Posts Tagged ‘navalny’
Unjustly convicted in Russia: the dead and the living
Two extraordinary convictions this month show that the rule of law in Russia only exists on the sufferance of President Vladimir Putin. One of the two people found guilty was not only innocent but already dead. The other was almost certainly innocent and a prospective presidential candidate, a protester against the Putin regime who once said, mysteriously, that he wished Russia to become “a big, irrational, metaphysical Canada.”
The norms of law around the world permit a finding of innocence in favour of an accused person who has died, but it is outrageous to convict someone who cannot defend himself because he is dead. Sergei Magnitsky’s exposure of certain corrupt Russians resulted in retaliation. He was imprisoned, and he died in jail in 2009. The United States Congress upped the ante by excluding some of the Russians involved from entering the U.S.
In 2011, Dmitri Medvedev, president of Russia at the time, expressed his belief in Mr. Magnitsky’s integrity, after a human-rights council cleared him, but he has since equivocated. Mr. Magnitsky has been almost literally pursued into his grave.
As for Alexei Navalny, he rose to international prominence in the protests against Mr. Putin’s re-election as president, in which the votes in his favour were evidently overstated. Mr. Navalny is a campaigner against corruption, an engaging character, an effective, lively blogger – but not a Westernizing liberal. For example, he takes a dim view of immigration. He is a nationalist of a kind not easy to grasp outside Russia, someone who could belong inside a Dostoyevsky novel.
That is probably all the more reason that Mr. Putin may fear him as a rival, unlike consistently liberal dissidents. This year, Mr. Navalny has been running to become mayor of the city of Kirov. The charges of embezzlement against him were not supported even by the prosecution witnesses against him, but the judge convicted him, with a five-year jail sentence, and the added result that he cannot seek public office – either as mayor or president.
Irrationality may have some charm for some semi-mystical Russians. Blatant bias in the courts, however, has no merits. The late Mr. Magnitsky should be exonerated, and so should the living Mr. Navalny. займы онлайн на карту срочно hairy girl https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php https://zp-pdl.com/apply-for-payday-loan-online.php займы без отказа
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Free Alexei Navalny
The conviction and five-year prison sentence given on Thursday to Alexei Navalny makes Russia’s opposition leader a political prisoner and dissident. As any number of history’s disgraced dictators could tell Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin, jailing your opponents can bring unforeseen consequences. Think Mandela, Walesa, Havel and, at a not-so-distant time in Russia, Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky.
As the Putin regime bears down on the democracy movement, such comparisons might seem fanciful. Mr. Navalny, who came to prominence as an anti-corruption activist, had no chance against the Russian state. He offended President Putin by labeling his ruling clique “the party of crooks and thieves,” a nickname that stuck, and by leading large protests starting in late 2011.
The Kremlin then revived a local investigation into the alleged theft in 2009 of about $500,000 in timber from the Kirov district, which had been dismissed for lack of evidence. Mr. Navalny briefly worked in the northeastern city as an adviser to a then reform-minded local governor. During the trial, the defense wasn’t allowed to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses or call its own. Nearly all cases in Russia end in convictions, certainly all political cases.
Other opposition figures face different criminal cases, but Mr. Navalny’s was the most prominent political trial since at least the 1970s. The sentence takes him out of the running for mayor of Moscow, an opposition bastion, in September elections. It will also keep the 37-year-old father of two small children in jail beyond the end of Mr. Putin’s third term as president in 2018.
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If we kowtow to Putin, his disdain for us grows
The absurd trial of a dead man is one more reason to stand up to the bully in the Kremlin
Many in Moscow complain that Vladimir Putin no longer takes counsel, that he has gone rogue. But the critics are wrong in one important respect. At his side, whispering in his ear, is the ghost of Franz Kafka.
How else to explain the political decision to prosecute, and find guilty, a dead man, the whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky? He had uncovered a tax scam that went almost to the top and so, by the inverted logic of the Iron Law of Putinism, the corpse of Sergei Magnitsky had to be tried and found guilty of tax evasion, as he was last week. He will be unable to do time.
