Posts Tagged ‘moscow times’
5 Ways to Get Yourself Banned From Russia (Photo Essay)
U.S. rock band Bloodhound Gang found itself unwelcome in Russia after one of its musicians shoved the Russian flag into the front of his pants and dragged it out the back during a concert in Ukraine.
But the rockers are not the first to get a frosty reception in Russia, which was known for being inhospitable to foreigners in Soviet times but still rejects visitors for a variety of reasons today.
Every country certainly has the right to decide which visitors it wants on its soil, but when it comes to Russia the rationale behind such decisions are not always clear.
Here’s a look at five ways to get yourself banned from Russia.
Read More →
Facebook
Twitter
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
del.icio.us
Google Bookmarks
Yahoo! Buzz
Tumblr
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
NewsVine
Digg
Returning to the Magnitsky Crime Scene
It is well-known that those guilty of murder often cannot resist the compulsion to return to the scene of their crime, even though they know that doing so will put them at great risk of being exposed.
In recent months, the world has witnessed a bizarre manifestation of this phenomenon in the absurd posthumous prosecution and conviction of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who unearthed a brazen $230 million dollar tax fraud scheme perpetrated by Russian police and tax officials. It is as though the Russian government, whose officials were implicated in the 2009 death of Magnitsky, could not keep itself from returning to the shameful events that led to his death. In so doing, Russia has put the depth of its legal bankruptcy and corruption on full public display.
In any nation with a legitimate legal system, Magnitsky would have been lauded as a whistleblower for his integrity, and the embezzlers, extortionists and those responsible for his death in pretrial detention would have been thrown in jail. In Russia, precisely the reverse happened. Magnitsky was instead arrested and charged with the very fraud he had uncovered and he died in prison after being severely beaten and being denied medical treatment. His death might have passed largely unnoticed as just another small tragedy in a nation where rule of law has become a thing of the past. But Magnitsky’s former client, Hermitage Capital CEO Bill Browder, felt a deep sense of responsibility to do everything in his power to attain a degree of justice for someone who had sacrificed his life in pursuit of integrity and the truth.
Thanks to the determined efforts of Browder and widespread outrage over the Magnitsky case, the U.S. passed a law imposing financial and visa sanctions on Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky’s death and in other human rights violations. Other nations are considering following suit. In their apparent fury after being exposed on a global scale, Putin’s government responded by doubling down against the victim. While clearing the dozens of officials implicated in the embezzlement scheme and Magnitsky’s death, the authorities instead put the heroic whistleblower on posthumous trial and, in a pre-determined outcome, he was duly convicted several weeks ago.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Russia Requests Interpol Warrant for Browder
The Interior Ministry has officially requested that British investment fund manager and “Magnitsky list” campaigner William Browder be placed on Interpol’s international wanted list.
In a statement released by the ministry, it was confirmed that a request for the arrest of the Hermitage Capital CEO had been made by the General Procurator’s Office, Interfax reported.
“In accordance with current legislation and on the basis of documents received from the General Procurator of the Russian Federation, the Interpol Bureau for Russia have sent a request to the General Secretariat to issue an international arrest warrant for Browder, William Felix, a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, born in 1964,” the statement read.
Browder is wanted in connection with the illegal acquisition of 131 million Gazprom shares at domestic-market prices between 1999 and 2004. As a result of Browder’s alleged dealings, the state lost 2.9 billion rubles, the statement says.
In May, the ministry asked Interpol to issue a ‘blue notice’ for Browder, which would have required all 190 member states to collect additional information about his identity, location and activities. The Interpol General Secretariat rejected that request however, citing “the predominantly political nature” of the case.
In July, Browder was tried in absentia in Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court for stealing more than $15 million in state funds and was sentenced to nine years in prison. His former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was also tried posthumously and found guilty.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Punishing Magnitsky One More Time
Thursday’s ruling by Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court that convicted the late Sergei Magnitsky, the Hermitage Capital lawyer who died in pretrial detention in 2009, of tax evasion charges shows how far Russia is willing to go to discredit itself.
