Those who let Magnitsky die were hoping the case would die with him. They were wrong
When Sergei Magnitsky lay close to death in Moscow’s Butyrka Prison in 2009, his worsening illness left untreated and exacerbated by beatings, few people heard his cries of pain. A man who had uncovered something dangerous, he was left to meet a horrible end, and none of the people who let it happen imagined that years later his demise would become an international cause célèbre and one of the most poignant reminders of the dangers of doing business in post-Communist Russia.
Three years after Mr Magnitsky’s death, the US looks ready to respond with the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability act, pushed by Senator John McCain, which will ban anyone implicated in his detention, abuse or death from travelling to the US, owning property there or holding a US bank account. If the Senate passes the law and Barack Obama signs it, it will be the culmination of a long battle by Mr Magnitsky’s former colleagues, led by the American-born British citizen Bill Browder.
Mr Browder’s dealings with Russia have taken a strange trajectory. He was once one of Vladimir Putin’s biggest cheerleaders, until his multi-billion-dollar Hermitage fund ran into problems. Even after he was banned from entering Russia in 2005, at the beginning of the problems which Mr Magnitsky would be tasked with investigating, Mr Browder was still upbeat about the prospects for investors in the country. Top Kremlin officials also expressed bemusement at the ban and said they were sure it would soon be rescinded. It never was, a sign perhaps that Hermitage had come up against powerful foes.
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A $230 million fraud – and a trail of death that just keeps growing
With its sweeping vistas of the Persian Gulf and central location in the Middle East’s glitziest city, Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah is one of the most exclusive patches of real estate in the world. Created in the shape of a palm tree, the artificial archipelago is home to the cream of a city already bulging with the super wealthy. It’s not the kind of place you might expect a lowly Moscow tax official with a declared family annual income of $38,000 to own a $3 million beach front villa. How could someone with a comparatively low-level civil service job become so wealthy?
That is the question Swiss prosecutors are currently probing as part of a complicated investigation into an alleged Russian money laundering scheme through Swiss bank accounts that began when a whistle blower handed them a damning dossier of evidence at the start of this year. The whistle blower, Alexander Perepilichnyy, died two weeks ago suddenly at the age of 44. But the investigation continues.
The origins of this tale, which sounds like a KGB era thriller but is in fact a depressingly real indictment of modern day Russia, can be traced back to a cold jail cell in Burtyrka Prison in November 2009 where Sergei Magnitsky, a pioneering Moscow lawyer lay dying.
Magnitsky, a charismatic and forensically bright father of two, had been hired by the British based investment fund Hermitage Capital Management to investigate a monumental tax fraud which had been carried out against them. Nine months earlier he pointed the finger of blame at a network of Interior Ministry officials and Russian underworld figures expecting his revelation to be the start of a sustained police investigation into how $230million in Russian taxpayers’ money was squirrelled away in one of Russia’s largest declared frauds.
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Alexander Perepilichnyy: Supergrass who held key to huge Russian fraud is found dead in Surrey
A Russian supergrass who was helping Swiss prosecutors uncover a multi-million pound money laundering scheme used by corrupt Russian officials has died in mysterious circumstances outside his Surrey home, The Independent can reveal.
Alexander Perepilichnyy, a wealthy businessman who sought sanctuary in Britain three years ago after falling out with a powerful crime syndicate, collapsed outside his mansion on a luxury private estate on the outskirts of Weybridge. He was 44-years-old and was in seemingly good health.
The Independent has learned that Mr Perepilichnyy was a key witness against the “Klyuev Group”, an opaque network of corrupt Russian officials and underworld figures implicated in a series of multi-million pound tax frauds and the death in custody of the whistle-blowing Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. He is the fourth person to be linked to the scandal who has died suddenly.
Surrey Police said that a post mortem examination of Mr Perepilichnyy had proved “inconclusive” and further tests were being carried out to try to establish a cause of death. The force said the sudden death was not being treated as suspicious but left open the possibility that it will have to carry out further investigations.
Officers were called to his home on a cul-de-sac shared with seven multi-million pound properties shortly after 5pm on a Saturday two weeks ago but the Russian was declared dead at the scene 30 minutes later. Surrey Police would not confirm suggestions that the Russian had been out running.