The absurdity of that trial has been compounded by Russian readiness to grant asylum to the renegade National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. Suddenly, cynically, the Russian authorities have decided that whistleblowers, if they are American, deserve the full protection of the State.
Today Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner, will hear whether he will be sent to jail for six years on convoluted embezzlement charges involving £400,000 of state-owned timber. It is wrong of course to anticipate the verdict of even such a plainly politically motivated trial. But I will eat my rabbit-fur schapka if Mr Navalny walks free and proceeds, as he hopes, to contest the September elections for Mayor of Moscow.
How will Britain react to his jailing? Almost certainly with head-shaking disappointment. Or perhaps just demure silence. The Magnitsky verdict was assessed by David Lidington, the Foreign Office Minister, as an “exceptional step”. That fell short in capturing the trial’s perverted essence. Britain, he said, was going to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. The nine-year jail term in absentia of William Browder, Magnitsky’s former employer and co-defendant, drew no significant comment from the Government, even though he is a British citizen.
As for poor Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB but also a British citizen, poisoned in London, he too is getting short shrift. First, the Foreign Office has withheld documents from Sir Robert Owen, the coroner, on grounds of national security. That made it next to impossible to determine whether the Russian state was involved in his killing (as Litvinenko claimed on his deathbed). Then, last week, the Government blocked the possibility of a public inquiry that would have allowed the coroner to study classified evidence in private. Russian officials are well pleased: Litvinenko’s dirty secrets about Mr Putin have been frozen out of the Anglo-Russian relationship.
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Conviction of Navalny: The Latest Human Rights Outrage Under Putin Regime
Freedom House strongly condemns the conviction of Russian corruption fighter and opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, in a trial and prosecution clearly staged to derail his political career. Navalny, 37, who became famous for investigations of government corruption on his blog, vocal criticism of the Russian government, and unconventional grassroots organizing activities, was sentenced today to five years in prison on charges of theft.
After a local investigation into the alleged theft in 2009 of 16 million rubles (about $482,000) from a Kirov-based timber company was closed for lack of evidence, the case was suspiciously reopened on the federal level by the Investigative Committee of Russia only weeks later. The case explicitly targeted Navalny in an obvious attempt to crush his presidential ambition and neutralize him as an opposition leader. Since Navalny rose to prominence in 2004, he has been known for his innovative public awareness raising initiatives and strident criticism of the ruling United Russia party and President Vladimir Putin, denouncing the former as “the party of crooks and thieves.” Weeks after the trial began, Navalny announced he was running for the powerful seat of the mayor of Moscow and clinched official registration as a candidate just a day before the verdict was handed down. During the proceedings, judge Sergey Blinov rejected Navalny’s request to have any defense witnesses testify; in contrast, over thirty witnesses of prosecution were allowed to speak in court.
“This whole case reeks of political vindictiveness for Navalny’s corruption revelations and political challenge to Putin and United Russia,” said David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House. “That the verdict was announced right after Navalny was allowed to register as an official candidate for the mayoral seat speaks volumes about the shameless scheming of Russian authorities to silence the loudest and most resourceful voice of the Russian opposition.”
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Britain should rise above Russian money and power
By blocking a public inquiry into Litvinenko, the UK plays to the most cynical Putinesque instincts.
Edward Snowden seems like a bright chap. So he will probably have noticed the irony of voicing his complaints about persecution by the US legal system from the confines of Moscow airport. There are few governments in the world that abuse the law, for political purposes, with the ruthlessness and cynicism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The ironies do not stop there. Mr Snowden’s original motivation, as a whistleblower, was to expose over-mighty American spies. Yet Russia is a state that is effectively run by its intelligence services. Mr Putin is a former KGB operative. Spies and their cronies dominate his inner circle. Indeed Russia – which has become Mr Snowden’s temporary protector – is the perfect illustration of his argument that a state in thrall to its intelligence services would be a frightening place.
Over the past fortnight, three different cases have highlighted the country’s dangerous contempt for justice. In each insta
nce, the victims were Russians or former citizens – but the implications are global.
