Posts Tagged ‘Hermitage’
Activists say they’ll show how prison guards’ beating contributed to Russian attorney’s death
Activists plan to present evidence Tuesday that a Russian lawyer who accused officials of corruption died after a brutal beating by prison guards, saying investigators’ findings that a lack of medical treatment killed the man fell short of the full truth.
Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who worked for a large U.S. investment fund, died in prison in November 2009 after the pancreatitis he developed there went untreated. He had been arrested by Interior Ministry officials after he had accused them of using false tax papers to steal $230 million from the state.
Magnitsky’s case is being scrutinized by human rights activists and potential Western investors as a gauge of the Kremlin’s commitment to addressing corruption and allowing an independent legal system. Several prison officials were fired but no one has been charged either for his death or in the alleged tax fraud.
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Russia blames doctors, not police, in death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky
Russian authorities, under persistent international pressure to charge police officials in the pretrial detention death of a 37-year-old lawyer, on Monday blamed prison doctors instead.
Human rights activists, colleagues of Sergei Magnitsky and even U.S. senators have urged Russia to call Interior Ministry officials to account for arresting, prosecuting and then denying medical treatment to Magnitsky, who died in custody in November 2009.
But on Monday, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee, told the Interfax news agency that doctors would be prosecuted because of “flaws” in treatment that caused Magnitsky’s death.
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Russia Probe Cites Officials in Death
Russian investigators on Monday blamed prison personnel in the 2009 death of a jailed hedge-fund attorney—the first time the government has acknowledged any official wrongdoing in the case.
Human-rights activists welcomed the announcement, but said they feared that the government could use the prison officials as scapegoats while ignoring any higher-level complicity.
The lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, had accused Interior Ministry officials of stealing $230 million in Russian budget funds in concert with tax officials.
Mr. Magnitsky’s employer, the U.K.-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital, has alleged that instead of investigating the theft, investigators tried to force him to recant by jailing him in squalid conditions and withholding vital medical care.
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Poor Care Led to Death of Lawyer, Russia Says
Russia’s Investigative Committee on Monday acknowledged for the first time that 37-year-old Sergei L. Magnitsky died in pretrial detention because prison authorities denied him medical care, setting the stage for prosecution in a case that has come to epitomize Russia’s trouble establishing rule of law.
Mr. Magnitsky was drawn into a feud between his employer, an international investment company, and Russian law enforcement authorities, testifying that senior Interior Ministry officers had used his employer’s companies to embezzle $230 million from the Russian treasury. He was arrested and held without bail on charges of evading about $17.4 million in taxes. He died in 2009 after 11 months in custody.
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Russia says attorney died from lack of medical aid in jail, activist blames beating by guards
Russian investigators admitted Monday for the first time that a Russian lawyer who accused officials of corruption died in jail due to a lack of medical treatment _ but a rights activist said the death came after a brutal beating by prison guards.
Sergi Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who worked for a large U.S. investment fund, died in prison in November 2009 after the pancreatitis he developed there went untreated. He had been arrested by Interior Ministry officials after he had accused them of using false tax papers to steal $230 million from the state.
Magnitsky’s case is being scrutinized by human rights activists and potential Western investors as a gauge of the Kremlin’s commitment to addressing corruption and allowing an independent legal system. Several prison officials were fired but no one has been charged either for his death or in the alleged tax fraud.
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Russia blames medics for Hermitage lawyer death
Reuters
Russian investigators, probing an affair that has shaken the confidence of foreign investors, said on Monday that poor medical care was to blame for the death in jail of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer for Hermitage Capital, once Russia’s biggest equity fund, died of heart failure in November 2009 after around a year in prison, sparking worldwide outrage.
He had earlier testified against Russian interior ministry officials during a tax evasion case against Hermitage. The hedge fund had accused the officials of embezzling $230 million in tax refunds from the state budget.
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Russia blames prison over top lawyer’s death
Russian investigators on Monday for the first time acknowledged that medical neglect was responsible for the death in pre-trial detention of Western investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The 37-year-old Hermitage Capital investment fund attorney’s death in November 2009 in a holding cell at Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina sparked outrage among international rights groups and drew condemnation from Western states.
His case came to symbolise both the perils facing Western businesses in Russia and the seeming gap between President Dmitry Medvedev’s more liberal rhetoric and his actual reform accomplishments.
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Russia to Prosecute Officials Linked to Magnitsky’s Death
Bloomberg
Russian prosecutors plan to charge officials linked to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management Ltd. who died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after almost a year in pre-trial detention. Officials will face criminal prosecution for refusing timely medical treatment to Magnitsky, who was 37 when he died of heart failure, including on the day of his death, Russia’s Investigative Committee said today on its website.
“The failure to provide Magnitsky with adequate medical treatment was a direct cause of his death,” the committee said, citing the results of a medical probe.
The announcement came less than two months after President Dmitry Medvedev said all guilty parties in Magnitsky’s “tragic” death should be punished. The lawyer said he was abused and denied medical care to force him to drop allegations of a $230 million tax fraud by Interior Ministry officials.
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Dutch MPs impose sanctions on under-fire officials, but Moscow bids to arrest dead lawyer’s colleague
Europe’s relations with Russia have been handed another test, as Dutch lawmakers voted unanimously to slap sanctions on Russian officials on the ever more notorious Magnitsky list.
In The Hague, 150 Dutch MPs voted in favor of sanctions against 60 officials implicated in the prosecution and death in disputed circumstances of Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky was a lawyer with British hedge fund Hermitage Capital and claimed to have exposed how Russian officials had embezzled $230 million of public funds.
But on the same day that Magnistky supporters were clapping themselves on the back a Moscow court issued an arrest warrant for Ivan Cherkasov, Magnitsky’s old colleague.
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