Posts Tagged ‘fred weir’
Guilty: Russian court passes verdict on dead lawyer at center of row with the West
A mild-mannered corporate lawyer who’s been dead for almost four years was found guilty of tax evasion in a Moscow court today.
The posthumous trial of Sergei Magnitsky, who testified about a $230 million tax scam by high officials and then found himself arrested by the same police officers he had accused, had become for many people around the world a symbol of just how strange – and often, scary – a place Russia has become during the third Kremlin term of Vladimir Putin.
The vast gulf of disagreement between Russia and the West over the Magnitsky case has been, perhaps, the single most painful aggravating factor in the worst diplomatic chill between Moscow and Washington since the end of the cold war.
Mr. Magnitsky died under suspicious circumstances, after allegedly being beaten in a Moscow pre-trial detention center in November 2009, about a year after his arrest.
Read More →
Facebook
Twitter
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
del.icio.us
Google Bookmarks
Yahoo! Buzz
Tumblr
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
NewsVine
Digg
Kremlin: No evidence of a crime in whistleblower’s suspicious prison death
Despite independent evidence that Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death in prison in 2009 in an incident that has chilled US-Russian relations, Russia’s top investigators have closed the case.
The Kremlin’s Investigative Committee, Russia’s top law enforcement body, has ended its inquiry into the 2009 prison death of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, saying it can find no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the way his life ended.
It’s the latest surprise in a case that has long been viewed as the acid test of the Kremlin’s willingness to fight corruption within its own government ranks. The issue has been front-and-center as US-Russia relations have gone into a downward spiral of acrimony and mistrust in recent months. A controversial US law signed by President Obama in December, which aims to punish Russian human rights violators, is named the Magnitsky Act.
The reason the Investigative Committee’s finding comes as a bit of a surprise is because some element of foul play in Mr. Magnitsky’s prison death had previously been the single point that all sides had agreed upon in the extremely complicated, contentious, and tragic story of Sergei Magnitsky.
“This decision by the Russian investigative authorities is a clear indication that they have decided to ignore the conclusions of two independent domestic commissions on the case,” Hermitage Capital, Mr. Magnitsky’s former employer, said in a statement.
“It is a sign of an overwhelming government cover up, and the extent that the Russian government is ready to go to protect those exposed by Magnitsky for committing crimes against the state,” it said.
Magnitsky was a lawyer working for Hermitage when he uncovered what he alleged was a vast scam by top Russian police and tax officials to embezzle $230 million in taxes paid by Hermitage firms in 2006.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Is Russia trying a dead whistle-blower because of a US law?
The US recently enacted legislation targeting those Russian officials involved in the 2009 death of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, spurring an angry reaction from the Kremlin.
At the center of the stormiest US-Russia diplomatic crisis since the cold war stands the enigmatic figure of Sergei Magnitsky, for whom the US Senate has named a punitive new law that imposes harsh visa and economic sanctions against scores of Russian officials who are deemed to have committed serious human rights violations.
The tale of Mr. Magnitsky, a corporate lawyer who blew the whistle on a vast corruption scheme, was arrested by the same officials he had implicated, and was allegedly beaten to death in prison over three years ago, appears to validate all the worst suspicions held in the West about the nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The Magnitsky Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama last month, is a controversial new breed of legislation that aims to compensate for the perceived failures of Russia’s justice system by meting out punishment to about 60 Russian officials deemed to have been involved in the wrongful prosecution and alleged murder of Magnitsky.
The Kremlin’s incandescent response makes it likely that the mutual acrimony will expand in weeks to come. Mr. Putin called the Magnitsky Act a “purely political, unfriendly act” that demanded a stern riposte. Last week he signed the retaliatory Dima Yakovlev Act, whose key provision is a ban on all adoptions of Russian children by US citizens.
But in an apparent effort to overturn the widely-held Western narrative, which sees Magnitsky as the victim of corrupt officials and a lawless state, Russian prosecutors have announced they will put the deceased Magnitsky on trial later this month, seeking to prove that he and his former boss, Bill Browder, head of the London-based Hermitage Capital, were the real criminals.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
What’s behind Russia’s bill banning US adoptions?
The bill had originally been a smaller, tit-for-tat response to US legislation, but the Russian Duma has expanded it into a much broader anti-American measure that even Putin may not approve.
A Russian bill that had seemed initially like a tit-for-tat response to US legislation now looks to be exploding into broad legislation that bars almost any US citizen from engaging in non-business activity in Russia – including the adoption of Russian children.
Russia’s State Duma on Wednesday passed a bill, in key second reading, that would ban all adoptions of Russian children by US citizens, order the closure of any politically-active nongovernmental organization with US funding, and block US passport-holders from working in any nonprofit group that authorities deem connected with politics. The bill passed the 450-seat Duma overwhelmingly, with just 15 deputies opposed.
The now radically-amended Dima Yakovlev bill, named after one of 19 Russian children who have died because of alleged negligence of his American adoptive parents in the past two decades, goes far beyond the originally-stated intent to respond to the US Senate’s Magnitsky Act, signed into law by President Obama last week.
The initial bill, which passed first reading last Friday, would have levied economic and visa sanctions against US officials allegedly involved in human rights abuses against Russians. Among the categories of Americans to be hit in the original bill were adoptive parents who abused their Russian-born children and officials involved in the extradition and prosecution of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a New York court last year.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Putin’s courts will soon put Sergei Magnitsky on trial, but he won’t be attending.
Few things illuminate the dark underbelly of Vladimir Putin’s Russia more starkly than the fact that a man who is among the most furiously denounced by the regime, and harshly prosecuted by law enforcement, is a mild-mannered corporate lawyer who’s been dead for more than two years.
The case of Sergei Magnitsky — who uncovered what might well be the crime of the century and then made the mistake of testifying about it — has grown into a huge international scandal ever since he died, under highly suspicious circumstances, in a police holding cell in November 2009.
The story of how Magnitsky exposed a vast corruption ring at the highest official levels, and then was allegedly framed, tortured and murdered, has been well documented. It is detailed in reports by Moscow’s independent prison watchdog, the Kremlin’s in-house human rights commission, as well as a 75-page investigation commissioned by his employer, Hermitage Capital, a London-based asset management firm founded in 1996 that remains one of the largest foreign investors in Russia.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Cold war-style blacklists? Wide ripples from Russian lawyer’s death in prison.
Two Russian generals have reportedly called off a US visit after senators asked for a review of their visa requests. A proposed Senate bill would restrict visas for 60 Russians allegedly linked to the case of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Sergei Magnitsky was just one statistic among more than 4,000 people who die each year after being consigned to Russia’s overcrowded and brutality-plagued prison system.
But the story of the dedicated corporate lawyer who died under suspicious circumstances in pretrial custody two years ago, after being arrested by the very police officers he had testified against in a major corruption case, has shocked the world and led to a wave of repercussions that could undo the tenuous “reset” that has thawed US-Russian relations since President Obama took office.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
