Vlad the Violator
The United States and other Western nations should be doing more to respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s human rights violations, members of Congress and foreign policy experts said Monday during a United States-Russia relations event hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative, Freedom House, and the Institute of Modern Russia.
Rep. James McGovern (D., Mass.) said the current trial of dead Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky represents a “malevolent move” that makes “it clear that Russian leaders recognize that they no longer have the support of the people they govern, and so they must resort to scare tactics to try and keep the lid on dissent.”
Magnitsky was killed while in a Moscow detention center in November 2009 after being imprisoned by Russian authorities. He claimed to have uncovered massive tax fraud that involved Russian government officials.
The Senate passed in December 2012 the Magnitsky Act, which applies visa sanctions to Russians who are believed to be engaged in human rights violations.
Senator Ben Cardin (D., Md.), who sponsored the Magnitsky Act, said the “objective is not to ban Russians from visiting the United States or using our banking system.”
“The objective is to get Russia to do what is right for its citizens,” he said.
The Russian government, led by President Putin, recently banned Russian children from being adopted by American parents in response to the Magnitsky Act.
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The Magnitsky Trial: Russia Places a Dead Man in the Dock
At Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court on Monday morning, there was a great deal of confusion among the journalists about what exactly was meant to happen in Courtroom No. 17. On the roster, a preliminary hearing was slated for the case of Sergei Magnitsky, who is accused of tax evasion. The court’s press secretary, Alexandra Berezina, explained that the defendant would learn, among other things, whether he would be granted bail or forced to await trial in prison. But like so much about Russia’s latest adventure in judicial folly, it was not clear how the issue of bail could matter. Magnitsky has been dead for more than two years. When this fact was pointed out to Berezina, she gave a look of exasperation. “I’m just telling you what would normally happen,” she snapped. And hardly anything is normal about this case.
For the first time in Russia’s history, a dead man has been placed in the dock, and it will not be easy for the court to parse all of the cryptic corollaries of that lurid fact. How, for instance, is the defense attorney supposed to consult with his client? A Ouija board? Some kind of voodoo mediation? And what about the issue of habeas corpus — literally, “show me the body” — the bedrock principle of common law that requires the accused to be brought before a judge? Are we to expect an exhumation? “It is a self-evident absurdity,” says William Browder, Magnitsky’s former employer and now his co-defendant in the case. “There’s no way in the world that a lawyer can represent him.” But with a trial as steeped as this one in Russian politics, nothing should seem too far-fetched.
The saga that led to Magnitsky’s death — and subsequently his trial — began in 2009, when Browder hired the young tax attorney to keep the books of Hermitage Capital, Browder’s investment fund in Moscow. While digging into some of the fund’s corporate documents, which Russian police had seized during a raid, Magnitsky uncovered the largest known tax fraud in Russian history. A gang of detectives, tax inspectors and other bureaucrats had allegedly used the fund’s corporate seals and documents to file for a tax refund worth $230 million. Following the paper trail, Magnitsky found that this refund — also the largest in Russian history — had been rubber-stamped at a Moscow tax office in just one day. After that, the money vanished into various offshore accounts. Magnitsky immediately blew the whistle, even offering to give testimony against the officials in court, including agents of the FSB secret police, which Vladimir Putin led before becoming Russia’s President in 2000.
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Russian businessman’s 20-year bid to enter Canada spawned top secret spy agency probes, but never citizenship
One evening last fall in the Parliament Hill office of a Canadian senator, a group of influential Canadians met with a controversial Russian oligarch bearing an intriguing offer: to help reveal the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat hailed as a hero for saving tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, before he disappeared in Soviet custody.
Two bodyguards stood outside Conservative Senator Linda Frum’s office watching over Vitaly Malkin, founder of a private national bank, once listed as one of the world’s wealthiest people and a member of the Russian senate.
Inside, Mr. Malkin and Ms. Frum were joined by Liberal MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler, who brought with him Mr. Wallenberg’s niece, Louise von Dardel. Charles Wagner, Mr. Malkin’s Toronto lawyer, and Moshe Ronen, vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, were also there, all of them looking to Mr. Malkin to pry the Wallenberg secret from KGB archives.