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Friends of Russia or Friends of Putin?
The recently-established lobby group Conservative Friends of Russia (CFOR) is doing little to dispel suspicions that its sympathies lie with the Russian government.
Last week it published an article on its website accusing the Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Russia, Chris Bryant, of “incompetence” over his failure to hold an annual general meeting at the required time. To accompany the piece, which has now been taken off their site, CFOR selected the snapshot of Mr Bryant in his underwear, originally posted on a gay dating site, which circulated in the tabloids years ago. The relevance of that particular photo to his stewardship of the APPG was not explained.
This most recent episode of sophomoric hackery has induced Honorary Chairman Sir Malcolm Rifkind to resign his post, and Robert Buckland to step down as Honorary Vice President. According to the Telegraph, “A spokesman for Sir Malcolm said he was ‘very unhappy’ about the article and it was the ‘final straw’, adding to long-held concerns about the way the group was being run.”
Bryant has responded by accusing CFOR of engaging in crude, Kremlin-esque tactics to discredit him and force his resignation as the Chairman of the Russia APPG, and suggested that the group is acting at the behest of the Russian embassy: “I gather the Conservative Friends of Russia have covered themselves in homophobic glory,” and “clearly [they] would prefer a Putin patsy to run the all-party group on Russia. Did the Embassy pay for them?” CFOR chairman Richard Royal responded by accusing Bryant of using alleged homophobia as a “smokescreen [to] divert attention from the real issue”.
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UN panel strongly criticizes Russia for failing to investigate widespread torture allegations
The U.N. Committee Against Torture strongly criticized Russia in a report for failing to investigate widespread allegations of torture and stepping up intimidation and reprisals against human rights advocates and journalists.
The panel of 10 independent experts expressed concern at the discrepancy between the high number of complaints of torture and ill treatment that it received from detainees and the relatively low number of criminal cases opened by authorities in response leading to prosecution.
The report on Russia’s compliance with a 1987 treaty against torture and other degrading punishments also expressed serious concern about numerous allegations that detainees have been tortured to extract confessions which were then used as evidence in court, and at Moscow’s failure to ensure all detainees the right to a lawyer.
The committee called on Russia to take “immediate and effective measures to prevent all acts of torture and ill-treatment throughout the country and to eliminate impunity of those allegedly responsible.”
It pointed to the increasing intimidation, harassment and attacks against people and organizations monitoring and reporting on human rights.
The committee urged the repeal of a new law backed by President Vladimir Putin that expands the definition of treason so broadly that critics say it could be used to call anyone who opposes the government a traitor. It called for another new Putin-backed law requiring human rights organizations that receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” to be amended, saying the term “seems negative and threatening to human rights defenders.”
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Russia: Introducing the Putin Doctrine
Six months after returning to power in the face of mounting opposition, Russian President Vladimir Putin is exercising his political capital—and doing so in imperial fashion. The most recent example: earlier this month, sitting at a small table in his ornate, oak-walled office in the Kremlin, Putin announced that Russia was creating the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. The goal: to restore the glory of Russia the only way Putin seems to know how—the raw acquisition of power. “He is trying to keep stability, as he sees it, with billions of dollars in oil,” said Evgeny Gontmakher, an analyst at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, a Moscow-based think tank. “I predict chaos.”
The announcement—which featured what appeared to be a staged tête-à-tête with one of the president’s advisers—seemed to crystallize what analysts are now calling “The Putin Doctrine.” Its essence is to consolidate political control at home and expand his country’s influence in Central Asia at the expense of the West. Earlier this year, as protesters crowded Moscow’s cold streets, demonstrating against the government in a way that hasn’t been seen in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, Putin said his third term would give rise to a stronger military, improved social programs, and the creation of a Eurasian Union, a confederacy of states that resembles a watered-down version of the old USSR.
Apparently he wasn’t bluffing. Once the protests faded, Putin announced that he would boost the Russian Army’s budget from $61 billion in 2012 to $97 billion by 2015. Last month, he flew to Tajikistan and extended the lease on three Russian military bases for 30 years. Meanwhile, the Russian Air Force has begun joint exercises with its counterparts in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and a special Kremlin committee is mulling the best ways for the country to further unite with its neighbors in Central Asia: “We take the Putin Doctrine as verbatim instructions for how to create revolutionary change,” said Yuri Krupnov, a Kremlin adviser who is trying to invest $12 billion in state money into the economy of Tajikistan.
