Posts Tagged ‘Hermitage’
Play and Ambivalence Mark Second Anniversary of Sergei Magnitsky’s Death
Supporters around the world are marking the second anniversary of the death in prison of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, but the Moscow Times says the date is being virtually ignored in Russia.
A spokesman for Magnitsky’s employer, the British-based investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, told the Russian newspaper Wednesday that “the only official thing going on is the continuing cover-up by officials.”
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Death in a Russian prison cell: Britain’s shameful silence
One minute Sergei Magnitsky was investigating tax fraud. The next he was dead. A coincidence? No, the businessman campaigning for the truth tells Jerome Taylor
Two years ago today the body of a father of two from Moscow was found face down in a prison isolation cell where he had languished in squalid conditions for more than 11 months. Every year hundreds of people die inside Russian prisons and most go unreported.
But the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a corporate lawyer hired by a British firm to investigate a multimillion-dollar tax scam, lit a fire that has rallied those seeking to end the culture of corruption and impunity among Russian government officials and has caused diplomatic rifts that have reverberated around the world.
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London play honours lawyer who exposed Russian fraud
A play about the last moments of an anti-corruption lawyer who challenged Moscow will be performed for the first time outside Russia.
One Hour Eighteen details the killing of Sergei Magnitsky, who challenged the authorities over a £140 million racket. The father of two was working for investment fund Hermitage Capital when he uncovered the biggest tax fraud in Russian history and pointed the finger at senior officials, police and politicians. But he was accused of fraud himself, imprisoned without trial and tortured. In 2009, a group of men beat him to death in his cell.
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Russians said to call off U.S. trip after backlash
Two Russian generals have called off plans to travel to Washington, according to the group that invited them, following a backlash over their alleged involvement in the case of a whistleblowing lawyer who died in a Moscow jail.
The lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died two years ago, but fallout from his death has reverberated in U.S.-Russian relations, with repeated allegations that officials were culpable in his death and later covered up their role. The allegations have fueled calls for accountability from rights groups and U.S. officials.
When word surfaced that two generals tied to the case were headed to Washington next week for a conference on intellectual property rights, a pair of U.S. senators balked, urging the State Department to reconsider allowing their entry to the country.
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William Browder on Human Rights in Russia
William Browder: “It’ll have an enormous impact on the human rights situation in Russia, if there are real consequences to the people who violate human rights.”
William Browder is the co-founder and CEO of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management currently based in London, a former client of the late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and an initiator of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. Interview with Iivi Anna Masso, published in Diplomaatia 96 / August 2011 (also in Estonian).
IAM: You did a great career in Russia as an investor and ended up as a public enemy of the Kremlin. How did your story in Russia begin?
WB: I have a connection with Russia that comes from my family. My grandfather was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the US and he lived in Russia in 1927–1932. My grandmother was Russian and my father was born in Russia.
My teenage rebellion against my Communist family was to become a businessman. I graduated from Stanford Business School in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down. When trying to figure out what to do with my life, I decided to go to Russia. I thought that with my background, it would be a good idea to do something in the post-Communist world.
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Record Bail Set in Magnitsky-Style Case
Seemingly thumbing its nose at Kremlin attempts to ease penalties for suspects of white-collar crime, a Moscow court has agreed to release a seriously ill woman from pretrial detention — if she posts an all-time record bail of $3.3 million by Monday.
The Kremlin did not comment Tuesday, but the Public Chamber said it would seek to have businesswoman Natalya Gulevich, whose kidneys are failing and bladder has stopped functioning, transferred from pretrial detention to a hospital, RIA-Novosti reported.
Gulevich’s supporters compare her to Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who also was accused of white-collar crimes and died in pretrial detention after not receiving adequate medical treatment in November 2009, 11 months after he was detained.
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Magnitsky Doctors’ Case Ready
The Investigative Committee said Tuesday that it has completed its probe into two prison medics charged in the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
The investigation will continue and others may be charged, but the case against the medics — widely considered minor players in Magnitsky death — was ready to proceed, the committee said in a statement on its web site.
Larisa Litvinova, a doctor at Moscow’s Butyrskaya pretrial prison, was charged in August with involuntary manslaughter, punishable by up to three years in prison. Her superior, Dmitry Kratov, faces up to five years on negligence charges.
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Alexei Navalny vs. Vladlen Stepanov
Anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny has lost a defamation lawsuit filed by Vladlen Stepanov, whom Navalny had implicated in the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. This is very good news — not that Navalny lost, of course, but that the lawsuit publicized some very important information. But let’s first look at what we knew before the lawsuit.
We knew that there was a greenmailer, Hermitage Capital founder William Browder, who had a falling out with the Russian authorities. We know that in June 2007 Interior Ministry officer Artyom Kuznetsov entered Browder’s offices and seized documents and stamps of three of his “shell” firms — Hermitage Capital subsidiaries Makhaon, Parfenion and Riland.
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My whistleblower son is dead – now they’re after me
The mother of a Russian anti-corruption lawyer, who died in custody after being jailed on trumped-up charges, has spoken of her “utter disbelief” that prosecutors have reopened a criminal inquiry into her son.
Natalia Magnitskaya, whose son Sergei Magnitsky died nearly two years ago after a savage beating by prison guards, described as “perverse” an attempt to question her as part of the investigation.
“This is a clear attempt to put pressure on me and Sergei’s family,” said Magnitskaya, 60, who is frail and suffers from high blood pressure.
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