Despite a whiff of Hollywood thriller about the after-hours gathering, it likely seemed entirely normal to Mr. Malkin, whose life is writ against a backdrop of international intrigue, precipitous geopolitics, high-level access and massive financial deals.
For 20 years, Mr. Malkin has eyed Canada, applying to live here and seek citizenship, investing millions in Toronto real estate.
Immigration rejection, RCMP probes, secret notations about him with Canada’s spy agency, accusations of organized crime ties, court battles with the government and lawsuits with former business partners have been his reward.
His November visit can be seen as something of a triumph, as it meant overcoming a 19-year ban on entering Canada for alleged involvement in organized crime, an accusation he steadfastly fought as unfair and baseless. Mr. Malkin, never charged with a crime, says he is a victim of Western prejudice against Russia’s business elites, with an assumption that their wealth comes from mobsters or corruption.
However, Mr. Malkin also found that not everything about his past was forgotten when he again crossed the Canadian border.
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Rep. James McGovern condemns Russian trial of dead lawyer
A decision by Russian authorities to go ahead with the trial of a dead lawyer is yet another example of the “endless vendetta” against him, a U.S. congressman said Monday.
A judge in Moscow has ruled that the posthumous trial of Sergei Magnitsky, who claimed to have exposed a web of corruption involving Russian officials, will proceed March 11. He has been accused of tax fraud.
“Unfortunately, the ordeal of Sergei Magnitsky did not end with his death,” said Rep. James P. McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat. “All these malevolent moves make it clear that Russian leaders recognize that they no longer have the support of the people they govern, and so they must resort to scare tactics to try and keep the lid on dissent.”
Mr. McGovern spoke at an event in Washington hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative, Freedom House and the Institute of Modern Russia, which is led by Pavel Khodorkovsky, the son of jailed Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
“The farce of the trial of Sergei Magnitsky shows how far the regime is willing to go to protect itself,” said Guy Verhofstadt, a former prime minister of Belgium.
Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer, died in a Moscow detention center in November of 2009. He claimed that he had uncovered a $230 million tax fraud involving Russian government officials.
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Magnitsky case: Russia accuses Browder over Gazprom
Russia is preparing new charges against UK-based fund manager Bill Browder, whose lawyer died in a Russian jail but now faces tax evasion charges.
Mr Browder will be accused of illegally buying shares in Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom, the interior ministry said. Mr Browder called the move “absurd”.
On Monday a Russian judge ruled that a trial of the dead lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, should go ahead next week.
Mr Browder, who runs Hermitage Capital Management, is to be tried in absentia.
Speaking to BBC Russian, Mr Browder said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin “has given an instruction to law enforcement agencies to charge me with any crime they can think up, no matter how spurious or absurd”.
“Every single securities firm in Russia set up derivatives structures which were legal, to invest in Gazprom shares… there was nothing illegal going on,” he said.
Mr Magnitsky died after his pancreatitis went untreated. He had uncovered an alleged $230m (£150m) tax fraud involving Russian government officials.
Nobody has been convicted over his death or the alleged theft from Russian state coffers.
However, Mr Magnitsky and Mr Browder were charged with tax evasion in the wake of Mr Magnitsky’s offer of evidence to the Russian authorities.
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Russia alleges $70m fraud against Browder
Russia authorities are seeking to charge former investor and shareholder activist Bill Browder with illegally obtaining Gazprom shares worth $70m, interior ministry officials announced on Tuesday.
The American fund manager based in London said the allegations were yet another attempt to intimidate him as he campaigns for Europe to adopt US-style legislation barring Russian human rights violators known as the “Magnitsky Law” named for Mr Browder’s former lawyer who died in a Russian prison in 2009.
The announcement that charges would be brought against Mr Browder followed a well-tested formula in Russia, where criminal indictments usually follow denunciation on state television. Russian network First Channel on Sunday night devoted a seven-minute slot to Mr Browder’s financial dealings in Russia prior to his ejection from the country in 2005.
The allegations themselves focus on whether Mr Browder violated any Russian laws when his fund, Hermitage Capital, used Russian companies registered in the region of Kalmykia to purchase shares in the gas monopoly between 2001 and 2004. At the time, according to presidential decree, foreigners were barred from directly owning Gazprom shares, but many funds used Russian derivative structures to play the market nonetheless.
