Sergei Magnitsky, Russia, and the rare case of the posthumous trial
On February 18*, Russian prosecutors plan to put a man on trial. Two things make the case important. First, the man is a whistleblower, a lawyer who was jailed after he had publicly accused interior ministry officials of tax fraud amounting to $230m. Second, he is dead.
Amnesty International argues that the posthumous prosecution of Sergei Magnitsky violates his fundamental rights even in death, “in particular the right to defend himself in person.”
Is it even legal to try someone once they’ve died? The key question is whether the trial is criminal, or civil, says William Schabas, professor of international law at Middlesex University. “You can sue a dead person in a civil court – you can sue their estate. But the point of a criminal prosecution is to put them in jail. To my knowledge you can’t hold a criminal trial once someone has died – although I can’t rule out the fact that a perverse justice system could create such a possibility.”
Marie-Aimee Brajeux at Queen Mary’s Criminal Justice Centre, University of London, agrees. “The objective of a criminal trial is to hold someone accountable for what they’ve done wrong and punish them for it. In that case, the defendant has to be alive and no action can be brought against them once they’re dead, especially as they can’t defend themselves.”
Until very recently, it was impossible in Russia to bring criminal proceedings against a dead person – so the case against Magnitsky was closed 13 days after he died. But in 2011, a Constitutional Court ruling allowed that criminal proceedings could be continued after someone’s death, if the deceased person’s relatives insisted on it. This is the basis on which the case against Magnitsky appears to have been reopened – despite the fact that his mother is strongly against the reopening of the case.
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Magnitsky trial goes ahead in defiance of family
A Russian court on Monday held a new preliminary hearing in the posthumous fraud trial of dead investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in defiance of his family who claimed it had no right to appoint defence lawyers.
The Tverskoi District court in central Moscow, in a third preliminary hearing in the trial, adjourned the case to March 4 at the request of defence lawyers who Magnitsky’s mother said had no right to defend her son.
“The preliminary hearing has been postponed to March 4 at the defence’s request,” a court spokeswoman told AFP, declining to name the lawyers appointed by the court to defend Magnitsky and his former employer, Hermitage Capital chief William Browder, who is being tried in absentia.
A Russian court on Monday held a new preliminary hearing in the posthumous fraud trial of dead investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in defiance of his family who claimed it had no right to appoint defence lawyers.
The Tverskoi District court in central Moscow, in a third preliminary hearing in the trial, adjourned the case to March 4 at the request of defence lawyers who Magnitsky’s mother said had no right to defend her son.
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Russia set for posthumous Magnitsky trial
Russia will press ahead tomorrow with its highly unusual posthumous prosecution of a whistleblowing lawyer who revealed how members of the government’s powerful Interior Ministry were part of a gang that stole £230m from Russian taxpayers.
The trial of Sergei Magnitsky, who died in November 2009 after months of neglect and torture in a Russian jail cell, will begin behind closed doors with the chairs of the two defendants left empty. His co-accused – the British hedge-fund manage William Browder – is banned from entering Russia and has refused to take part in what he has described as a “Stalin show trial”.
The case has become a source of international embarrassment for Moscow with America recently banning any officials involved in the arrest and death of Mr Magnitsky from holding assets in the US or travelling there. Moscow responded with a ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans.
Supporters of Mr Magnitsky say he was jailed and killed for daring to expose how a network of Russian officials and criminal underworld figures used complex tax frauds to steal money from the Russian people. Russian prosecutors admit the frauds occurred but after initially blaming a number of low- level crime figures (some of whom were dead before the scams took place) they have since switched to accusing Mr Magnitsky and Mr Browder of carrying out the crimes they say they uncovered.
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Why Russia’s Patriots Love to Buy U.S. Real Estate
Imagine a newspaper exposé about several members of the U.S. Congress who didn’t declare on their tax forms luxury villas on the Iranian Persian Gulf coast. This would be a scandal of Watergate proportions and most likely produce a couple of best-sellers and a made-for-TV movie. Now imagine an analogous situation in Russia. What happens? Almost nothing. There is no scandal, no movie, only a lot of talk on the Internet.
The story began when a group of Russian senators went to the U.S. last summer to persuade their U.S. counterparts to vote against the Magnitsky Act. One of the most vocal opponents of the act was Senator Vitaly Malkin, who said Magnitsky had died in prison from consequences of alcoholism. The senators’ “anti-Magnitsky road show” in Washington raised suspicions that their actions not only were not just political but also that their personal interests might have been threatened by the act’s ban on visas and asset holdings for some Russian officials.
Journalist Andrei Malgin decided to get to the bottom of the mystery. Using just his computer and the Internet, he dug up some very interesting facts. It turned out that Malkin has real estate in North America. Furthermore, since 1994 he has been trying to get a residence permit in Canada, justifying his request by his business interests. In his application, he openly declared that he owns 111 — yes, 111 — apartments in Toronto. The Canadian authorities turned down his request, and Malkin even tried to take them to court. Unfortunately for him, the court refused to hear his suit.