Last week, a Russian court found Sergei Magnitsky guilty of fraud in absentia. In fact, Magnitsky was not merely absent, he was dead – beaten to death in 2009, while in the custody of the Russian police. His real “crime” was to have pursued corruption with too much vigour and then, after his death, to have become an international cause célèbre. America’s “Magnitsky” law bans officials implicated in his killing, from travelling to the US. This act has so angered and alarmed the Russians that they felt it necessary to “prove” that Magnitsky was a criminal by staging a show trial of a dead man.
Alexei Navalny is likely to be the next victim of the Russian system of injustice. Since the Moscow protests of 2011 and 2012, he has emerged as the most charismatic leader of the opposition to Putinism. Witty, brave, internet-savvy, and with a populist and nationalistic streak, Mr Navalny presents a clear political danger to Putinism. The Russian authorities have openly acknowledged that there are political motives behind his trial on ludicrous-sounding charges of embezzlement. This Thursday, he is all-out certain to be convicted – and probably imprisoned, joining other prisoners whose political activities have displeased Mr Putin.
A third miscarriage of justice took place last week, when it was announced in London that the British government is refusing to hold a public inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned in London in 2006. The UK tried for many years to secure the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, Litvinenko’s suspected killer, who is now a member of parliament in Moscow. There were tit-for-tat expulsions of Russian and British diplomats.
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Trials suggest a growing repression in Russia
Last week was a busy one for Russian authorities, who arrested the only nationally known opposition mayor for bribery, sought six years in prison for crusading blogger Alexei Navalny and asked a court to declare a long-dead lawyer guilty of tax evasion.
The trial of a dozen demonstrators accused of rioting and attacking police at Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on the eve of President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration ground on. Maria Alyokhina, a punk rocker sent to a labor camp for two years for a singing protest in Moscow’s main cathedral, lost an appeal. An appeal filed on behalf of the oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who has been in prison for nearly 10 years, was rejected.
Leonid Razvozzhayev, an opposition organizer who was kidnapped and returned to Moscow after he sought asylum in Ukraine, was given permission to get married in jail — perhaps because he is not expected to get out soon. He faces 10 years in prison if convicted of planning riots.
And Putin signed not one, but two laws aimed at gays.
By week’s end, it was clear to anyone who held out hope to the contrary that the future here looks more and more repressive. The authorities appeared intent on using all their resources — police, courts, legislature and media — to pursue that end and silence dissent for years to come.
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Capitalism on Trial: How is the “Navalny case” similar to those of Khodorkovsky and Magnitsky?
Obviously the government never learned any lessons from Khodorkovsky’s case, and it’s stubbornly looking for more adventures.
Act Three, Scene One: Timber Logging
Russia is getting drawn into the third landmark political trial of the decade. Khodorkovsky, Magnitsky, and now Navalny. What is common among the three trials is some historical logic, and as a consequence, they have many “overlaps”, even in appearance.
The setting for the first act of the Navalny drama is a forest. But, of course, that’s just the beginning. There will be roads – “Russian Postal Service” – and fools – “organizing public unrest”. So the fans of video production of the “political trash” type should get some popcorn, sit down, lay back and enjoy the TV show.
The Story Outline (Criminal-Political Fiction)
Navalny (the main character, a hero) arrives in the Vyatka region “to implement reforms in that particular region”. After becoming the governor’s advisor on a pro-bono basis (the governor himself pretty much stays behind the scenes) he decides to do a favor for one of his friends (who once happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time) and introduce him to the director of the local FGUP – a state enterprise that controls logging in the region (an “absolute villain”, who sells out timber and his moral principles).
The purpose of the whole scheme was apparently to put a company owned by Navalny on the very limited list of entities to which the FGUP is ready to sell timber directly, bypassing intermediaries. Those who ever have to deal with logging in Russia know that buying timber in this country is much more difficult than selling it. This is because the directors of all these logging enterprises would never sell timber to anyone but “their own”, and would never let anyone come near their forest. That’s why the forestry is decaying while those in charge are “getting fatter”. So, Navalny approached one of these “forest brothers” and “asked” him to open his “feed trough” of pines and spruces.
