Posts Tagged ‘browder’
“Not Even Stalin Did That”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee met yesterday on the heels of the tainted Russian election that put Vladimir Putin back in power. (He never left.)
A top observer characterized Russia’s leadership as “corrupt, rotten and rotting.” A quarter to a third of the economy is lost to corruption, it’s believed. $84 billion in capital flight last year alone.
Human rights abuses abound. The head of an investment fund told the story of Sergei Magnitsky, his Moscow lawyer. In 2008, Magnitsky uncovered evidence of police corruption and embezzlement. He was dead eleven months later – imprisoned, beaten and denied critical medical treatment. One Committee member called this testimony “one of the most powerful the Committee has ever heard.” Magnitsky’s case has become a cause célèbre in Russia, an example of the systemic corruption and abuse of power that has driven tens of thousands of protesters to Moscow’s streets recently.
Read More →
Facebook
Twitter
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
del.icio.us
Google Bookmarks
Yahoo! Buzz
Tumblr
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
NewsVine
Digg
If the US Congress cares about human rights, it will replace Jackson-Vanik with the Magnitsky Act
The US House Committee on Foreign Affairs hosted a hearing yesterday that addressed human rights and corruption in Russia, and the future of US-Russian relations. The hearing paid particular attention to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act (.pdf), currently under consideration by the US Congress, which seeks to impose travel bans and asset freezes against the individuals involved in the false imprisonment, torture and death of the whistleblower attorney Sergei Magnitsky. The act also carries a universal application against all individuals credibly suspected of human rights abuses.
The hearing highlighted one of the key issues facing contemporary US-Russian relations: how—or indeed, whether– the US can support human rights in Russia today. This question was embodied in the confluence of the debate over the Magnitsky Act and the proposed repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment.
The proceedings featured the testimony of Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital who has spearheaded the campaign to bring the perpetrators of Sergei Magnitsky’s false imprisonment and death to justice. Sergei Magnitsky was an attorney employed to represent Hermitage Capital, who uncovered an elaborate ruse by government officials whereby Hermitage companies were fraudulently re-registered and used to apply for a tax refund of $230 million. Magnitsky went public with his accusations, and was subsequently pressured into confessing to the theft of the $230 million, and imprisoned without trial in November 2008.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Diary: Russia to put British whistle-blower on trial… except he’s dead
The Russians are defiantly sticking to their plan to have a trial with an empty dock. There will be two accused. One will be absent because he is a British businessman, banned from Russia from 2005. The other cannot be there, because he is dead. The dead man is Sergei Magnitsky, whose case is now an international cause célèbre. While he was working for Hermitage Capital, an investment fund run by the US-born British businessman, William Browder, he gathered evidence that 60 Russian officials had defrauded Russian taxpayers of £147million.
Other members of his legal team fled Russia after receiving threats, but Magnitsky stayed, was arrested in 2008, and died the following year, aged 37, from the ill treatment he had suffered in prison.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Russia to Try Browder With Dead Hermitage Lawyer for Tax Evasion
Russia plans to try William Browder, head of London-based Hermitage Capital Management Ltd., for tax evasion, along with Sergei Magnitsky, the fund’s lawyer who died in custody in 2009, RIA Novosti said.
“Magnitsky and Browder are both accused of severe crimes, which deprived the state of several hundred million rubles,” Alexander Yagodin, a senior Interior Ministry official, said in an interview with RIA Novosti, published today on the state- controlled news service’s website. Calls by Bloomberg to the ministry’s investigative branch weren’t answered today.
Yagodin denied that Magnitsky, who President Dmitry Medvedev’s human rights commission said was facing fabricated charges when he was beaten to death, had uncovered corruption by Interior Ministry officials. The Hermitage lawyer said he was abused and denied medical care in an effort to force him to drop fraud allegations against officials before his death in November 2009 after almost a year in pre-trial detention.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Investor William Browder on Russian corruption and the elections
[Download]
Russia will hold its presidential election this Sunday. Despite massive protests in Moscow, Putin said he is confident of his victory. If elected, Putin would serve 12 years as president, making him the longest-standing Russian leader since Josef Stalin.
William Browder, of Hermitage Capital, invested heavily in Russia until he encountered what he characterizes as massive state corruption. He has since led a campaign against corruption in Russia.
Browder has been banned from Russia since 2005 and relocated his company to London. His associates in Russia have been intimidated and jailed. Sergei Magnitsky, Browder’s lawyer, died in prison and Browder has been working to discover the truth about his death. He is campaigning to have those involved in Magnitsky’s death banned from visiting the West.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Above and Beyond
When my Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in police custody in November 2009, I thought that there was a good chance of getting justice for him from the Russian legal system for what I believe to be his murder. Unlike in many other human rights abuse cases, there was a mountain of documentary evidence proving exactly who killed him.
