Posts Tagged ‘browder’
Sergei Magnitsky charges fabricated, says Russia inquiry into Moscow lawyer’s death
In a landmark investigation into the cell death of Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, a special Kremlin commission is likely to publicly implicate members of Russia’s Interior Ministry and FSB.
The metal cage used for prisoners in courtroom No 14 at the Tverskoi regional court was empty during a recent hearing, its door wide open, when the court considered the arrest of Ivan Cherkasov, a senior executive at British investment fund Hermitage Capital.
Mr Cherkasov, who lives in London, said he has no intention of returning to face charges of tax evasion he says are false. He said his arrest was an act of revenge by members of the Russian security services.
Just days before, an independent commission set up by President Dmitry Medvedev said that the charges in the case of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky were fabricated and that Interior Ministry and FSB security service officers were at least partly responsible for Mr Magnitsky’s death in Moscow’s Butyrka prison in 2009.
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Why Khodorkovsky Matters
Over the past six months, I’ve written three columns about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Russian oligarch who has been in prison since 2003, charged, tried, convicted — and recently reconvicted — on transparently bogus tax and embezzlement charges.
Partly, I keep returning to the subject because his lengthy imprisonment offends my sense of justice; his real crime, after all, was challenging Vladimir Putin, the Russian strongman. More importantly, Khodorkovsky’s fate stands as a powerful illustration of Russia’s biggest problem: the contempt the country’s corrupt rulers have for the rule of law.
Yet after each of those columns, I received feedback saying, essentially, that Khodorkovsky deserved what he got. Even if the crimes for which he went to prison were fictitious, he undoubtedly did bad things on his way to becoming Russia’s richest man. “He stole Russian national resources, truly the wealth of the nation,” read one e-mail, referring to Khodorkovsky’s role in founding the now-defunct oil company Yukos. “I have zero sympathy for him.”
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Law Society Event, A few words from me…
I went to the Sergei Magnitsky evening at the Law Society, 113 Chancery Lane, London on 26 May 2011. I wasn’t prepared for the impact of the screening of the hour-long Justice for Sergei that was filmed especially for the first anniversary of his death in prison on 16 November 2010. The movie made a strong point that Sergei could have escaped and he conscientiously didn’t make that choice. Until the last moment he believed in justice and rule of law, and he also believed that his duty as a lawyer was to document injustice and bring it to the attention of those in charge. That stated with his discovery of $230 million VAT tax reimbursement fraud and ended with the complaints about prison conditions that affected him and his fellow inmates among whom he often was the only one who could legibly complain and wasn’t afraid to do so despite the reality each complaint was followed by a deterioration of his conditions.
I thought that, after reading papers, online interviews and evidence submitted by REDRESS to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, I knew the story very well. After the screening, I couldn’t touch any part of the Magnitsky event in my mind and possibly write about it.
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A ghost at the banquet
The general mood at VTB Capital’s “Russia Calling” forum in London was one of cautious optimism about changes under way in reforming the economy, but there was one harsh reminder of the huge mountain to climb in improving the business climate.
Former Yevroset boss Yevgeny Chichvarkin, like Banquo’s ghost at the feast in “Macbeth”, turned up outside the forum to protest that Russia is still not calling him back, despite criminal charges being dropped against him by prosecutors.
Most investors inside the forum were at pains to stress that cases such as that of Chichvarkin and Sergei Magnitsky, the hedge fund lawyer whose died in jail after his company was embroiled in a bitter dispute with law enforcement officers , are still relatively isolated, and that most foreign investors in Russia make a lot of money out of the country.
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Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika Under Orders to Focus Attention on the Notorius Magnitsky Case
WPS: What the Papers Say
Two criminal proceedings are associated with Magnitsky, lawyer in the employ of Hermitage Capital Management who died behind the bars. One of them concerns criminal charges pressed against Magnitsky himself, the investigation is carried out by the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee. The other deals with circumstances of his demise in prison, investigated by the Russian Investigative Committee. The Prosecutor General’s Office is supposed to run a check on both investigations.
