Posts Tagged ‘Hermitage’
One Russian Official Who is Proud to Be a Criminal
Looking at this happy-looking fellow right here to the left. Not only is he a highly decorated public servant of the Russian Federation, he loves puppies too (perhaps he was inspired by Paul Krugman’s bizarre cat photos). His name is Vladimir Churov, Chairman of the Central Elections Committee, and apparently he would like you to know that he is “honored” to be included on the “Magnitsky List.”
For those who haven’t followed the case, the Magnitsky list is an item of draft legislation in the United States which proposes visa sanctions on Russian officials who were personally involved in the murder by medical torture of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed without trial or charges for blowing the whistle on a $230 million tax rebate fraud perpetrated against Bill Browder’s Hermitage Capital Management. Churov believes inclusion on the list is a credit to his “efficiency” as a Russian public servant, and now he claims he’ll be unable to travel to the United States to observe the 2012 presidential elections.
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A Sobering Look Inside Putin’s Russia
Vaclav Havel was stooped and frail last week when he opened his annual Forum 2000 at the glittering Zofin palace beneath Prague Castle. While the voice of the iconic former Czech president is weakened by illness and the burden of 75 years, through these yearly events Havel still speaks truth to power.
Several speakers, most prominently opposition politicians Gregory Yavlinsky and Boris Nemtsov, painted a grim picture of a corrupted Russia groaning under the weight of a tyranny only slightly less cruel than in Soviet times. The 59-year old Yavlinski, whose Yabloko party will participate in December’s parliamentary elections, said Russia has neither rule of law nor property rights. “The judiciary,” he said, “is controlled by the ruling elite and money.”
Nemtsov, a leader of the People’s Freedom Party, said that by orchestrating a return to the presidency, “Putin has decided to be president for life.” He accused the Russian leader “of keeping totalitarianism to protect corruption.” Putin’s friends, he continued are the “crony capitalists” who have plundered state assets and safely deposited that ill-gotten wealth outside of Russia. Nemtsov, a deputy prime minister in 1997-1998, has been arrested three times this year. The Kremlin refuses to register his party, which is thus unable to contest the Duma elections.
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Dead Before Trial
Two Deaths in Pretrial Detention Show that Little Has Changed Since the Magnitsky Case.
Andrei Kudoyarov, a former principal of a school in Moscow, was facing 12 years in prison for attempting to solicit bribes, when he died of a massive heart attack in a Moscow pretrial detention center last week. With an eye to the drawn-out investigation and international furor over the earlier death of Firestone Duncan lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, investigators responded quickly by opening an inquiry into the death on Tuesday. Yet when a second prisoner in a Russian pretrial detention center died on the same day, rights activists cried foul, claiming that substandard care in detention centers has led to an “epidemic” of prisoner deaths.
Kudoyarov was arrested in May on charges that he had taken a bribe of 240,000 rubles in exchange for giving a student a spot in the first grade at Moscow School 1308. Other parents came forward with similar claims, some voiced as recently as this week, yet Kudoyarov’s lawyers and many at the school continued to claim he had been set up. It all became moot when he died on Saturday in pretrial detention of a fatal heart attack. An article published in Moskovsky Komsolets claimed he waited 43 minutes for an ambulance to arrive at the scene.
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Magnitsky Investigator Arrested on Bribery Charges
A police investigator implicated in the prosecution of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been charged with extorting a $3 million bribe, officials said Wednesday.
Nelli Dmitriyeva, a senior investigator with the Interior Ministry’s Moscow branch, is suspected of extorting the bribe while holding an inquiry into contraband medical equipment, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. Her arrest was sanctioned by a Moscow court on Wednesday.
Dmitriyeva is one of 60 officials linked to the 2009 death of Magnitsky, 37, who died in detention after being beaten badly by guards and being refused treatment for existing health problems. Dozens of the officials have been banned from entering the United States. It was unclear whether Dmitriyeva is among them.
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UK Bans 60 Officials Over Magnitsky Death
Are secret blacklists becoming a way to keep people out of a country?
The U.K. secretly banned 60 people implicated in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management who died while in Russian custody in 2009 after alleging that senior police officials had defrauded the investment firm. Those same police officials arrested him for the crimes he accused them of committing.
Magnitsky has been hailed by activists as a martyr, and justice for his death has been a cause of William Browder, head of Hermitage, which was once the biggest portfolio investor in Russia. The U.K. move follows a similar visa ban imposed by the U.S. in July.
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Russian lawyer denied prison medical leave dies
A former Yukos oil executive whose struggle to win medical treatment for Aids and cancer came to symbolise the harshness of the Russian prison system, has died.
Vasily Aleksanyan, a Harvard-educated lawyer who headed Yukos’s legal department and was briefly vice-president of the firm, was imprisoned in April 2006 as part of the sweep against the oil company.
He was diagnosed with HIV shortly after his arrest, and later with tuberculosis and cancer of the liver, as well as severely limited vision.
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Investigator in Magnitsky case arrested for taking bribe
An investigator in the case of campaigning lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been arrested for demanding a $3 million bribe to drop charges against suspected smugglers in an unrelated case.
Maj. Nelly Dmitriyeva accepted part of the pay-off through a third party in August, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor-General’s Office told reporters on Wednesday.
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Murder in the Magnitsky case
The mother and friends of the deceased plan to prove that his death in jail was caused by severe torture.
A new twist has occurred in the case of Hermitage Capital Foundation lawyer Sergey Magnitsky’s death at Matrosskaya Tishina (Sailor’s Silence) detention center in Moscow in 2009. The lawyer’s friends and family have learned that investigators initially had strong evidence indicating that he was tortured and killed in jail, though it was presented simply as negligence on the part of medical staff. Now, Magnitsky’s mother is asking the Investigation Committee to file a criminal case against Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, staff members of the Interior Ministry, the FSB, the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) and 11 judges, who, according to her, are responsible for her son’s death.
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Sergei Magnitsky’s mother demands Russian murder investigation
Russia has come under fresh pressure to investigate the high-profile prison death of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who uncovered the biggest tax fraud in Russian history.
In a complaint lodged with prosecutors, the late man’s mother has alleged he was illegally arrested, tortured and murdered in a Moscow prison in November 2009.
Demanding that a fully fledged murder investigation be opened into a case that continues to damage Russia’s relations with the West, Natalia Magnitskaya said: “During the more than one and a half years that have passed since my son’s death I have learnt and reviewed information proving that a crime was committed against my son, and that his death came about as a result of premeditated violent actions.”
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