Posts Tagged ‘independent’
Chaos in Moscow court for trial of dead whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky as legal team fail to show
There was mayhem in a tiny courtroom in Moscow today after one of the most controversial trials in recent Russian history – that of the deceased whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky – failed to start.
The case was prevented from proceeding after the lawyers for the late defendant did not show up. Mr Magnitsky, who died in prison in 2009 after being beaten and refused medical treatment, will be judged in the first posthumous trial in modern Russia.
He is accused of tax evasion, along with his former employer, William Browder, a US-born British investor.
Mr Browder has been banned from entering Russia and is being tried in absentia. He is the head of the investment fund Hermitage Capital and was accused of tax evasion after falling foul of the Russian government. Mr Magnitsky was investigating these charges in 2008, and discovered that the disputed tax payments had been stolen by police and tax officials. When he reported these findings, he himself was thrown into jail.
Mr Magnitsky’s family and lawyers have refused to participate in the trial, so the court has appointed lawyers to represent the deceased defendant. These lawyers have been told they could risk being debarred if they did not take on the case, but nevertheless were not present at court yesterday. It is unclear if their no-show was a political statement, as they were not available for comment, though the lawyers had told the court they needed more time to read the case documents.
Earlier, Mr Magnitsky’s widow had called on all of the participants to boycott the trial. “I think that if any of its participants have a conscience – and this is key not only in human morality, but also in Russian criminal law – they have a duty to refuse to participate in this blasphemy,” said Natalia Zharikova.
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Russia set for posthumous Magnitsky trial
Russia will press ahead tomorrow with its highly unusual posthumous prosecution of a whistleblowing lawyer who revealed how members of the government’s powerful Interior Ministry were part of a gang that stole £230m from Russian taxpayers.
The trial of Sergei Magnitsky, who died in November 2009 after months of neglect and torture in a Russian jail cell, will begin behind closed doors with the chairs of the two defendants left empty. His co-accused – the British hedge-fund manage William Browder – is banned from entering Russia and has refused to take part in what he has described as a “Stalin show trial”.
The case has become a source of international embarrassment for Moscow with America recently banning any officials involved in the arrest and death of Mr Magnitsky from holding assets in the US or travelling there. Moscow responded with a ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans.
Supporters of Mr Magnitsky say he was jailed and killed for daring to expose how a network of Russian officials and criminal underworld figures used complex tax frauds to steal money from the Russian people. Russian prosecutors admit the frauds occurred but after initially blaming a number of low- level crime figures (some of whom were dead before the scams took place) they have since switched to accusing Mr Magnitsky and Mr Browder of carrying out the crimes they say they uncovered.
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Russia’s casualties of the new Cold War
“If we are slapped in the face, we must retaliate, otherwise they will keep on slapping us.” Thus spoke the Russian President Vladimir Putin, just before he signed into law the Dima Yakovlev bill, which bans the adoption of Russian orphans by US foster parents.
The American slap to which Mr Putin was responding was a new law that bans Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses from entering the US or having property there. Dubbed the Magnitsky act, the law primarily focuses on officials allegedly involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer who died in a Moscow prison in 2009.
Furious at this perceived meddling in Russian internal affairs, Russia decided to go beyond a mere tit-for-tat response. As well as drawing its own reciprocal list of US officials to ban from Russia, the Kremlin went one step further and banned adoptions, a move which has become one of the most controversial pieces of legislation of Mr Putin’s 12-year tenure as Russia’s leader. Rather than a retaliatory slap, say a growing number of critics, the bill appears more like shooting oneself in the foot to prove a point.
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Libel case puts fraud in the public forum
The London court case brought by Pavel Karpov is an interesting development, because if the case comes in front of a judge it would be likely to throw up details that officials fingered for their alleged involvement in the fraud would perhaps prefer to keep quiet.
In Russia, the approach from the authorities over the Magnitsky case has been twofold. Firstly, there has been no real investigation into the claims put forward by Bill Browder and Hermitage Capital about the massive fraud that was perpetrated. The second approach has been to turn the tables and suggest that Mr Magnitksy and Mr Browder are the real criminals.
Just this week Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in Davos, said that Hermitage’s claims were the “politicised fiction of certain people”. Mr Magnitsky, he said, was “not a truth seeker” but “a corporate lawyer or an accountant who defended the interests of the people who hired him.”
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Exclusive: Briton who took on Sergei Magnitsky network faces libel case in UK
A former Moscow police officer is suing a British businessman who exposed how a network of corrupt officials and shadowy criminal underworld figures were behind the largest tax fraud in Russian history.
Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Karpov has launched libel and defamation proceedings in the High Court against William Browder, a millionaire hedge-fund magnate who has campaigned against corruption within the Russian government after his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was tortured and died in police custody.
The 35-year-old officer, who was until recently a Moscow and Interior Ministry investigator, is one of more than 60 Russian officials who Mr Browder has publicly accused of being behind a scam that led to the theft of $230million from the Russian tax payer. Mr Browder has also accused him of being among a group of police officers who arranged for the arrest and torture of Mr Magnitsky when he uncovered the scam and went public with his allegations.
If the case ends up in the High Court, it will shed a spotlight on a scandal that has become a source of major international embarrassment to the Kremlin because of the mounting evidence that prominent officials within the Interior Ministry, tax offices and the judiciary aided the scam.
