Posts Tagged ‘Hermitage’
Magnitsky Deserves Justice
VOA News.com
This month marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died from apparent medical neglect after 12 months in pre-trial detention.
In 2008, Mr. Magnitsky implicated Russian officials in what he called a massive scheme to defraud the government of $230 million. Authorities arrested Mr. Magnitsky and accused him and his client, Hermitage Capital, of evading taxes. According to Mr. Magnitsky, investigators and prison officials pressured him to withdraw his complaint and testify against Hermitage Capital. He refused to cooperate and was subsequently transferred from one Moscow prison to another with worse conditions. After being denied medical attention for pancreatic problems and enduring what human rights activists have described as torturous conditions for almost a year, Sergei Magnitsky died November 16th, 2009.
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DIFFERENT ANGLE
Are you Banking any of the 60 Russians that the EU wants to Sanction?
Kenneth Rijock
Financial Crime Consultant, for World-Check
The European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has recommended to the full European Parliament, in its Human Rights Report, that it adopt sanctions against sixty Russian officials, denying them visas for the Schengen area, and freeze their assets and bank accounts within the EU. These PEPs were reportedly implicated in the illegal detention, torture and death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky last year, and the $230m tax rebate fraud involving Hermitage Capital Management.
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Crime and unjust punishment in Russia
The Lancet
Tom Parfitt
A year after the controversial death in a Moscow detention centre of Sergei Magnitsky—a 37-year-old lawyer who was denied vital medical treatment—Russia is promising an overhaul of its antiquated prison system. But will the reforms bring real change to health-care provision?
It was 1830 h on November 16, 2009, when Sergei Magnitsky was transferred to the Matrosskaya Tishina detention centre in Moscow. The 37-year-old lawyer had been healthy when he was arrested a year earlier on fraud charges that colleagues said were trumped-up in revenge for his work for Hermitage, an international investment fund that passed evidence about corrupt officials to Russian media. Yet within 4 hours of arriving at Matrosskaya Tishina (Sailors’ Rest), Magnitsky was dead.
In the past year the Magnitsky Affair, as it is known in Russia, has become emblematic of the country’s woeful human rights record and its—sometimes wilful—neglect of the sick in prison. 6 weeks after Magnitsky was found lifeless in his cell, the public oversight commission (ONK) for Moscow’s pretrial detention centres published a scathing report describing the events that led up to his death.
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Documentary Commemorates Death of Sergei Magnitsky
By Marina Grushin, 24 Nov. 2010
In an unprecedented show of solidarity, lawmakers and human rights activists gathered in capital cities around the world Tuesday to condemn the rampant lawlessness and corruption in Russia.
Legislators in Washington, Ottawa, and cities across Europe hosted the events to commemorate Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison last year. On the one-year anniversary of Magnitsky’s death, his supporters premiered “Justice for Sergei,” a documentary chronicling the lawyer’s struggle against corrupt officials in Russia.
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Bill Browder: The Russians are out to kill me…
Evening Standard
London, A year ago last week, millionaire hedge fund boss Bill Browder received a chilling call at his north-west London home that would change his life for ever. The call was from Russia and it was to say that Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who had been held on trumped-up charges and tortured in a Moscow prison, was dead.
“It was the worst moment of my life,” recalls Browder. “I walked round my bedroom in a daze, full of dread. I’m the head of a $1 billion hedge fund, I always know what to do, but for the first time in my life I felt lost. Sergei was 37. He had a wife and two sons and everything to live for. Yet he had been tortured and died —all because of his refusal to falsely testify against me.
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Justice for Sergei
National Post
November 16, 2010 marked the first anniversary of the tragic death in detention of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered the largest tax fraud in Russian history and paid for it with his life. While his story is one of great moral courage and heroism, his saga shines a spotlight on the pervasive culture of corruption and impunity implicating senior government officials in Russia today.
Working as a tax attorney for Hermitage Capital Management in Moscow, an international investment fund founded by CEO William Browder, Magnitksy blew the whistle on widespread Russian government corruption, involving officials from six senior Russian ministries. The officials he testified against arrested and detained him, beginning a nightmare in which he was thrown into a prison cell without bail or trial, and systematically tortured for one year in an attempt to force him to retract his testimony.
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Sergei Magnitsky one year on
16 November 2010 – One year ago today, three Economist journalists sat in a Moscow restaurant discussing the prospects for the Russian economy with a smart Western banker, who argued that our coverage of Russia was far too harsh, and that business was thriving. The smart new restaurant, full of customers, seemed to support his words.
A few hours earlier, Sergei Magnitsky, a corporate lawyer representing Hermitage Capital Management, once Russia’s largest portfolio investor, died mysteriously in pre-trial detention after being repeatedly denied medical care and in effect subjected to what in most civilised countries would be considered torture. At the time, few people outside the small world of Russian investors and a few human-rights activists had heard of Mr Magnitsky. A year later, his death has become a symbol of the mind-boggling corruption and injustice perpetrated by the Russian system, and the inability (or unwillingness) of the Kremlin to change it.
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Sergei Magnitsky – a Tragic Metaphor for Russia’s Judicial, Law Enforcement and Governance Systems
Henry Jackson Society
16 November 2010 – One year ago this very day, Sergei Magnitsky passed away in what was a tragic and unjust death. And yet, the past three-hundred sixty five days have seen little in the way of justice or accountability. In fact, a vast array of questions remains unanswered – questions which are posed in the direction of the Russian state. Many believed that Russia had caught up with the 21st century; that Russia had become at least some semblance of a democracy, providing governance and security for its citizens and adhering to the rule of law. The truth, however, is that Sergei Magnitsky’s death is a tragic metaphor for Russia’s judicial, law enforcement and governance systems, systems in which justice is slowly and painfully killed by the state’s defiance of the rule of law.
The story of Sergei’s death is well documented. Sergei Magnitsky was a man who believed in the virtues of his motherland’s legal system; a lawyer who sought to uncover the largest tax fraud in Russian history committed by officials within the Russian Interior Ministry (MVD) to the tune of $230 million; and a man who was acting out of the interest of both his client and the Russian state. A month after his efforts to bring justice to light, Sergei Magnitsky was arrested by the officials he stood against and was placed in detention for over 11 months where he was forced to endure appalling conditions with no access to medical treatment. On 16 November 2009, as a result of the denial of medical care in prison, he tragically passed away.
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Magnitsky and Russia’s Opportunity Cost
16 November 2010 – November 16th marks the one-year anniversary of the murder of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was imprisoned last year in Moscow under pre-trial detention and intentionally denied medical care which led to his death. The responsibility lies with the Russian government, and specifically with individual officials who sought to cover up a $230 million tax fraud they had orchestrated using stolen documentation from Magnitsky’s client, Hermitage Capital Management.
No one has ever been held accountable for Magnitsky’s death: no charges, no arrests, no trials, and no justice, despite the mountains of evidence and even the names of the “untouchables” made public. Instead, with a familiar Russian twist, the killers were rewarded with promotions and decorations, while the victim has been blamed for the crime. Those who make a fuss over the Magnitsky incident are investigated, persecuted, and sometimes chased into exile.
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