Posts Tagged ‘Hermitage’

26
September 2011

Late lawyer’s mother challenges Russia’s top prosecutor

AFP

The mother of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer whose 2009 death in pre-trial detention sparked global outrage, Monday filed a criminal complaint against Russia’s top prosecutor and a slew of top officials she said had contributed to her son’s death.

In an extensive letter to Russia’s top investigators, Natalia Magnitskaya listed evidence that the death of her son was not caused by negligence but was a premeditated murder brought on by months of torture to keep him silent.

A 37-year old corporate lawyer, Magnitsky died of untreated heart condition and pancreatitis in an isolation cell in November 2009 after his arrest in 2008.

Before his arrest, he claimed to have uncovered a scheme used by police officials to reclaim about $235 million in taxes paid by his employer Hermitage Capital. He was charged with fraud and spent nearly a year in Moscow prisons.

“In over 1.5 years since the death of my son… I became aware of information evident of a crime against my son, specifically that his death was brought on by deliberate violent actions,” the letter states.

Russian investigators have charged two prison doctors with negligence and carelessness over Magnitsky’s death.

Magnitskaya however claimed in her letter that the doctors were only part of a scheme that included far more senior officials.

Officials from the interior ministry, FSB security service, and the prosecutor’s office, that “created torturous conditions in Sergei Magnitsky’s detention”, she said.

Numerous complaints lodged by the lawyer were ignored by all levels of the justice system — including Russia’s top prosecutor Yury Chaika — “due to either criminal negligence or personal interest”, she said.

“I ask to open a criminal case into torture and premeditated murder of Sergei Magnitsky,” she wrote, listing 11 interior ministry officers, five prosecutors, and a slew of other officials.

The United States and other Western countries expressed alarm over the tragedy and Washington has now imposed a visa blacklist against Russian officials whom it believes were involved. срочный займ hairy girl https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php hairy girl

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26
September 2011

Mother of late Russian lawyer claims he was killed in detention

Interfax

The mother of Hermitage Capital fund’s lawyer Sergey Magnitskiy, who died in a Moscow remand prison in November 2009, claims that her son was killed while in pre-trial detention, Russian Interfax news agency reported on 26 September, citing a statement issued by Hermitage Capital.

Lawyer Nikolay Gorokhov has filed Magnitskiy’s mother’s petition to the Russian Investigations Committee to initiate criminal proceedings against officials from the Prosecutor-General’s Office, the Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service, the Federal Penal Service and 11 judges “as accomplices in organizing the illegal arrest, torture and killing of her son”, the statement says.

In total, more than 30 officials are named in Natalya Magnitskaya’s petition, who, she claims, were either involved in her son’s death or showed criminal negligence in connection with his case, Ekho Moskvy radio reported on 26 September.

“During more than 18 months since my son, Sergey Magnitskiy, died in pre-trial detention, (…) I have discovered and gained access to the information attesting to criminal wrongdoing against my son, specifically that his death had been the result of intentional acts of violence,” Interfax quoted from Magnitskaya’s statement.

The statement also noted that there had been signs of beating on Sergey Magnitskiy’s body, including damaged knuckles on both hands, multiple grazes and bruises, a puncture wound on his tongue and suspected head injury, as recorded in the death certificate.

“The fact of Sergey Magnitskiy’s murder is further substantiated by the results of a pre-investigation examination conducted, as we have learned, in the first days after his death, but made public only now. Three days after Magnitskiy’s death, on 19 November 2009, the investigations authorities of Moscow’s Preobrazhenskiy district collected evidence pointing to signs of murder, which was reflected in a corresponding report about the initiation of criminal proceedings under Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code (murder),” Magnitskaya wrote in the petition.

She insists that the investigators looking into Magnitskiy’s death and the last hours of his life are relying on the theory of events proposed by employees of the remand prison where Magnitskiy had died, thus allowing them to conceal relevant evidence and information.

The law-enforcement agencies have not yet commented on Magnitskaya’s petition, Ekho Moskvy radio said. быстрые займы на карту займы на карту https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php займ на карту

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26
September 2011

Magnitsky’s Mother Files Criminal Complaint Against Russian Officials

Radio Free Europe

The mother of Sergei Magnitsky has filed a criminal complaint against Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika, senior officials of the Russian Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service, the Penitentiary Service, and 11 judges, accusing them of being involved in a conspiracy to murder her son.

Magnitsky, an attorney who was jailed after accusing Interior Ministry officials of involvement in a massive corruption scandal, died in pre-trial detention in 2009 after suffering abuse and medical neglect.

He was acting as outside counsel for the investment firm Hermitage Capital Management.

