Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Russia opens macabre show trial

Sydney Morning Heald

Russian authorities, in a legal twist bizarre even by their standards, are pushing ahead with the trial of anti-corruption whistle blower Sergei Magnitsky posthumously for alleged ”tax evasion”.

The prosecution of a dead man – a first for Russia, something that not even Joseph Stalin did – promises to be as shocking and puzzling from the Western perspective as last year’s inquisition of the punk rockers of Pussy Riot.

The trial, scheduled to begin on Monday in Moscow, will feature two empty chairs facing the judge, one for the dead lawyer and one for his former client, London-based investor William Browder, who will be tried on the same charges of ”tax evasion” in absentia.

The Kremlin, operating from its own logic, needs to discredit these two men in order to shore up its position, both domestically and internationally, political analysts and lawyers say.
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Mr Browder’s firm, Hermitage Capital Management, was the largest investor in Russia until the fund manager started exposing massive corruption, irritating the Russians so badly that they declared him a ”threat to national security” and expelled him in 2005. Mr Browder wound up his business in Russia and evacuated his staff.

”I didn’t want to end up like Khodorkovsky [Mikhail, the jailed billionaire oil tycoon],” he said. ”I thought that was the end of it but it turned out to be the beginning of the worst possible nightmare.”
He said that after he left Russia, his offices were raided and seized documents were used to fraudulently re-register some of his companies.

He hired Magnitsky to investigate. The lawyer discovered that the scammers, unable to steal assets because they had already been liquidated, applied instead for a refund on $US230 million of taxes Hermitage Capital had paid.

”They didn’t steal from us but from the Russian state,” Mr Browder said.
”It was the largest tax refund in Russian history. It was approved in one day, on Christmas Eve 2007. It could only have been done with the complicity of senior officials.”