Magnitsky hearing postponed as mother urges Russian lawyers to boycott trial
The preliminary hearing of the posthumous trial of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been postponed after his family and their lawyers refused to take part in the trial.
Russian authorities had required Magnitsky’s mother and widow to be present at the trial to speak on his behalf, but after both they and their lawyers refused to participate, only the judge and the prosecution appeared in court yesterday.
Hermitage Capital Founder Bill Browder, for whom Magnitsky was working when he was detained in 2009, is also due to be examined in the hearing, albeit in absentia. It is understood that he is one of few foreigners ever to be tried in absentia in Russia.
The hearing is now due to take place on 18 February and Judge Igor Alisov and the Russian authorities are planning to appoint lawyers to defend both Magnitksy and Browder.
Earlier this month, Natalya Magnitskaya, Magnitsky’s mother, appealed via a formal application to Moscow Bar Association chairman Henri Reznik to urge all of its members to not participate as ‘state-appointed counsel’ in the trial.
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Posthumous trial of Russian lawyer delayed
The trial of Russian lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky officially began yesterday, but has been postponed for several weeks. This was not, as one might expect, because Magnitsky died in prison more than three years ago, but because his defense team has chosen not to participate in the bizarre proceeding:
In Monday’s hearing, it was unclear who or what, exactly, went on trial. Mr. Magnitsky’s co-defendant, William F. Browder, the manager of the Hermitage Capital hedge fund, has been barred from entering Russia since 2005, so he did not appear in court.
The hearing was of a type in Russian practice that indicates that the police consider their work complete, and that the case can go to trial, Aleksandra V. Bereznina, a spokeswoman for Tverskoi Regional Court, said in an interview.
Judge Igor B. Alisov promptly postponed the trial because the defendants did not appear in the courtroom — as expected — but neither did lawyers representing their interests.[…]
The hearing took place in a closed courtroom. The defendants’ chairs were unoccupied, Ms. Bereznina said. Mr. Browder and relatives of Mr. Magnitsky have said they will boycott the proceedings.
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Did Prime Minister Medvedev physically threaten Russia’s most acid billionaire critic?
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev appeared to physically threaten an American billionaire critic of his country in an off-the-record briefing with journalists, the billionaire says.
Because the briefing last week at Davos operated under Chatham House rules, which bar the disclosure of remarks attributed to specific individuals, none of the journalists has written about the session with Medvedev. But Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital, says that (video) four journalists who attended the Jan. 24 briefing told him of Medvedev’s remarks.
Browder, once one of Russia’s most enthusiastic Western investors and now one of its most acid critics, accuses Russian officials of murdering his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, after an expose accused them of stealing $230 million in government revenue. Magnitsky died in a Moscow jail in 2009, and the US has passed a law called the Magnitsky Act that bars US entry for Russian officials allegedly complicit in the death. Lithuania has frozen bank accounts allegedly used to secretly get some of the money out of Russia.
The reported remarks are highly unusual not just in their content but their source—Medvedev is typically one of Russia’s most mild-mannered senior leaders, particularly compared with the pugnacious and outspoken president, Vladimir Putin.
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Dead? No excuse for Russian man Sergei Magnitsky to miss trial
SERGEI Magnitsky died more than three years ago in a Russian jail but authorities are moving to put him on trial in a Russian court.
The whistle-blowing lawyer died in 2009 after being arrested on charges of tax fraud – the same fraud in which he alleged that Interior Ministry officials had a hand.
The Russian government has faced harsh international criticism over its treatment of Magnitsky, and its plan to bring a dead man to trial beginning February 18 can only increase that chorus.
Here’s a look at some other posthumous trials and actions.
POPE FORMOSUS
This was a grisly case in which the accused pope’s corpse was put on the stand in the so-called Cadaver Synod of 897.
The Catholic cleric had long been involved in internecine church disputes and jockeying for power. One of his predecessors, John VII, accused him of conspiring with others to take the papacy and of trying to become bishop of Bulgaria even though he already held another bishopric. Formosus eventually was elected pope in 891 and served until his death in 896, but the previous quarrels had festered. His successor revived the charges and ordered that Formosus’ corpse be exhumed and brought to the papal court for judgment.
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Russian opposition leader Yashin calls for Lithuanian support to Magnitsky act
The head of the Solidarity movement, one of opposition leaders Ilya Yashin, maintains he has urged Lithuanian officials and parliamentarians to support the so-called Magnitsky act in Europe.
Yashin described his meetings in Lithuania over the past week in his accounts on Twitter and Facebook on Monday.
“I am having a useful time in Vilnius. Had a meeting with Lithuania’s presidential adviser, foreign vice-minister and a group of parliamentarians. I am persuading them to support the Magnitsky act in Europe and personal sanctions against investigators and judges in the Bolotnoye case (a criminal case on opposition protest rallies on the eve Vladimir Putin’s inauguration as president). We will do our best to bar the defiant bad guys from using their real estate and bank accounts in European countries,” Yashin said on Facebook and Twitter.
