Posts Tagged ‘new york times’
Report Calls for Prosecution of Officials in Death of Russian Lawyer
A human rights panel that advises President Dmitri A. Medvedev on Wednesday published a damning report on the case of Sergei L. Magnitsky, arguing that highly-placed investigators and prison officials share responsibility for his death in state custody.
Among the surprises in the report is the assertion that Mr. Magnitsky’s death may have been brought about by a beating at the hands of a team of eight psychiatric orderlies at a clinic where he was transported after suffering from abdominal pain and vomiting. Government investigators have attributed his death to heart disease that went undetected during his 11 months in custody.
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Poor Care Led to Death of Lawyer, Russia Says
Russia’s Investigative Committee on Monday acknowledged for the first time that 37-year-old Sergei L. Magnitsky died in pretrial detention because prison authorities denied him medical care, setting the stage for prosecution in a case that has come to epitomize Russia’s trouble establishing rule of law.
Mr. Magnitsky was drawn into a feud between his employer, an international investment company, and Russian law enforcement authorities, testifying that senior Interior Ministry officers had used his employer’s companies to embezzle $230 million from the Russian treasury. He was arrested and held without bail on charges of evading about $17.4 million in taxes. He died in 2009 after 11 months in custody.
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Why Khodorkovsky Matters
Over the past six months, I’ve written three columns about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Russian oligarch who has been in prison since 2003, charged, tried, convicted — and recently reconvicted — on transparently bogus tax and embezzlement charges.
Partly, I keep returning to the subject because his lengthy imprisonment offends my sense of justice; his real crime, after all, was challenging Vladimir Putin, the Russian strongman. More importantly, Khodorkovsky’s fate stands as a powerful illustration of Russia’s biggest problem: the contempt the country’s corrupt rulers have for the rule of law.
Yet after each of those columns, I received feedback saying, essentially, that Khodorkovsky deserved what he got. Even if the crimes for which he went to prison were fictitious, he undoubtedly did bad things on his way to becoming Russia’s richest man. “He stole Russian national resources, truly the wealth of the nation,” read one e-mail, referring to Khodorkovsky’s role in founding the now-defunct oil company Yukos. “I have zero sympathy for him.”
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Police Investigator Is Cleared in Death of Russian Awaiting Trial
Russia’s Investigative Committee said Monday that prosecutors had cleared a police investigator of any wrongdoing in the case of Sergei L. Magnitsky, whose death in pre-trial detention is viewed as a test of country’s law enforcement and judicial systems.
Mr. Magnitsky, 37, who had been arrested after accusing police investigators of a huge tax fraud, died in a prison clinic after complaining for days about acute abdominal pain and untreated pancreatitis.
Central decisions about Mr. Magnitsky’s medical treatment were made by Oleg F. Silchenko, the lead investigator in the case against him, who transferred him to a prison with minimal medical facilities despite a serious diagnosis. He also authorized Mr. Magnitsky’s arrest on tax evasion charges, detained him for 11 months as a flight risk and refused repeated requests for a follow-up ultrasound that had been prescribed by a doctor.
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In Russia, Prisons for Police Thrive
New York Times
NIZHNY TAIGIL, Russia — Like a scene from a felon’s daydream, all the inmates at a prison compound here in western Russia — some 2,000 of them — are former policemen, prosecutors, tax inspectors, customs agents and judges.
Most of the day, they mill about, glum-faced, dressed in prison clothes. The only visible hints of the policemen’s former employment are the occasional buzz cuts.
Russian penitentiary authorities offered a rare tour of this specialized penal colony recently with an eye to demonstrating that these inmates receive no privileges.
In some ways, the officials proved their point. At least as far as accommodations go, the prison is as grim as most. Inside the walls of unpainted concrete slabs, barbed wire slashes the prison yards into zones for those doing hard time and minor offenders. And like the men and women they put behind bars, former police officers here live in rough-hewn brick barracks, toil in a workshop and eat boiled buckwheat and cabbage.
But the tour of the prison, Correctional Colony 13, also underscored a point that the authorities might not have intended to highlight: most of the inmates are here for work-related infractions, from accepting bribes to attacking suspects.
As Andrei V. Shumilov, a former detective, said of his conviction for beating a suspect with his fists during questioning: “I was investigating a crime, and I committed a crime myself.” By way of justification, he mumbled that the man had suffered only “damage to soft tissue.”
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Russian Officials Said to Reap Wealth in Tax Case
After accusing government officials here of involvement in large-scale tax fraud three years ago, Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer for a major international investment fund, was arrested and jailed for nearly a year until he died mysteriously in detention.
Mr. Magnitsky’s claims have never been fully investigated, and on Monday, a year and a half after his death, his former colleagues unveiled information that they said showed that the officials he implicated had become astonishingly wealthy.
The findings are the latest in a series of independent investigations into Russian officials by Mr. Magnitsky’s supporters, including William F. Browder, the owner of Hermitage Capital Management, the fund that Mr. Magnitsky represented. A $12 million country house outside Moscow and seaside villas in Dubai and Montenegro are some of the purchases made by the officials since Mr. Magnitsky made his accusations against them, according to the investigation.
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The Next Steps in the U.S.-Russia Reset
When we came into office two years ago, our relationship with Russia had reached a low point. The war between Russia and Georgia played a role in that decline, but even before that conflict erupted in August 2008, a dangerous drift was under way.
While we no longer considered each other enemies, you couldn’t always tell that from the rhetoric flying back and forth. Ironically, this came at a time when American and Russian security interests, as well as economic interests, were more closely aligned than ever.
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Plain Speaking From Biden in Moscow Speech
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who two years ago introduced the idea of a thaw between the United States and Russia, used a speech at Moscow State University to criticize Russia’s legal and political systems, a move likely to irritate the country’s leaders.
Russians, he said, “want to be able to choose their national and local leaders in competitive elections. They want to be able to assemble freely, and they want the media to be independent of the state. And they want to live in a country that fights corruption.
“That’s democracy,” he said. “I urge all you students here: Don’t compromise on the basic elements of democracy. You need not make that Faustian bargain.”
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Can’t Afford a Picasso? How About a Piece of One?
Art aficionados have long held themselves to be in a more elite class than Wall Street speculators.
Now, their worlds are colliding as a new crop of financial firms move to sell shares in pools of paintings — and some fear the results may resemble the chaotic splashed canvases of Jackson Pollock.
The two make for an odd combination. While many investors favor transparency and asset gathering, art dealers generally like secrecy and exclusive holdings.
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