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Interview With Ariel Cohen: Russia’s Agenda Creates Unnecessary Friction With U.S
Following his reelection, U.S. President Barack Obama now faces the task of revitalizing U.S.-Russian relations. Ties between Washington and Moscow have seemed to stagnate somewhat following the reset of 2009-2010 and the return to the Kremlin of Vladimir Putin.
RFE/RL correspondent Robert Coalson spoke recently with Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Cohen has worked as a consultant to the U.S. executive branch and the private sector on issues related to Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and co-author of the 2005 book “Eurasia in Balance: The U.S. and the Regional Power Shift.”
RFE/RL: Where do U.S-Russian relations stand at the moment and what are the most likely points of conflict?
Ariel Cohen: The Russians have an agenda that brings them into friction with the United States. First, it is Syria, where they do not want the [Bashar al-]Assad regime to fall. They, together with the Iranians and the Chinese, have blocked any diplomatic resolution and are still providing weapons to the Syrian regime. The Russians are setting themselves up for a fall because the minority Alawite regime cannot survive against the onslaught of the Sunni majority and the international support the Sunni fighters receive, especially from other Sunni countries in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, etc.
The second area of disagreement is missile defense and the U.S. plans to build a ballistic-missile defense in Europe, primarily aimed against Iran and possibly other rogue players — but not against Russia at this moment. Russia has a massive arsenal that can overwhelm any missile-defense arrangement that we can predict in the future. And, finally, I would say that the second Obama administration will focus on domestic priorities. We have very significant economic, fiscal issues to resolve and the president will not have that time to deal with the Russian agenda.
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Ghost in the machine
US moves forward on Magnitsky case, with Canada next. When will the UK act?
Friday 16 November marked a milestone for human rights, with the US House of Representatives voting overwhelmingly to pass the Magnitsky Act, the clearest sign yet that the US government is finally bowing to pressure to name and shame those implicated in the death in custody of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
All the more timely as it took place on the third anniversary of Magnitsky’s death, the vote provoked a vociferous reaction in Russia that Magnitsky’s former client Bill Browder termed “apoplectic”. Russia’s interior ministry duly followed swiftly by announcing that there is “no data whatsoever” to implicate the Russian officials investigated for embezzling $230m (£146m) – the scandal Magnitsky unravelled shortly before his arrest.
It is probably no coincidence that these events coincided with the London premiere of One Hour And Eighteen Minutes, a play that uses real-life testimony from Magnitsky, his colleagues and relatives, prison staff and the judge who denied his appeals for release and prolonged his detention, to expose the truth about the run-up to his death.
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Magnitsky: A New Human-Rights Law for Russia—and the World
A young Russian lawyer uncovers what looks like a massive tax fraud. He tells the police. But instead of investigating the alleged crime, the cops—in league with the officials he accuses of perpetrating the fraud—throw the lawyer in jail and subject him to torture. He refuses to retract his accusations, and he’s finally beaten to death. For good measure, he’s prosecuted posthumously for a list of trumped-up crimes. The police who jailed him, meanwhile, are promoted and decorated. Russian officialdom protects its own.
If Russia’s courts won’t bring the guilty parties to justice, who will? The U.S. Congress has just voted to make it America’s job. The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act (named for the 37-year-old tax lawyer who died three years ago), bars everyone implicated in Magnitsky’s detention, abuse, or death from visiting the U.S., owning property there, or holding a U.S. bank account. The Senate is to pass its bill soon. Similar laws have already been adopted in Canada and across Western Europe.
Those penalties may be scant punishment for murder, but the Magnitsky Act could have outsize consequences. The American and European laws are open-ended, applying not only to the suspects in the Magnitsky case, but to human-rights violators around the world. “We have an opportunity to target those in the Russian, Syrian, and other rogue regimes who resort to torture or extrajudicial killing to silence the voices of freedom and democracy,” says Dominic Raab, a Conservative British member of Parliament. “[They] should not be free to waltz down King’s Road to do their Christmas shopping.”
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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