“Browder used specially developed schemes according to which foreign companies bought liquid shares in the name of Russian legal entities, registered in zones with special tax treatment,” said Mikhail Alexandrov from the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Department on Tuesday. He also accused Mr Browder of seeking to use share holdings in Gazprom to gain a seat on the board, and to exercise influence at the gas monopoly.
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Russia resumes hearings against dead lawyer
A Moscow court resumed preliminary hearings Monday in the posthumous trial of a Russian lawyer whose death in jail after accusing state officials of tax fraud has upset the Kremlin’s delicate ties with the US.
The Tverskoi District Court began the latest preliminary hearing against Sergei Magnitsky — Russia’s first legal procedure against a dead man — behind closed doors at 0600 GMT, a court spokeswoman told AFP.
The hearing is expected to set a date for the start of the trial in the case, after the state appointed an attorney to defend Magnitsky despite protests from his family.
“A lawyer is not allowed to take an instruction in a case that is clearly unlawful, and to take a position against the will of the client,” said a complaint written by Magnitsky’s relatives and distributed by his former employer Hermitage Capital.
“The assertion by prosecutors that the case was initiated at the request from the relatives is a lie,” the letter said.
Magnitsky’s mother Natalya and her own lawyers are boycotting the trial.
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Police Set to Charge Browder for Buying Gazprom Stock
The Interior Ministry is preparing to bring criminal charges against U.S.-born investor Bill Browder, the latest turn in a feud that has led to U.S. sanctions against Russian officials, a Russian ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children and the upcoming posthumous trial of Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky worked as a lawyer for Browder’s Hermitage Capital, once a minority shareholder in the state-controlled gas giant, Gazprom. He died in jail in 2009 after his pancreatitis went untreated. The Kremlin human rights council said in a 2011 report that Magnitsky had been repeatedly beaten and deliberately denied medical treatment.
Magnitsky and Browder are due to be put on trial next week for tax evasion.
Browder, a British citizen, has been barred from Russia since 2005 as a security threat, according to Russian officials. He has campaigned to bring those responsible for Magnitsky’s death to justice.
Mikhail Alexandrov from the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Department said Tuesday that there is sufficient evidence to charge Browder with misappropriation for allegedly using subsidiaries to amass a 3 billion ruble stake in Gazprom between 2001 to 2004. Until 2005, foreign investors were not allowed to hold more than 9 percent of Gazprom shares.
“We’re talking about not only personal enrichment with the violation of Russian laws by illegally buying up stocks in strategically important gas monopolist Gazprom, but it’s about intending to impose their own rules on that company,” Alexandrov said.
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Russia Says New Fraud Charges Against Browder
Russian authorities announced new fraud charges against U.S.-born investor William Browder, escalating pressure in a politically charged case that has fueled tensions between Moscow and the West.
The new charges come as a Moscow court is set to begin hearings in a rare posthumous trial of Mr. Browder’s former lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, on tax-evasion allegations next week.
Mr. Magnitsky died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after exposing what he and Mr. Browder claimed was a $230 million fraud perpetrated against the Russian government by senior police and security officials. A Kremlin human rights commission said in 2011 that Mr. Magnitsky was beaten and deliberately denied medical treatment, leading to his death. Russian authorities deny any wrongdoing and lower-level prison officials charged in the case have been acquitted.
The U.S. government, pushing for a full investigation of his death and the corruption allegations, passed a law known as the “Magnitsky Act” last year that imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials allegedly implicated in the case and other violations of human rights. The law triggered some of the worst tensions in years between Moscow and Washington. The Kremlin denounced the measure as unjustified interference in Russia’s affairs and retaliated by banning adoption of Russian children by Americans.
Mr. Browder, a U.K. citizen, is now pushing for passage of similar restrictions in Europe. He said Tuesday the new charges were “retaliation” for his global campaign. A Russian Interior Ministry spokesman denied that. Officials said they would seek his extradition to Russia, though so far western law-enforcement agencies haven’t cooperated in the probes.
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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