Simultaneously, the court found Hermitage Capital CEO William Browder guilty of colluding with Magnitsky to create an illegal tax-break scheme using two of Hermitage Capital’s subsidiaries in the republic of Kalmykia. On Thursday, Browder was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison for allegedly failing to pay more than $15 million in taxes in 2001.
Following Magnitsky’s death in November 2009, the case against him was dropped. Nonetheless, the case was resumed in August 2011, loosely based on a Constitutional Court decision stating that posthumous trials in Russia can be held when the family of a dead person requests to clear their relative of charges. But Magnitsky’s relatives never requested the trial against Sergei for the obvious reason that they don’t trust the authorities’ impartiality or their motives. What they did request and demand was an investigation into the cause of his death and a fair, honest trial against those who perpetrated the crimes against him.
But the Investigative Committee closed that investigation early this year, claiming that no crimes had been committed. The deputy head of the prison where Magnitsky was being held was acquitted, and the prosecutor who brought charges for criminal negligence against a prison doctor, who was responsible for Magnitsky’s health while in detention, suddenly withdrew his charges in early April, claiming that there was no corpus delicti.
Even before Magnitsky’s arrest, Hermitage Capital had informed the authorities that government officials had used a fraudulent tax-refund scheme to steal $230 million in state funds. After that, the officials implicated in the crime organized Magnitsky’s arrest and his inhumane conditions in a pretrial detention center. No charges were ever filed against those individuals.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Punishing Magnitsky One More Time
Thursday’s ruling by Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court that convicted the late Sergei Magnitsky, the Hermitage Capital lawyer who died in pretrial detention in 2009, of tax evasion charges shows how far Russia is willing to go to discredit itself.
Simultaneously, the court found Hermitage Capital CEO William Browder guilty of colluding with Magnitsky to create an illegal tax-break scheme using two of Hermitage Capital’s subsidiaries in the republic of Kalmykia. On Thursday, Browder was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison for allegedly failing to pay more than $15 million in taxes in 2001.
Following Magnitsky’s death in November 2009, the case against him was dropped. Nonetheless, the case was resumed in August 2011, loosely based on a Constitutional Court decision stating that posthumous trials in Russia can be held when the family of a dead person requests to clear their relative of charges. But Magnitsky’s relatives never requested the trial against Sergei for the obvious reason that they don’t trust the authorities’ impartiality or their motives. What they did request and demand was an investigation into the cause of his death and a fair, honest trial against those who perpetrated the crimes against him.
But the Investigative Committee closed that investigation early this year, claiming that no crimes had been committed. The deputy head of the prison where Magnitsky was being held was acquitted, and the prosecutor who brought charges for criminal negligence against a prison doctor, who was responsible for Magnitsky’s health while in detention, suddenly withdrew his charges in early April, claiming that there was no corpus delicti.
Even before Magnitsky’s arrest, Hermitage Capital had informed the authorities that government officials had used a fraudulent tax-refund scheme to steal $230 million in state funds. After that, the officials implicated in the crime organized Magnitsky’s arrest and his inhumane conditions in a pretrial detention center. No charges were ever filed against those individuals.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
U.S. State Department Mulls Extending Magnitsky List
The U.S. State Department is considering adding more Russian officials to the U.S. “Magnitsky list” after a Moscow court found late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and former Hermitage Fund chief William Browder guilty of tax evasion, but Russia’s Foreign Ministry has warned of a harsh response.
Former State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland on Friday called the ruling “a parody of justice” and said the possibility of adding new names to the list was being looked into, Interfax reported.
Nuland made her statement in response to a question from Senator John McCain in which he slammed the verdict handed down by the Tverskoi District Court on Thursday.
The court found that Magnitsky and Browder fraudulently stole more than $15 million in budget funds by way of an illegal tax break scheme using two of Hermitage Capital’s subsidiaries in the Kalmykia republic, Dalnaya Step and Saturn Investments between 1997 and 2002.
Browder, a British citizen, was tried in absentia on tax evasion charges as the British government refused to extradite him.
