Posts Tagged ‘moscow times’
Russian Probe Finds Hedge Fund Lawyer Was ‘Tortured, Beaten To Death’
An investigation into the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has found that police torture may have contributed to his demise, reports Russia Today.
“The documents we possess testify to the illegal use of rubber clubs,” council member and human rights defender Valery Borshchyov was quoted by Interfax. “It turns out that 8 prison employees were beating one prisoner.”
Other details noted included the delay in medical attention and wounds on the wrists that indicate Magnitsky was struggling to get free.
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U.S. Treasury Adds 12 Russians to ‘Magnitsky List’
The U.S. has sanctioned 12 Russians for human rights abuses, including officials who allegedly withheld medical care from lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in prison after exposing large-scale corruption in Russia.
The U.S. Treasury Department, which announced the action on Tuesday, did not link it with the confrontation between Washington and Moscow over the Ukraine crisis, which has led the U.S. to target a number of senior Russian officials with sanctions.
The Treasury said in a statement that the sanctions would freeze any U.S. assets held by the 12 individuals and bar Americans from doing business with them.
Since 2012, the U.S. has targeted Russians for human rights abuses under a law named for Russian lawyer Magnitsky, who allegedly uncovered tax fraud that involved Russian officials.
The State Department has placed 18 Russians on a public list of those affected, and a handful of other senior officials are on a list that was not made public.
Last year, Russia convicted Magnitsky of tax evasion even after his death.
The people sanctioned on Tuesday included prison doctors, the judge who oversaw his posthumous trial and a banker alleged to have masterminded the conspiracy he uncovered.
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European Parliament Calls for EU ‘Magnitsky List’
The European Parliament has passed a resolution calling on the EU Council of Ministers to impose sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the death of a Hermitage Fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
The resolution, passed Wednesday, would create a blacklist along the lines of the one adopted by the U.S. in April, which contains the names of 18 people suspected of involvement in Magnitsky’s death and other human rights abuses.
They are banned from traveling to the U.S. and having assets there. The measures caused tension between the U.S. and Russia, with Russia drawing up its own blacklist in response.
“The European Parliament … calls on the Council, therefore, to adopt a decision establishing a common EU list of officials involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky; adds that this Council decision should impose targeted sanctions on those officials,” the resolution said.
This is the fourth such European Parliament resolution since 2009. The EU Council didn’t implement any of the previous resolutions, however.
Magnitsky was imprisoned on tax evasion charges in 2008 soon after accusing Russian officials of stealing $230 million in state funds. He died in jail a year later.
Although members of the Kremlin human rights council said his death was caused by severe beatings, investigators dropped their inquiry due to a lack of evidence. hairy woman займы на карту без отказа zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php unshaven girl
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Former Prosecutor Details Violations in Magnitsky Case
Moscow Times
A former senior federal prosecutor has accused her one-time colleagues of illegally intervening in the probe into the 2009 death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, as well as committing legal violations in connection with other high-profile cases.
Galina Tarasova, who says she was fired from the Prosecutor General’s Office in April, said Sergei Bochkaryov, a department head at the agency, phoned Investigative Committee officials “giving them oral orders” and “sending some kind of documents” in connection with the committee’s probe into Magnitsky’s death.
Two other senior officials at the Prosecutor General’s Office — David Kutaliya and Timur Borisov — “obstructed oversight of the probe into Magnitsky’s death” by “creating red tape,” Tarasova said in an interview published on pro-nationalist news website Russkaya Planeta on Wednesday.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is charged with overseeing the work of the Investigative Committee to ensure that investigators do not violate the law while carrying out criminal probes, Tarasova explained. Prosecutors also approve charges before sending a case to court.
Tarasova linked her dismissal to her complaints to superiors about the legal violations committed by her colleagues.
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Browder Expects Broader Magnitsky List Sanctions for Russian Officials in U.S., Europe
The United States may publish the extended version of the “Magnitsky list” as early as next month, while Europe is expected to pass a similar measure, Hermitage Capital investment fund president and bill supporter William Browder said.
The Magnitsky Act, enacted by the U.S. Congress in December 2012 and named after late Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, imposed personal sanctions on Russian officials responsible for human rights violations and obstructing the rule of law.
“The law is only one year old now,” an assistant to U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, who helped draft the bill, said in an interview for the Voice of America. “We are at the very beginning of its implementation process and anticipate its expansion both here in the U.S. and Europe.”
Executive Director of U.S.-based human rights NGO Freedom House David Kramer said his organization is currently working with lawmakers in several countries to “try to advance the adoption of a similar law as early as next year.”