It should be noted that the Prosecutor General’s Office completed examination of the former criminal proceedings on the request from the Russian Investigative Committee earlier this week. It said it had uncovered no violations. Three days later, Medvedev told Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika to “boost procuracy supervision” and run another check. Meeting with his American counterpart Barack Obama last week, the president had been reminded of the importance the U.S. Administration was attaching to impartial investigation of the lawyer’s death.
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights Michael H. Pozner made a statement in the meantime. He said that the U.S. Administration welcomed the judiciary reforms and reorganization of law enforcement agencies launched in Russia but was distressed by the lack of progress in the investigation of Magnitsky’s death.
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No Charges For Top Investigator In Magnitsky Case
Russian officials have exonerated one of their own in the prison death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management.
Russia’s powerful central prosecutors, the Investigative Committee, said Monday that Oleg Silchenko, the Interior Ministry official who ordered Magnitsky’s arrest and oversaw the investigation of the lawyer, had “not allowed” any illegal treatment in the case. The committee would not comment beyond its three-paragraph statement.
Silchenko was cleared despite a finding by the head of Russia’s prison oversight panel that Silchenko was to blame for Magnitsky’s treatment. Magnitsky died in a notorious Moscow prison in November 2009 at the age of 37. Human rights officials say he was tortured and denied adequate medical care; the latter claim was echoed by the oversight panel’s Valery Borshchev.
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Russian Investigator Cleared in Prison Death
Russian prosecutors exonerated the lead investigator in the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a hedge-fund attorney who died in jail after what colleagues said was an attempt to expose a massive theft of government funds in 2009.
Acitivists conducting an independent probe of the case called the ruling a whitewash of the case, despite President Dmitry Medvedev’s repeated promises of a full investigation. The handling of Mr. Magnitsky’s death has emerged as a litmus test of Mr. Medvedev’s willingness to investigate corruption in the security services, whose strength and clout have crept throughout the Russian economy.
Russia’s powerful Investigative Committee issued a three-paragraph statement Monday absolving the investigator in the case, Oleg Silchenko, of any blame, saying he had “not allowed” any legal violations in the case.
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After Swiss Freeze Millions, Stepanov Swings Back
An abbreviated version of this story ran in May 28 edition of Barron’s Magazine.
Swiss prosecutors have frozen Eur. 8 million in Credit Suisse bank accounts of Vladlen Stepanov, a subject of our story about a $230 million tax scam in Russia that victimized the hedge fund firm Hermitage Capital and led to the death in police custody of Hermitage’s whistle blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky (“Crime and Punishment in Putin’s Russia,” April 16).
Stepanov isn’t taking the Swiss action lying down. Last week he placed a self-justifying advertisement in a Russian newspaper, and this week he appeared for a video-taped interview at the Russian financial daily Vedomosti. In both forums, Stepanov denies that the Swiss bank money, and other riches detailed in our article, were illicitly obtained or derived from the hundreds of millions in dubious Russian tax refunds doled out by Olga Stepanova, a former tax official from whom Stepanov says he’s been divorced since 1992.
The evidence of corruption amongst police and other officials involved in the Magnitsky case has created enough of a stink that President Dmitry Medvedev called a press conference last week to discuss an independent inquiry into the scandal.
“I do not want to be a wood chip,” is the headline of Stepanov’s May 17th ad in the RBK Daily newspaper – an allusion to a Russian proverb suggesting that he sees himself as an innocent victim who’s been ground up in the chainsawing of a forest. He dismisses as “recreational arithmetic,” the estimates of his wealth presented in “horror videos” about the Magnitsky case produced by Hermitage Capital’s founder William F. Browder (see www.russian-untouchables.com).
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Investigation into Magnitsky’s case continues
Russia’s Prosecutor General has found no violations on the part of the investigator, who handled the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, said on Monday. At the request of Russia’s Investigative Committee, the Office of the Prosecutor General checked the legality of actions, taken by the investigators regarding the Hermitage Capital Investment Fund worker Sergei Magnitsky.
Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was accused of tax evasion regarding his revenues from the work of the companies belonging to the investment fund. According to the investigators, the Hermitage Capital Investment Fund and the Firestone Duncan Consulting Firm, where Magnitsky headed the Tax and Audit Department, created a scheme of tax evasion with the use of a ramified network of branch companies. As a result, more than 5 billion roubles were stolen.
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