Egidijus Vareikis, a member of the Lithuanian parliamentary European Affairs Committee, said the Monday’s meeting with Yashin was informal and, among other matters, addressed the Magnitsky act.
“The meeting was informal, we discussed the political situation in Russia, we had questions, I was a pre-election observer during the presidential elections (in Russia) and said that some in the West deemed it senseless to wait for Russia to become a Western country, as Putin made Russia what he needed it to be. I asked (Yashin) about his opinion on my position, and he agreed that this was what the situation actually was,” Vareikis told BNS on Tuesday.
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Attorneys assigned for Magnitsky’s tax evasion case
Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court on Monday ruled to appoint an attorney for the tax evasion case against deceased Hermitage Capital auditor Sergei Magnitsky, who died while in a pretrial detention facility in 2009.
Under Russian criminal law, a dead person can be prosecuted. According to Article 24 of the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure, proceedings can be closed against a deceased person who stood accused of some crime pending the consent of his relatives. The case would then be closed on so-called non-rehabilitative grounds meaning that relatives of the person do not demand the deceased person to be recognized as innocent.
Preliminary hearings in the case had previously been postponed because the attorneys defending Magnitsky and Hermitage Capital Management Bill Browder, who has also been accused of tax evasion, did not appear in court.
Thus the court has appointed attorneys for both Magnitsky and Browder.
“The preliminary hearing which was to be held today has been postponed until 11:00 a.m. on February 18 because Magnitsky and Browder’s attorneys have not appeared in court. The court has decided to appoint attorneys for them. The next court session will also be preliminary and will be held behind closed doors,” the court’s press secretary, Alexandra Berezina, told journalists.
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Hearing Postponed In Posthumous Trial Of Magnitsky
A preliminary hearing has been postponed in the posthumous trial of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after accusing government officials in a massive fraud scheme.
A Magnitsky family lawyer told the Interfax news agency that the family would not cooperate in the trial, which has now been set for February 18. The court announced it will appoint lawyers to defend Magnitsky.
Prosecutors filed new charges of tax evasion against Magnitsky last year. Charges have also been filed against William Browder, the owner of the Hermitage Capital investment fund where Magnitsky worked. Browder, who is outside Russia, is to be tried in absentia.
Supporters, NGOs, and the Kremlin’s own human rights commission say the 37-year-old Magnitsky was denied proper medical care and abused during nearly a year in pre-trial detention. He was arrested after implicating mid-ranking Interior Ministry and tax officials in a $230 million scheme to defraud the government. His case has become an international symbol of Russia’s human rights and rule-of-law failings.
According to Professor David M. Crane, who specializes in international criminal and humanitarian law at Syracuse University College of Law in the United States, the proceedings against Magnitsky are highly unusual.
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Russia presses on with plans to try dead whistleblower
Russia pushed forward with plans for the posthumous trial of a lawyer on tax evasion charges on Monday, despite a boycott by relatives and lawyers who said President Vladimir Putin’s government was “dancing on the grave of a dead man”.
Sergei Magnitsky died in 2009 after complaining repeatedly he was denied treatment as his health declined in jail, prompting the United States last month to bar entry to Russians accused of involvement in his death or serious rights abuses.
Putin, restored to the presidency in May, has dismissed the international furor over the case, saying last month the lawyer had died of a heart attack.
Although Putin has rejected suggestions Magnitsky was tortured in prison, the Kremlin’s own human rights council has voiced suspicions he was beaten to death.
Magnitsky’s former employer, investment fund Hermitage Capital, says the lawyer was killed because he had accused law enforcement and tax officers of stealing $230 million from the state by setting up bogus tax refunds.
Magnitsky’s mother and her attorney refused to show up for a preliminary hearing for a trial they denounced as a politically motivated attack on a dead man, forcing the Moscow court hearing the case to appoint defense lawyers.
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Always the Last to Know
Dmitri Medvedev-prime minister of Russia, at least until Putin needs a sacrificial victim to blame for some failure, that being the main role of a Russian PM-claims that Russian business has not been harmed by the Magnitsky controversy:
Medvedev said the whistleblower’s death in jail, for which no one has been brought to justice, was being used by Kremlin critics to score points but was of no import to business leaders.
. . . .
“It does not interest anyone, except maybe certain citizens who are trying to use it to accumulate political capital,” said Medvedev, who was president from 2008 until Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin last May.
“Not a single businessman raises this issue,” he told state television in an interview focusing on his role in the forum. “But unfortunately it has become a factor in political life.”
Biznessmen have a different story-off the record, which is part of the point:
With international concern spreading after the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky, some Russian tycoons are worried their legitimate cross-border money transfers involving anything from industrial investments to luxury properties will get hit by red tape.
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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