Mr Karpov insists he had nothing to do with the fraud or the subsequent cover up – or the arrest, torture and death of Mr M. In court documents obtained by The Independent Lawyers from Olswang, the major London law-firm which represents the former detective, say the allegations made by Mr Browder have caused “serious hurt, embarrassment and distress.”
They insist that while Mr Browder’s quest to pursue those who killed Mr Magnitsky might be legitimate, his campaign has wrongfully made false and highly defamatory claims against their client including that he is complicit in fraud, torture, kidnapping and murder.
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Lithuanian prosecutors open investigation into multi-million dollar tax fraud by Russian organised crime group
Prosecutors in Lithuania have opened an investigation into a multi-million dollar tax fraud carried out by a Russian organised crime group which used the Baltic nation’s banks to launder some of their money.
Lithuania is now the fourth European nation to investigate how millions were stolen from Russian tax-payers in a highly complex scam that involved criminal networks aided by corrupt members of the Russian state and judiciary. Switzerland, Latvia and Cyprus have also begun similar investigations.
The money trail links back to the so-called “Magnitsky case”, a $230 million tax fraud that has become a major source of international embarrassment for the Kremlin because of mounting evidence that prominent officials within the Interior Ministry, tax offices and the judiciary aided the scam.
Sergei Magnitsky, the Moscow based lawyer who uncovered the fraud at the behest of a British hedge fund, died in prison in November 2009 nine months after he was arrested by the same officials he had accused of being behind the heist.
The scandal has led to increasing friction between Russia and the West with the United States recently approving legislation banning a number of officials linked to the scam from entering America or holding assets there. Moscow was infuriated by the moves and responded with a ban on American couples adopting Russian babies.
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Prosecutors drop charges in Magnitsky killing to leave family at square one
Supporters of Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky have seen their hopes of justice fade after it emerged that prosecutors have withdrawn charges against the only person to be tried in connection with his death.
An investigation into the death of Mr Magnitsky in Moscow’s Butyrka prison in 2009 saw charges brought against two people, both doctors: Larisa Litvinova, who was responsible for the lawyer’s treatment during the last weeks of his life, and Dmitri Kratov, who at the time was the chief medical official at the prison.
Charges of professional negligence against Dr Litvinova were dropped earlier this year after prosecutors claimed the statute of limitations had run out, and on Monday the state prosecutor, Konstantin Bokov, urged the court to acquit Dr Kratov. “There is no cause-and-effect relationship between Kratov’s actions and Magnitsky’s death,” Mr Bokov is reported to have said. “I request his acquittal.” The court is expected to make its ruling on Friday.
Mr Magnitsky died in November 2009 after nearly a year in jail – the victim, former colleagues say, of retribution from the same police investigators he had accused of stealing $230m from the state through fraudulent tax refunds. The 37-year-old’s death was attributed by the prison to a heart attack, but Mr Magnitsky’s supporters insist he was fatally beaten after exposing what he described as a web of corruption.
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Magnitsky affair row grows as Russia threatens to reveal banned US officials
Russia has threatened to unveil a list of American officials who are banned for alleged human rights abuses in the latest in a tit-for-tat row between the two powers.
Moscow is furious that American legislators approved a new law which forbids any Russian officials known to be involved in corruption or criminality of travelling to the United States or holding assets there.
The law, which was passed on Thursday night, is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow based lawyer who was hired by the British investment fund Hermitage Capital to investigate a multimillion-pound scam and died in prison after he was arrested by the same Russian officials he had accused of being behind the scam.
Alexei Pushkov, one of Russia’s top foreign policy officials, said yesterday that Russia already had a list of US citizens implicated in human rights abuses of Russian citizens banned from entering Russia. Up to now, this list has been secret rather than official policy, in response to the American informal visa ban for those on the “Magnitsky list”. Now that the Magnitsky Act is official policy, however, Russia could well respond in kind.
The passage of an American banned list is a victory for Hermitage’s CEO, William Browder, who has lobbied extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe for such legislation.
“In a world where partisan politics can be so divisive, the moral outrage over what happened to Sergei Magnitsky has caused everybody in Washington to lay down their arms and do something truly historic to honour his sacrifice,” he told The Independent yesterday. “The obvious next step is to implement the same kind of ban across Europe and the UK.”
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Magnitsky row grows as Russia threatens to reveal banned US officials
The Independent
Moscow retaliates to new US law with its own blacklist of Americans accused of rights abuses
Russia has threatened to unveil a list of American officials who are banned for alleged human rights abuses in the latest in a tit-for-tat row between the two powers.
Moscow is furious that American legislators approved a new law which forbids any Russian officials known to be involved in corruption or criminality of travelling to the United States or holding assets there.
The law, which was passed on Thursday night, is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow based lawyer who was hired by the British investment fund Hermitage Capital to investigate a multimillion-pound scam and died in prison after he was arrested by the same Russian officials he had accused of being behind the scam.
Alexei Pushkov, one of Russia’s top foreign policy officials, said yesterday that Russia already had a list of US citizens implicated in human rights abuses of Russian citizens banned from entering Russia. Up to now, this list has been secret rather than official policy, in response to the American informal visa ban for those on the “Magnitsky list”. Now that the Magnitsky Act is official policy, however, Russia could well respond in kind.
The passage of an American banned list is a victory for Hermitage’s CEO, William Browder, who has lobbied extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe for such legislation.
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