But as Malgin discovered, those aren’t the only properties in the Western Hemisphere belonging to Malkin, who is from far-away Buryatia. Public documents show that Malkin’s company, which has the mysterious name 25 СС ST74B LLC, owns a duplex worth $15.6 million in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Malkin’s lawyers denied that he is the owner, but public documents from a suit the company brought against its construction manager show that Malkin owns the apartment. They also solved the mystery of his company name, which is an abbreviation of the address: 25 Columbus Circle, apartment 74B.
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Dead lawyer to go on trial in Russia
The posthumous trial of Sergei Magnitsky, a crusading lawyer who died in prison in 2009, is set to begin in Moscow on Monday. The trial is part of an effort by Russia’s government to push back against countries adopting blacklists similar to the Magnitsky law passed last December by the US.
As far as anyone can remember, it will be the first trial of a dead defendant in Russian, or Soviet, history and most expect a speedy conviction.
Bill Browder, the head of investment fund Hermitage Capital, and Mr Magnitsky’s former chief, says he believes the trial is connected to the passage last December of the Magnitsky law in the US, which imposes a visa blacklist and asset freezes on certain Russian officials accused of human rights violations.
Mr Browder recently began a campaign to promote similar laws in Europe, starting with a trip to Paris last week.
“This is just pure vindictive nastiness because they are trying to get some sort of conviction right away,” said Mr Browder. “They can then go around the world and say: ‘Look, you’re naming a law after a convicted criminal.’”
A representative of the prosecutor’s office said it had no additional comment. “The case materials explain everything. We have nothing additional to say.”
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Russia: Get Rich or Die Trying
“It’s the same old story; someone will approach you and offer a pittance for your business, an offer you can only refuse. Next thing you know your family home is raided by police officers and you are imprisoned for a crime you did not commit. Why? Because the system is corrupt. The police are corrupt; the judiciary is corrupt and at the very top is Putin- the ex-KGB officer who has engendered the demoralization of justice in Russia. “
These are the ominous words of Sergei- a member of Russia’s most persecuted class. Sergei is not a human rights lawyer nor a political activist or any other member of society that is most often oppressed under despotic regimes. Yet 3 million of Sergei’s peers have been imprisoned in the last ten years. And there is a 1 in 6 chance that my interviewee will too find himself behind bars.
Sergei is an entrepreneur.
Sergei created his business in 2005, a cattle farm situated in European Russia. It was the post-Soviet period of hope and growth spanning from the fall of Communism in 1992 until 2008 that enabled Sergei, a humble Russian citizen with an entrepreneurial vision, to join the growing market. Indeed, it was in this period that entrepreneurism was apparently actively encouraged. The government’s ‘belief’ in capitalism and the capability of its citizens was exemplified by the ‘National Priority Projects,’ implemented by Putin in 2005. As well as huge investment into the country’s education and healthcare systems, the government aimed to spur growth in the agricultural sector through the backing of private loans to start-up businessmen and small time farmers.
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Russia Threatens HSBC in Police Inquiry, Hermitage Says
Russian police are threatening to seize documents unless HSBC Holdings Plc hands over information required for a criminal investigation into Hermitage Capital Management Ltd., the investment fund said.
Under a new criminal case alleging “fraudulent actions,” Russia’s Interior Ministry is demanding that HSBC’s Moscow unit provide financial and banking information about the fund’s companies dating back to 1996, Hermitage said in an e-mailed statement today. Otherwise, the documents can be taken by force, it said, citing a request from the ministry to HSBC.
Andrei Pilipchuk, a ministry spokesman, declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg. Evgenia Efimova, a spokeswoman for HSBC in Moscow, said she couldn’t comment immediately.
Russia is prosecuting on tax-evasion charges London-based Hermitage head William Browder and a lawyer who worked for the fund, Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in November 2009. The trial opened last month.
Magnitsky died at age 37 while in pretrial detention after alleging the biggest known tax fraud in Russia, a theft of $230 million from the national treasury. The case sparked a diplomatic row, with the U.S. imposing sanctions on Russian officials accused of playing a role in Magnitsky’s death and Russia’s government retaliating by barring American citizens from adopting Russian orphans.
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Play puts Russian justice system in dock over lawyer’s death
In a poorly lit basement theatre in central Moscow, actors play out a symbolic trial of Russia’s justice system over its failure to protect an anti-corruption lawyer who died in custody.
Without costumes or a set, the actors in “One Hour and Eighteen Minutes” take on the roles of judges, an investigator, doctor and medical assistants, reciting lines cobbled together from legal documents, media and public pronouncements on the case of Sergei Magnitsky.
His death in 2009, while awaiting trial on charges of tax evasion and fraud, has outraged human rights campaigners who see it as an example of arbitrary justice in Russia, and contributed to a rift in U.S.-Russian relations.
A nervous giggle runs through the audience, perched on wooden chairs and benches, when an actor playing a judge says that the justice system is the only thing that is still working in Russia.
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France 24 Interview: William Browder, Co-founder and CEO, Hermitage Capital Management
Douglas Herbert speaks to US-born businessman William Browder about his campaign to get a US-style “Magnitsky Act” – blacklisting Russians implicated in severe human rights abuses – passed here in France. The law is named after Browder’s former lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who was found beaten to death in a Russian jail in 2009.
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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