The director had no choice but to bite the bullet, “make some room”, and accept the company suggested by Navalny as one of his favored customers. It has to be noted, though, that the director didn’t get too generous and let Navalny’s protégé buy directly from him. 2% to 5% of his timber worth an estimated 14 million roubles. That is not surprising, since Navalny was not a local police chief, and the impression of his status of a “volunteer” advisor amounted to exactly the 2-5% that he received. If Navalny was a volunteer advisor for the local office of the FSB (formerly the KGB), he could well be entitled to much more, up to 50% …
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Disarray Among Putin’s Elites Deepens as Russia’s Self-Isolation Progresses
The meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk in the early hours of February 15, as damaging as it was, produced even more jokes than material destruction. One of those was about the State Duma urgently approving legislation banning the incursions of celestial bodies because of their pronounced anti-Russian inclinations (Newsru.com, February 15). The joke captures the frantic activity of the Russian parliament, which has lost legitimacy in the crudely falsified elections in December 2011. As a result, the Duma now tries to compensate for this disgrace by producing a deluge of laws aimed at restricting the growth of the country’s fledgling civil society and promoting “patriotism” even in such ugly forms as the prohibition of adoption of orphans by American families. Consequently, this commonly disparaged institution is now seen by a record high 42 percent of Russians as playing a big or very big role in Russia’s political life (Levada.ru, February 14). The unintended consequence of this attention-seeking behavior, however, has been a series of scandals that reveal the scope of corruption among the parliamentarians who are supposed to represent a key part of the political establishment (Moskovsky Komsomolets, February 14).
Vladimir Pehtin, the head of the committee on parliamentary ethics, had to resign from this chair after the publication by activist-blogger Alexei Navalny of documents confirming his ownership of a condo in Miami, which was not mentioned in his tax declaration (RIA Novosti, February 13). This revelation could have gone unnoticed, if it had not coincided with President Vladimir Putin’s introduction of a draft law that would prohibit a wide group of key state officials from holding bank accounts abroad, while all real estate owned overseas would need to be declared (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 13; see EDM, February 14). The aim of this legislation is to ensure loyalty among the prime beneficiaries of the “power-is-money” regime through the newly-launched campaign of “nationalization of the elites” (Forbes.ru, February 13). The predatory elites, however, remain reluctant to be “nationalized” in terms of repatriating their ill-gained fortunes. Keeping their wealth abroad allows them to enjoy a level of property rights, which are mostly non-existent in Russia.
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Why Russia’s Patriots Love to Buy U.S. Real Estate
Imagine a newspaper exposé about several members of the U.S. Congress who didn’t declare on their tax forms luxury villas on the Iranian Persian Gulf coast. This would be a scandal of Watergate proportions and most likely produce a couple of best-sellers and a made-for-TV movie. Now imagine an analogous situation in Russia. What happens? Almost nothing. There is no scandal, no movie, only a lot of talk on the Internet.
The story began when a group of Russian senators went to the U.S. last summer to persuade their U.S. counterparts to vote against the Magnitsky Act. One of the most vocal opponents of the act was Senator Vitaly Malkin, who said Magnitsky had died in prison from consequences of alcoholism. The senators’ “anti-Magnitsky road show” in Washington raised suspicions that their actions not only were not just political but also that their personal interests might have been threatened by the act’s ban on visas and asset holdings for some Russian officials.
Journalist Andrei Malgin decided to get to the bottom of the mystery. Using just his computer and the Internet, he dug up some very interesting facts. It turned out that Malkin has real estate in North America. Furthermore, since 1994 he has been trying to get a residence permit in Canada, justifying his request by his business interests. In his application, he openly declared that he owns 111 — yes, 111 — apartments in Toronto. The Canadian authorities turned down his request, and Malkin even tried to take them to court. Unfortunately for him, the court refused to hear his suit.
But as Malgin discovered, those aren’t the only properties in the Western Hemisphere belonging to Malkin, who is from far-away Buryatia. Public documents show that Malkin’s company, which has the mysterious name 25 СС ST74B LLC, owns a duplex worth $15.6 million in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Malkin’s lawyers denied that he is the owner, but public documents from a suit the company brought against its construction manager show that Malkin owns the apartment. They also solved the mystery of his company name, which is an abbreviation of the address: 25 Columbus Circle, apartment 74B.
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