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20
September 2011

U.S. Senate Asked to Blacklist Yukos Foes

The Moscow Times

A group of humans rights activists, politicians and artists on Monday urged the U.S. Senate to blacklist 305 Russian officials linked to the jailing of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The list includes Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin, but not Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his deputy Igor Sechin, whom Khodorkovsky has repeatedly named as his main enemies.

Rights champion Lev Ponomaryov, a co-signee, told The Moscow Times that Putin and Sechin were not included to make the proposal easier for U.S. senators to approve.

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19
September 2011

No way in

Russia Today

Kommersant has a letter written by Russian opposition members, human rights activists and cultural figures in the US Senate which contains a request to impose the same restrictions on officials involved in the Yukos case as those which are being imposed on authorities associated with the Sergey Magnitsky case. The list compiled by the opposition includes 305 people: Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, head of the Investigation Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin, Moscow City Court Chairwoman Olga Yegorova, investigators, state prosecutors and judges associated with all parties in the Yukos case. The authors of the letter are hoping that the people whose names have been blacklisted will be banned entry to the United States and their foreign bank accounts, if they exist, will be frozen.

In particular, the letter addressed to the US Senate was signed by co-chairmen of the People’s Freedom Party Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov, human rights activists Lyudmila Alekseeva and Lev Ponomarev, film director Eldar Ryazanov, People’s Artists of Russia Lia Akhedzhakova and Natalia Fateeva.
“With this letter we are showing support for the pending Sergey Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011,” reads the letter. “However, Magnitsky’s case is not the only of its kind in our country.”

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16
September 2011

State-Run Shakedown

Time Magazine

Alex Shifrin thought he found a surefire way to profit from Moscow’s new consumers with an old Russian tradition: soup. Russians can’t get enough of the stuff, slurping down an incredible 32 billion bowls each year. But with the city’s emerging middle class increasingly adopting Westernized, on-the-go lifestyles, soup fans have less time to boil it for themselves. Shifrin, an advertising executive, and three partners smelled an opportunity. Why not cook it for them? They pooled their personal savings and in April 2010 launched Soupchik, a chain of takeaway outlets serving up borscht, chicken noodle and other local favorites to upwardly mobile Muscovites.

The investors, however, learned that nothing in Russia is a sure thing, thanks to the unpredictable and predatory government. A steady stream of corrupt tax officials, police officers and other security agents began harassing them for payoffs. Within weeks of Soupchik’s opening, two tax inspectors claimed the start-up was violating an obscure retailing regulation. Shifrin protested, and amid the negotiations, a tax administrator suggested that some $1,000 in cash would resolve the matter. (Shifrin refused to ante up, and the tax office eventually dropped its case.)

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16
September 2011

One More Reason Not to Invest in Russia

The Moscow Times

In the 1990s, Anatoly Chubais was guilty for all the country’s economic woes, as the popular phrase goes. Now Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin has found a new source of Russia’s economic problems — foreign investors.

At the Baikal International Economic Forum on Monday in Irkutsk, Basargin criticized foreign investors, calling them “vacuum cleaners” that “suck up Russia’s natural resources and export them out of the country.”

“Vacuum cleaners” is nothing compared with what Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, was called. Although Hermitage was the largest portfolio investor in Russia in the mid-2000s — with more than $4 billion in investments in the country — the Russian government labeled him “a threat to national security” in 2006 and denied him entry into the country. Browder was blacklisted after he spent years fighting against corruption and abuse of shareholder rights in Gazprom and other large companies that Hermitage invested in.

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14
September 2011

Lebedev targets Russian secret police for damages

Financial Times

Russia’s secret police have long been immune to the law that they supposedly uphold, a state within a state that acts with virtual impunity in the tradition of its KGB forebears. But now, a disgruntled banker has decided to test just how aloof they are from the law, with a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in a Moscow court.

Alexander Lebedev, the billionaire owner of The Independent and Evening Standard newspapers in London, launched the lawsuit claiming damages of 350m roubles ($11.6m) to his business reputation following a raid by masked special forces on his National Reserve Bank in November.

The lawsuit is the first of its kind in Russia to target the FSB, according to Mr Lebedev. “It’s the first time to my knowledge that any one has tried this,” he said.

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13
September 2011

David Cameron is ‘ignoring Russian crime problems’, according to leading investor

Daily Mail

David Cameron is turning a blind eye to ‘spectacular criminality’ to avoid disrupting his Moscow trade mission, a leading investor claims.

Hermitage Capital boss Bill Browder, formerly the biggest investor in Russia, believes the Prime Minister is ‘afraid’ to address serious crimes against British firms, including the killing of Browder’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The broadside came as documents seen by the Daily Mail revealed that officials complicit in Magnitsky’s death have been flying in and out of Britain with impunity.

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