Posts Tagged ‘mark franchetti’
Putin hounds Russian whistleblower in his grave
THE mother of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian anti-corruption lawyer who died in custody after accusing officials of embezzling £140m, has condemned a decision to put her late son on trial as illegal and morally reprehensible.
In Russia’s first posthumous prosecution of its kind, a court is to try Magnitsky on tax evasion charges more than three years after he died in a Moscow prison, where he was beaten and denied medical help.
“Maybe they’re planning on bringing the sentence to my son’s grave. There’s no limit to these people’s cynicism,” said Natalia Magnitskaya. “To put a dead man on trial is not only shocking beyond words; it’s also a travesty of justice. These people have no conscience. I’ll be boycotting this trial and urge all Russian lawyers to do the same. It’s perverse.”
Magnitsky died in prison in November 2009 while awaiting trial on tax evasion charges. His family and friends say the charges are trumped up and were brought as revenge after he reported a gang of corrupt officials and criminals to the police. The case was closed when he died.
Under Russian law, proceedings against a deceased person can be resumed only at the request of the defendant’s family to clear their name. But Magnitsky’s family strongly opposed reopening the case in protest at Russia’s notoriously biased and politicised judicial system.
“After Sergei’s death the case was reopened and sent to trial, not at our request but by prosecutors,” said Magnitskaya, 61, who has ignored several court summonses. “It’s blatantly illegal.
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Police raid on Moscow love nest splits Putin’s inner circle
A dawn police raid at the luxury Moscow flat of the blonde director of a defence procurement agency at first seemed merely the latest in a long line of corruption scandals to hit the Russian government.
But when news broke that a bleary-eyed Anatoly Serdyukov, the defence minister, had opened the young woman’s front door when police came knocking, it became clear that this was altogether bigger news.
The titillating detail seemed to break the Russian media’s traditional refusal to delve into the private lives of politicians.
It appears that the scandal became public because Serdyukov, 50, is married to Yulia, the daughter of Viktor Zubkov, 71, a deputy prime minister, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and one of the most powerful men in Russia.
Serdyukov, who is reported to owe his meteoric rise from furniture salesman to minister to the influence of his father-in-law, incurred Zubkov’s wrath by allegedly having an affair with Yevgenia Vasilyeva — the official whose flat was raided — and in the process humiliating his daughter.
The case is mushrooming into an embarrassing scandal that may lift the veil on corruption, nepotism, selective justice and bitter Kremlin infighting under Putin’s rule.
Prosecutors searched Vasilyeva’s flat for several hours as part of a £60m fraud investigation into Oboronservis, a state-owned company that manages supplies to the armed forces. Vasilyeva, 33, who was until recently the head of the defence ministry’s vast property portfolio, is one of the company’s directors.
Officers from the prosecutor’s investigative committee said they had seized documents at her flat and confiscated more than £60,000 in cash plus antiques, paintings and hundreds of items of jewellery, including many diamonds. They also searched Oboronservis’s offices and have charged five people who, they allege, skimmed off large personal profits by using the company to sell state assets at far below their market value.
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My whistleblower son is dead – now they’re after me
The mother of a Russian anti-corruption lawyer, who died in custody after being jailed on trumped-up charges, has spoken of her “utter disbelief” that prosecutors have reopened a criminal inquiry into her son.
Natalia Magnitskaya, whose son Sergei Magnitsky died nearly two years ago after a savage beating by prison guards, described as “perverse” an attempt to question her as part of the investigation.
“This is a clear attempt to put pressure on me and Sergei’s family,” said Magnitskaya, 60, who is frail and suffers from high blood pressure.
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