Posts Tagged ‘moscow times’
City Hall Refuses Permission for Magnitsky Rally
Moscow City Hall has refused to grant permission for a March 24 protest against alleged police misconduct in the case of former Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, protest organizer Natalia Pelyevina said in an email to journalists.
Pelyevina, who is coordinator for the organization Committee for Democratic Russia, told Interfax that City Hall based the refusal on the grounds that the event “may influence the judicial process” in the Magnitsky case.
The group had planned an event for March 24 on Kaluzhskaya Ploshchad as a show of support for Magnitsky’s relatives and to protest what it called “police violence” in the case.
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McFaul Pushes for Trade Status
The Obama administration will not support any human rights or democracy legislation in exchange for Congress repealing the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, the U.S. envoy to Russia said in Washington on the eve of a gathering of U.S. ambassadors Tuesday.
U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul spoke about relations with Russia, telling scholars at two think tanks that refusing to lift Jackson-Vanik would not make Russia more democratic.
“If you don’t believe me, ask Navalny,” Ambassador Michael McFaul said, referring to an open letter published on the blog of Vladimir Milov, leader of the Democratic Choice movement, on Monday evening. The letter, which was also signed by Alexei Navalny and other key opposition figures in Moscow, urged the United States to remove the largely symbolic Cold War trade restriction.
The signatories included organizers of demonstrations against President-elect Vladimir Putin who recognize the lagging enthusiasm of protesters but have found it nearly impossible to unite around a common policy agenda.
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A Culture of Corruption Defies Efforts at Reform
Wounded in Afghanistan and an 18-year veteran of the elite Alfa counter-terrorist forces, Sergei Vasilenko considers himself a patriot.
Which is why, when his bosses at the Federal Security Service asked him in 2010 to investigate corruption, he jumped at the chance.
The problem, Vasilenko now says, was that his new chiefs at the Federal Tax Service didn’t want him to do his job properly.
Vasilenko’s experience opens a window into what even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, bidding for a third Kremlin term, calls Russia’s “systemic” corruption. It’s a malaise that Putin’s political opponents say has flourished during the prime minister and former president’s 12 years as the country’s most powerful leader.
Vasilenko says his investigation, into suspected fraud involving tax officials in Moscow, met a wall of silence and he was soon out of a job. The Federal Tax Office said it had investigated Vasilenko’s allegations but declined further comment.
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Tax Officials Accused by Magnitsky of Stealing $186M Flee Country
Two tax officials accused by former Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky of stealing 5.4 billion rubles ($186 million) in a corruption scheme cannot be questioned in the case because they left the country in May, a newly released Federal Security Service report said.
The FSB report was presented at a hearing in a lawsuit filed by Magnitsky colleague Jamison Firestone against investigators for failing to open probes against government officials accused by Magnitsky of stealing public funds, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The two tax officials mentioned in the FSB report, Olga Tsaryova and Yelena Anisimova, were accused by Magnitsky of stealing $186 million in a tax refund scheme, Firestone’s lawyer Alexander Antipov said at the hearing Tuesday.
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Why Putin Believes His Critics Are Monkeys
In the six weeks since the protests began at Bolotnaya Ploshchad, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has made one fatal, but inevitable, error. He broke his vow of silence.
Until now, one of the most conspicuous features of Putin’s rule had been his silence on every subject that had been a source of public outrage.
It was always President Dmitry Medvedev who went out of his way by promising to “get to the bottom” of the latest injustice — for example, the possible cover-up of the fatal car accident involving a LUKoil executive on Leninsky Prospekt, the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the brutal beatings of journalist Oleg Kashin and the persecution of Khimki forest highway protesters. But because Medvedev never made good on his promises, he came off looking like a windbag.
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Magnitsky Relatives Complain of Harassment
Relatives of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky have appealed to the Kremlin human rights council to stop “harassment” by Interior Ministry officials pursuing a posthumous criminal case against Magnitsky, Hermitage Capital said Tuesday.
The request came after Magnitsky’s relatives were summoned for the fifth time to aid the investigation against the anti-corruption whistleblower, who was arrested on tax evasion charges in 2008 after he accused officials of stealing $230 million from the state budget. He died in pretrial detention a year later.
Magnitsky’s relatives, who have called for the investigation to be closed, will not cooperate with investigators and resist their threats to “illegally” appoint a lawyer to represent them, Hermitage Capital said in a statement.
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Hopes Raised As Court Frees Entrepreneur
The country’s courts may finally be heeding orders from the Kremlin to end a crackdown on the business community, judging by the recent surprise ruling to not jail gravely ill entrepreneur Natalya Gulevich after her conviction on fraud charges.
The judiciary has come under increasing pressure from rights activists, the media and the government to cease its harsh treatment of business owners after a string of high-profile deaths in pretrial detention — most notably that of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
Many courts around the country have stubbornly resisted, but Gulevich’s unexpected release suggests that change may finally be under way. Still, many other ill suspects remain under arrest, and it is unclear whether they will receive the softer treatment that President Dmitry Medvedev has promised.
Gulevich was convicted of large-scale fraud late Monday by Moscow’s Tagansky District Court.
While the verdict was widely expected, the sentence was decidedly less so. Gulevich got off with a three-year suspended sentence and a fine of 1 million rubles ($32,000), as well as an order to pay back a bank loan of 590 million rubles ($26.5 million at the time) that sparked the case in 2008.
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Rights Council: Free Khodorkovsky
In a stinging rebuke of the justice system, the Kremlin’s human rights council said Wednesday that former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev had been jailed illegally in their second trial and their verdicts should be overturned.
Moreover, the legal system should be reformed to avoid a repeat of similar cases, the council said in a 400-page report based on the findings of nine state-employed and independent experts, both domestic and foreign.
The council’s decisions have been ignored in the past, but Wednesday’s report comes after two presidential candidates pledged to release Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, fueling new hopes that the two bitter enemies of Vladimir Putin’s government might finally be freed.
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‘Magnitsky List’ Backed in Europe
The European Parliament has passed a resolution recommending an EU-wide travel ban and asset freeze for officials tied to the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The resolution, passed Wednesday, demanded that Russia’s Investigative Committee pursue immediate charges against those involved in Magnitsky’s 2009 death and that “further inaction” would result in calls to the European Union’s executive committee to create a blacklist.
The parliament said there was ample “evidence that Sergei Magnitsky’s arrest was unlawful and that his detention was marked by beatings and torture aimed at extracting a confession of guilt.”
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