Sergei had given official testimony to Russian investigators prior to his arrest describing how the police were involved in stealing our companies as well as the $230 million in taxes we had paid to the Russian budget. Official police documents show that the same police officers who Sergei testified against arrested him. After his arrest, Sergei wrote 450 complaints during his 358 days in detention detailing exactly how his rights were violated and who did what to him at every different moment of his horrible ordeal. His complaints showed how specific state officials and judges refused his desperate requests for medical care, fabricated evidence to keep him locked up, and moved him through dozens of cells.
As Sergei was being tortured in detention, the Russian officials who approved the largest known tax refund fraud in Russian history, and their families, got inexplicably rich. On Nov. 16, 2009, Sergei went into critical condition from the withholding of medical care. Only then did the authorities move him to a prison hospital, but instead of treating him, they put him in an isolation cell and let eight riot guards with rubber batons beat him for one hour and 18 minutes until he was dead. He was 37 years old. There is nothing debatable in this story. It was laid out in great detail by the Moscow Public Oversight Commission on Dec. 28, 2009, and then subsequently by President Dmitry Medvedev’s own Human Rights Council on July 5, 2011.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
The Fund Manager At The Center Of Russia’s Tragic Hermitage Saga Talks Putin And Corruption
Bill Browder was one of the first Westerners to make a fortune in post-Communism Russia.
After arriving in the country in 1997, his fund Hermitage Capital Management started with $25 million and was at one point thought to have invested $4.5 billion, making it one of the largest foreign investors in the country.
However, in 2005 that all changed. While Browder had initially supported Vladimir Putin, he found himself barred from entry to the country.
When he began to investigate, tragedy struck. In 2008, Sergei Magnitsky, a young lawyer who was working for Hermitage Capital, was arrested after he reported allegations of a huge tax $230 million fraud to the authorities. He found himself accused of the very crimes he was reporting, and was thrown into prison.
Magnitsky died in prison in 2009. A Russian report later found he had been “tortured, beaten to death”. Despite his death, Magnitsky remains on trial, and no one has been charged with his death.
Browder and Hermitage are now based in London, where they still control $1 billion in assets.
However, Browder remains active in Russian life. Last year he released this video of their corruption allegations, and his pressure was able to get visa sanctions from the US and Canada on the officials involved in the death of Magnitsky.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
U.S.-Russian Trade Ties Face Some Political Snags
With relations between Russia and the United States on edge over Syrian policy and strident anti-American statements by the Russian government in response to political protests here, the Obama administration and its Democratic allies in Congress have begun an aggressive push to end cold-war-era trade restrictions and make Russia a full trade partner.
The seemingly incongruous and politically fraught campaign to persuade Congress to grant permanent, normal trade status reflects a stark flip in circumstances: suddenly, after more than 35 years of tussling over trade, Russia has the upper hand.
In December, Russia became the last major economy to win admission to the World Trade Organization — a bid that was supported by the Obama administration because it required Russia to bring numerous laws into conformity with international standards, including tighter safeguards for intellectual property. It was also part of the so-called reset in relations with the Kremlin.
But if Congress does not repeal the restrictions, adopted in 1974 to pressure the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration and now largely irrelevant, the United States will soon be in violation of W.T.O. rules. American corporations could be put at a serious disadvantage — paying higher tariffs, for instance, than European and Asian competitors, which would immediately enjoy the benefits of Russia’s new status.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Russia’s Perversion of Justice
From the gulags to the “doctor’s plot,” Russian history is replete with politically orchestrated show trials. But an upcoming case may achieve the unlikely feat of raising the bar for legal and political corruption. That is because the defendant in the case, attorney Sergei Magnitsky, has been dead for two years. What’s more, his trial is being sought by the very government and police officials who may have been complicit in his death.
Earlier this month, officials with the Russian Interior Ministry announced their plan to resubmit a tax evasion case that would see Magnitsky go on trial posthumously. Magnitsky first incurred these officials’ ire in 2007, when he was an attorney with of the Moscow-based American law firm Firestone Duncan and an outside counsel for the investment fund Hermitage Capital. In June 2007, police from the ministry raided both Firestone Duncan and Hermitage Capital’s Moscow offices on the pretext of tax evasion charges. In the course of the raid, they took away the official documents and seals of the fund’s Russian investment companies – despite the fact these documents were outside the scope of their search warrant.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
