lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, discovered that police and tax officials had colluded to steal Hermitage’s tax payments for their own enrichment. The case has come to exemplify Russia’s corrupt justice system.
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Lawyers of Browder, Magnitsky unprepared, court hearings adjourned till March 22
Moscow’s Tverskoi Court on Monday postponed till March 22 hearings on the criminal case against the auditor of the British fund Hermitage Capital Management, Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a detention center, and the fund’s director, British subject William Browder, as the defense lawyers proved unprepared.
The court opened hearings on the case in the presence of 50 journalists. Judge Igor Alisov read out a request from the lawyers of Magnitsky and Browder for a postponement by one month, because they had no time to study the case.
The prosecutor and the representative of the plaintiff agreed, but at the same time asked the judge to pay attention to what they claimed was deliberate procrastination by the defense lawyers.
“The court rules the session should be adjourned till March 22. The head of the corresponding body of lawyers was asked to pay attention to the need for observing the deadlines for studying the case, “the judge ruled.
Magnitsky and Browder are accused of evading 522 million rubles of taxes. The investigators say they forged tax declarations and abused benefits established for disabled persons. Also, the Interior Ministry suspects Browder of involvement in the misappropriation of Gazprom shares.
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Justice is put to the sword by Moscow’s greed and corruption
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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Russia puts dead whistleblowing lawyer on trial
A whistleblowing Russian lawyer whose death in custody became a symbol of rights abuses and strained relations with the United States will go on posthumous trial tomorrow in what relatives say is revenge by the Kremlin.
Sergei Magnitsky, who died while in pre-trial custody in 2009, is being prosecuted for defrauding the state in what will be the first time Russia has ever tried a dead person, a development Amnesty International says sets a “dangerous precedent”.
Mr Magnitsky had been jailed after accusing police and tax officials of multimillion dollar tax fraud. His employer says the charges against him were a reprisal and that he was murdered, and the Kremlin’s own human rights council aired suspicions he was beaten to death.
The circumstances of his demise led the US last year to bar entry to Russians accused of involvement in his case or in other rights abuses.
Critics say the trial – more than three years after he died and despite pleas by relatives to drop the case – is an attempt by President Vladimir Putin’s government to hit back at Washington and show the public Mr Magnitsky was a crook, not a hero.
“It’s inhuman to try a dead man. If I take part in this circus, I become an accomplice to this,” Mr Magnitsky’s mother Natalya told Reuters. “I won’t take part in the hearings.”
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Across the Ocean, They Are Listening
Russian defenders of human rights and representatives of the opposition will be appearing at a conference in Washington, entitled “U.S.-EU-Russia Relations after Putin’s Crackdown.” Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the head of the Moscow-Helsinki Group (MHG), is speaking to the Congress on the candidacy of Russian officials who, in the opinion of human-rights defenders, should be included on the “Magnistky List.” Mikhail Kasyanov, a representative of the Republican Party of Russia — People’s Freedom Party (RPR-PARNAS), is speaking about repressive laws adopted by the Russian Parliament. Additionally, Dmitri Gudkov, a Just Russia (Spravoross) party representative in Parliament, is asking for American assistance in “anti-corruption investigations” into overseas real estate held by Russian officials.
Appearing at today’s conference in Washington — “New Approach or Business As Usual? U.S.-EU-Russia Relations After Putin’s Crackdown” — are: Mikhail Kasyanov, a representative of RPR-PARNAS; Lyudmila Alexayeva, the head of the MHG; Dmitri Gudkov, a Parliamentary representative of the Just Russia Party; and Lilia Shevtsova, a leading researcher at the Moscow Carnegie Center. The conference is taking place in the context of the “Helsinki 2.0” process, which focuses on the issue of Russia’s fulfillment of its obligations to observe human rights and civil freedoms, which was undertaken in the framework of an agreement with the OSCE (signed in 1975 in Helsinki). Also appearing at the conference are Guy Verhofstadt, head of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) party in the European Parliament, and David Kramer, President of Freedom House.
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Russian TV Airs New Accusations Against Browder
A program on Russia’s state-controlled Channel One television has accused investor William Browder of committing tax fraud worth billions of rubles in Russia’s republic of Kalmykia.
The broadcast said Browder’s Hermitage Capital Investments set up 10 companies in the republic that hired disabled people for small salaries in order to reap tax benefits and to qualify to purchase shares in Russian companies, including Gazprom.
Last week, prosecutors opened an investigation into charges Browder illegally purchased Gazprom shares at a time when foreigners were not allowed to do so.
Browder is also a defendant in absentia in a tax-evasion case along with former Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky faces the charges despite the fact that he died while in pretrial custody in 2009.
On March 7, the NTV channel broadcast a program claiming Browder was a British agent.
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The final straw?
SERGEI MAGNITSKY goes on trial in Russia, large sugary drinks are banned in New York, a referendum takes place in the Falkland Islands and a telescope is inaugurated in Chile.
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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