The State Department’s current spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said at a briefing Thursday that Washington was disappointed with Thursday’s “unprecedented ruling” against Magnitsky and that the trial had discredited attempts to bring the case to justice.
Magnitsky was imprisoned on tax evasion charges in 2008 soon after accusing officials of stealing $230 million in state funds, and he died in prison a year later. His imprisonment and death prompted an international outcry as many believed he had been falsely charged for the very same crime he discovered had been committed by officials.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Magnitsky Verdict Is In: Russia Is a Criminal State
On Thursday, almost four years after Sergei Magnitsky’s death in a Russian prison, Magnitsky was convicted of tax fraud by a Moscow court.
Back in 2008, after the Yukos show trial, corporate raiding with the help of corrupt police and courts had just become a new fact of Russian life at a time when the country’s new, seemingly liberal president, Dmitry Medvedev, was asking his countrymen to fight legal nihilism.
It so happened that at exactly this time my law partner, Sergei Magnitsky, discovered a staggering case of fraud.
In 2007, police officers raided Magnitsky’s and my law office. They took the corporate documents for three companies belonging to Hermitage Capital, the largest hedge fund operating in Russia. Shortly thereafter, the documents were used to put convicted criminals in control of the companies, and the $230 million in taxes the companies had paid while under Hermitage’s control were refunded in one day to accounts in a small Russian bank owned by a convicted criminal.
The tax officials who refunded the money then went on vacation with the bank owner and bought millions of dollars of property in Dubai. The police officer who had custody of the corporate documents went on vacation with the lawyer who made the refund possible. Nobody — not even the Russian government — contests these facts.
Back in 2008, Magnitsky was sure that if he exposed this fraud, the government would prosecute those behind it. Magnitsky didn’t know whether Medvedev’s declared war on corruption was genuine, but he believed there were at least some limits to the country’s lawlessness and criminality.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
U.S. Slams Posthumous Magnitsky Conviction
The U.S. on Thursday condemned Russia’s conviction of deceased whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on tax evasion charges, calling the case a “discredit” to efforts to bring the officials he accused of a $230 million tax fraud to justice.
“We are disappointed by the unprecedented posthumous criminal conviction against Sergei Magnitsky,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington. “The trial was a discredit to the effort of those who continue to seek justice in his case.”
A Moscow court on Thursday found Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion, a conviction that came more than three years after he died in disputed circumstances while in pretrial custody. His former boss, Hermitage Capital CEO William Browder, was convicted in absentia of tax evasion and handed a nine-year sentence Thursday.
Prior to his detention and subsequent death in a Moscow jail in November 2009, Magnitsky claimed that a group of law enforcement and tax officials had swindled the federal budget out of $230 million in a phony tax scheme. His supporters claim he was jailed and tortured to death in retribution, allegations that the authorities deny.
“Despite widely publicized credible evidence of criminal conduct resulting in Magnitsky’s death, the authorities have failed to prosecute those responsible,” Psaki said.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Britain Bans Entry to Russian Officials Linked to Magnitsky Case
Britain has banned entry to 60 Russian officials implicated in the Sergei Magnitsky case, The Daily Telegraph reported.
A list drafted by the U.S. Helsinki Commission, chaired by Senator Benjamin Cardin, contained the names of officials suspected of being involved in a $230 million tax fraud uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for investment fund Hermitage Capital, or in Magnitsky’s death in prison in 2009.
The Magnitsky law was passed by the Senate in December and requires the White House to publish the names of those suspected of human rights violations, including those linked to the fraud uncovered by Magnitsky or to his death.
In April, the U.S. Treasury Department published a list 18 officials who are subject to visa bans and asset freezes in the United States.
The Home Office’s ban was contained in a previously unreported Parliamentary response in April to a written question from Dominic Raab.
Mr Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher & Walton, asked the Home Office if any of the 60 Russians named on the draft list had visited the UK in the last year.
In response, immigration minister Mark Harper said: “The Home Office Special Cases Directorate is already aware of the individuals on the list and has taken the necessary measures to prevent them being issued visas for travel to the UK.”
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
