Posts Tagged ‘Hermitage’
Hedge Fund Lawyer’s Death Gets UN Probe
The death of hedge fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky is now the subject of a United Nations investigation.
Juan Mendez, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, has opened a probe into Magnitsky’s death in 2009 after nearly a year in jail awaiting trial on tax fraud charges. Magnitsky, in a series of notes he kept during his confinement in some of Moscow’s most notorious jails, claimed to have been denied adequate medical treatment, and supporters say he was tortured.
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UN Launches Investigation Into Russian Lawyer’s Prison Death
The United Nations has launched an investigation into the death of Russian anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky under what have been described as torturous pretrial jail conditions.
According to a statement released by Hermitage Capital Management, the investment advisory firm that Magnitsky represented, the UN special rapporteurs on extrajudicial executions, the independence of lawyers and judges, and torture have initiated an “unprecedented investigation” into the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky’s death in late 2009.
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Russian commentary calls for Western sanctions over Yukos trial
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
“Rescuing the drowning: Weakness of our civil society makes the state of rights and freedoms in Russia highly dependent on West’s influence”
One of the important factors in the second Yukos case was the reaction of Western countries to the trial in the Khamovnicheskiy court. Russian human rights activists who followed the case closely were hoping that the influence of the G7 leaders would be a limiter on judicial tyranny.
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Hermitage Fund’s William Browder
The Hermitage Fund founder and former Putin ally on how exposing corruption in Russia upended his business and changed his worldview.
My grandfather was the general secretary of the American Communist Party. And as I was finishing business school in 1989, I had a romantic attraction to the Soviet Union as it was opening for business. As an investment banker in 1992, I went to the Russian town of Murmansk to advise the managers of a state-owned fleet of 100 ships. Each ship cost $20 million, but the managers were being offered the chance to buy 51 percent of the entire fleet for $2.5 million. I realized that to make money in Russia, you had to invest directly in assets that were being privatized. In 1996, I moved to Moscow and set up the Hermitage Fund, which became the largest foreign investment fund in the country.
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The Verdict Is In
The re-sentencing of Russia’s No.1 dissident, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, wasn’t unexpected, but the sheer brazenness of it is a striking and dangerous sign of bad things to come. There is one word that comes to mind when watching the drama surrounding the Mikhail Khodorkovsky verdict and sentence today of 13.5 years in prison. Perhaps tellingly, it is a Russian word: naglost’. English simply doesn’t have one word that packs into so few letters all that naglost’ means: arrogance, contemptuous malice, obnoxiousness, brazenness, insolence, impudence, and sheer nerve. Google Translate suggests no fewer than 22 synonyms, none of which captures the fullness of the word as well as the Russian government has embodied it in this case.
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Russia defies EU diplomacy on Khodorkovsky sentence
Experts have warned that polite diplomacy alone will have zero impact on an increasingly wayward Russia as EU leaders lined up to criticise the jailing of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Thursday.
“There’s nothing anyone can say outside of Russia that has any effect on the Russians. They just laugh as we condemn their actions,” Bill Browder, the CEO of US venture capitalist firm Hermitage Capital, whose lawyer, Sergey Magnitsky, died in suspicious circumstances in a Russian prison last year, told this website shortly after the Khodorkovsky sentence.
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Fatal odyssey of a Russian prisoner tells a dark tale; Above the law
International Herald Tribune
More than a year ago the members of an obscure oversight panel filed into Butyrskaya Prison to look into the death of a prisoner. They were hardly an intimidating bunch: mostly retired women, scribbling their observations in notebooks, regarded by the prison staff as a minor irritant, like fleas.
In a country whose law enforcement wields enormous power, it is easy enough to ignore civilian watchdog groups. But this day was different. When the doctors were led in and told to take a seat, the panel’s leader, a veteran human rights activist named Valery V. Borshchev, felt something unfamiliar in the air.
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After Russian Death, Inquiry Doors Open and Shut
The New York Times
by Ellen Barry
It was more than a year ago when six members of an obscure oversight panel filed into Butyrskaya Prison to look into the death of a prisoner. They were hardly an intimidating bunch: retired women in hats, mostly, scribbling their observations in notebooks, regarded by the prison staff as a minor irritant, like fleas.
In a country whose law enforcement structures wield enormous power, it is easy enough to ignore civilian watchdog groups. But this day was different. When the doctors were led in and told to take a seat, the panel’s leader, a veteran human rights activist named Valery V. Borshchev, felt something unfamiliar in the air.
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Sergei Magnitsky: European Parliament recommends tough sanctions on Russian officials
The European Parliament has recommended hard-hitting sanctions be taken against 60 Russian officials accused of involvement or dereliction of duty in the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. In a vote that caused friction with Moscow, the parliament backed a resolution that opens the door for EU member states, including Britain, to introduce a visa ban and freeze the bank accounts of the officials.
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