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers say they are unaware of U.S. plans to expand the “Magnitsky list” or European intentions to pass similar legislation, Interfax reported.
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Lawmakers From 21 Countries Form Magnitsky Group
Lawmakers from 21 countries have formed a commission to promote sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the prison death of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
The Justice for Sergei Magnitsky commission, which was holding its inaugural meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday, includes lawmakers from Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Poland and 15 other countries.
It is headed by Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister and attorney general who served as lawyer to prominent prisoners of conscience such as Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Natan Sharansky in the Soviet Union, according to its website.
“This will be the inaugural launch of a global, coordinated campaign to impose Magnitsky sanctions internationally,” Cotler said in an e-mailed statement.
“The Magnitsky case has come to represent all that’s wrong with Putin’s Russia,” he added. “By forming the inter-parliamentary group on the Magnitsky case, we hope to give expression to the best initiatives from parliaments around the world and implement them across the countries represented by parliamentarians participating in this group.”
The group timed its first meeting with the fourth anniversary of Magnitsky’s death on Nov. 16, 2009, said a spokesman for Hermitage Capital, once Russia’s largest foreign investment fund and the employer of Magnitsky at the time of his death.
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Obama and Putin May Meet at APEC Summit
President Vladimir Putin could meet U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of an economic summit in Indonesia on Monday to discuss a range of topics including Syria, a Putin aide said Thursday.
“This was our proposal, which was taken up immediately by the American side,” Yury Ushakov said at a news briefing, Interfax reported. “We think the meeting will take place.”
The meeting would take place in Bali at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, forum,
which is aimed at developing trade and economic cooperation within a group of 21 countries from the Asia-Pacific region. Apart from Russia and the U.S., group members include China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada.
The two leaders plan to discuss the “development of agreements and the prospects of working together on Syria,” Ushakov said, among other issues.
Despite last week’s United Nations Security Council agreement on the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons that codified an earlier deal brokered by Russia and the U.S., bilateral relations between the countries have been deteriorating since Putin returned to the presidency last year.
The U.S. Senate passed the Magnitsky Act in December, banning entry to the U.S. for Russian officials suspected of involvement in the 2009 death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other suspected human rights violators. Russia retaliated with the Dima Yakovlev law, which prohibited U.S. adoptions of Russian children and banned entry to certain U.S. officials implicated in human rights abuses.
Last September, Obama skipped the APEC summit in Vladivostok, which some saw as a response to Putin backing out of last May’s Group of Eight meeting at Camp David near Washington, D.C. payday loan unshaven girl https://zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php займы на карту без отказа
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Russia Could Deny Entry to FIFA Official
A senior FIFA official who was declared persona non grata in Russia is expected to be denied a Russian visa as he embarks on a tour to examine reports of corruption and match fixing in soccer, a news report said Thursday.
Michael Garcia, chairman of FIFA’s Ethics Committee, will next week start his tour of the nine countries that submitted bids to host the World Cups in 2018 and 2022, Kommersant reported.
In December 2010, Russia was awarded the right to stage the 2018 tournament, but Garcia may have to forgo his plans to visit the host-country.
He was blacklisted by the Russian government in April over alleged human rights violations linked to his involvement in the criminal case against Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout when Garcia worked as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 2008.
Bout was sentenced to 25 years in a U.S. prison in April having been found guilty of collusion to sell weapons to Colombian terrorist group FARC.
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U.S. Justice Department Files Suit Against Companies Connected to Magnitsky Affair
The U.S. Justice Department has filed civil suits against 11 companies involved with Russian officials on the Magnitsky list, alleging that they used luxury New York real estate to launder $230 million in illegally begotten funds.
The action is “a significant step towards uncovering and unwinding a complex money laundering scheme,” Preet Bharara, a U.S. district attorney in New York, said in a statement.
Officials are accused of using an American subsidiary of the Cyprus-based company Prevezon Holdings, owned by former Transportation Minister Peter Katsyv’s son Denis, and other intermediaries to hide billions of rubles stolen from the Russian treasury.
Denis Katysv’s lawyer said that her client was surprised by the accusations because he bought the company six months after the alleged money laundering took place, Kommersant reported.
The complaint says the companies purchased high-end Manhattan condos with money that had been funneled to them in an elaborate tax fraud scheme that involved sham lawsuits against the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management.
A lawyer for the fund, Sergei Magnitsky, accused Russian government officials of masterminding the fraud scheme, but was arrested and later charged with the same crimes he had reported to the authorities and died after a beating in detention.
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