Posts Tagged ‘agence france presse’
Russia gives Ireland adoption warning over Magnitsky law
Russia has warned Ireland it could break off talks on cross-border adoptions if lawmakers press for sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, according to a letter obtained by AFP on Friday.
The threat follows Moscow’s decision to ban US adoptions of Russian orphans in retaliation for a recent US law freezing the assets and denying entry to America of those tied to Magnitsky’s death in custody in 2009.
The warning was included in a letter from Russian ambassador Maxim Peshkov to Pat Breen, the chairman of the Irish parliament’s committee on foreign affairs, which last month began debating plans for an Irish version of the US Magnitsky law.
Dated March 11, the letter cites the US ban on adoptions and says the committee’s proposals “can have negative influence on the negotiations on the adoption agreement between Russia and Ireland being proceeded”.
Bill Browder, the US-born investor who was Magnitsky’s employer when he died and who is campaigning for an EU version of the US law, condemned the ambassador’s remarks.
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Russia drops probe into whistleblowing lawyer’s death
Russian investigators on Tuesday dropped their investigation into the 2009 death in jail of a whistleblowing attorney whose case led to a crisis in relations between Russia and the United States.
The investigators said they had no evidence that Sergei Magnitsky died at the age of 37 from beatings by prison staff, as his family and US-born former employer William Browder claim.
“Based on the preliminary investigation’s results, a decision was taken to end the criminal case due to a lack of evidence of a crime,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Magnitsky is currently facing a posthumous trial — Russia’s first — along with Browder into alleged tax evasion.
The Russian lawyer was jailed shortly after disclosing an alleged $230-million fraud scheme being run by senior tax and law enforcement authorities and accused of carrying out the fraud himself.
An attorney for Magnitsky’s mother Natalia said he intended to appeal the decision in court.
Magnitsky’s prosecution by the very same officials he had singled out for fraud has come to symbolise the Kremlin’s failure to crack down on corruption and institute the rule of law as repeatedly promised by President Vladimir Putin.
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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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Magnitsky fund boss brings Russia blacklist campaign to Europe
The investor pushing to blacklist Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has brought his campaign to Europe’s capitals, in a move that could have far-reaching implications for their relations with Moscow.
The London-based head of Hermitage Capital Management, William Browder, was in Paris on Monday to push for a French version of the US Magnitsky Act, a December law that blacklisted Russian officials tied to Magnitsky’s prison death.
The law has prompted a crisis in US-Russia ties, with Moscow retaliating by banning US adoptions of Russian orphans.
Ahead of talks with French lawmakers, Browder told AFP he was sure that within a year European capitals would have followed Washington’s lead in imposing sanctions on Russian officials.
“The Russian government tortured and murdered Sergei Magnitsky, our lawyer, after he uncovered a massive corruption scheme,” Browder said.
“The Russian government has taken every step to cover up the involvement of the officials… and then attack the victim. It has become clear to us that we have to get justice outside of Russia.”
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Russia seeks to drop charges over Magnitsky death
Russian prosecutors said on Monday the man on trial for causing the death of a whistle-blowing attorney should be freed without charge, in a surprising development in a case that has triggered a major row between Moscow and Washington.
Dmitry Kratov is the only official remaining as a defendant in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died of untreated illnesses in 2009 while under pre-trial arrest at a Moscow jail.
Magnitsky had claimed to have uncovered a $235 million state embezzlement scheme, before being arrested by the very officials he implicated in the crime.
His case caused international outrage and led to the passage of a US law that blacklists Russian officials allegedly involved in the death.
Moscow retaliated by introducing legislation banning adoptions of Russian children to American citizens in the biggest diplomatic scandal in years between the two powers.
In Monday’s development, prosecutor Dmitry Bokov said that Kratov, deputy head of the prison where Magnitsky died, should be acquitted of a charge of carelessness, because he acted according to the rules and did not receive any complaints from the lawyer.
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Magnitsky fund boss says staff received death threats
Agence France Presse
The head of the investment fund at the centre of the Magnitsky fraud scandal said Friday staff had received death threats, as British police probed the unexplained death of a Russian involved in the case.
The chief executive of investment fund Hermitage Capital, William Browder, would not say whether he believed that Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, who died on November 10 near his home in Surrey outside London, had been murdered.
But he confirmed the Russian businessman had since 2010 been passing evidence to Hermitage of the involvement of Russian officials in a scheme to embezzle $230 million (177 million euros) by obtaining false tax returns on payments made by the fund.
Hermitage’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian jail in 2009 after he went public with allegations about the conspiracy and was in turn taken into custody accused of tax violations.
Browder said Perepilichnyy was the fourth person linked to the Magnitsky affair to have died in unexplained circumstances.
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Russian lawyer beaten on day of jail death: supporters
A Western investment fund whose attorney died in a Moscow jail published documents Monday alleging to show prison officials authorised the use of rubber batons on the day of his death.
The case of Sergei Magnitsky — a whistle-blowing lawyer who alleged mass embezzlement by the tax police — has been highlighted by the West as one of the most flagrant abuses of human rights in Russia in recent years.
The 37-year-old’s death also raised alarm over the Russian justice system’s impartiality and the ability of the police to manipulate the courts.
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Russia blames prison over top lawyer’s death
Russian investigators on Monday for the first time acknowledged that medical neglect was responsible for the death in pre-trial detention of Western investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The 37-year-old Hermitage Capital investment fund attorney’s death in November 2009 in a holding cell at Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina sparked outrage among international rights groups and drew condemnation from Western states.
His case came to symbolise both the perils facing Western businesses in Russia and the seeming gap between President Dmitry Medvedev’s more liberal rhetoric and his actual reform accomplishments.
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Russia reopens tax case linked to lawyer’s death
A Moscow court on Tuesday reopened a hearing into the alleged theft of hundreds of millions of dollars from a US investor by Russian police in a case that led to the death of his jailed lawyer.
The November 2009 death in Butyrka prison of ailing 37-year-old attorney Sergei Magnitsky sparked Western outrage and refocused investor concerns about corruption and the lack of judicial independence in Russia.
Magnitsky claimed to have unravelled a clandestine scheme through which Russian interior ministry officers won control of three subsidiary companies formed by the US investment firm Hermitage Capital.
Executives at Hermitage — formed in 1996 and once ranked as the world’s best-performing fund in emerging markets — discovered the theft after learning that their own companies had inexplicably moved to different cities.
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