Posts Tagged ‘panfilova’
In This Russian Trial, The Defendant Is A Dead Man
The Russian government is about to put a dead man on trial.
Sergei Magnitsky was a tax lawyer for the investment fund Hermitage Capital, at one time the largest foreign investment firm in Russia.
In 2007, Hermitage Capital was seized by the Russian tax police, and through a number of shady maneuvers, they extracted more than $230 million in illegal tax refunds for themselves.
Magnitsky decided to investigate, angering those who had stolen the company. They had him arrested, and he died in prison in 2009.
But the case didn’t die with him — far from it. Now, it seems those who perpetrated the fraud have found it beneficial to reopen his case and bring him to trial, says Elena Panfilova, the director of the human rights organization Transparency International in Russia.
“They need to protect themselves or somebody they know,” she says. “Not maybe necessarily themselves, like physically, but maybe they need to protect their own institution from being blamed for doing something wrong.”
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Editorial: don’t trust, don’t fear, ask!
Members of the Presidential council on human rights probably supposed that after an invitation to collaborate with the authorities, they could soften their morals and make it respect the law a little bit more. But only the power can decide if it will punish or pardon, will it act by the law or rule arbitrary.
Russia needs to prolong its modernization course, just to prove it once followed it. “Our council is supported by those parts of society which think that our country needs to be modernized. The country must not fall into stagnation, it mustn’t remain so archaic in terms of social structure or state machine construction,” said Mikhail Fedotov, the chairman of the Presidential council on human rights.
Meanwhile, several of his colleagues in the council are not going to collaborate with the government in helping to modernize the country. The first to leave Fedotov was the director of Transparency International Russia, Elena Panfilova, who was preparing a report on the fight with the corruption as part of her work in the council. True, it would be naïve to consider that this fight, despite all the anti-corruption rhetoric of President Medvedev and even the adoption of a national anticorruption plan, now almost forgotten, has brought any result. There’s more corruption in Russia now, not less, on all the steps of the state stairway.
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Russia’s Civil Society ‘Beats Authorities’ in Tackling Corruption
Russia’s civil society has made a dramatic leap forward over the past three years and is doing much more to curb corruption than the authorities, Yelena Panfilova, a prominent, outgoing member of the presidential anti-corruption and human rights council, said on Wednesday.
“Russia today is not the same country it was when I joined the council three years ago; first of all, it’s about the society, not the authorities,” Panfilova, who heads Transparency International’s Russian branch, said at a news conference in Moscow marking the end of the council’s term under President Dmitry Medvedev.
Panfilova announced last week that she was not planning to continue her work with the council, which is expected to be reshuffled following the inauguration of Vladimir Putin on May 7. Several other council members also said they were going to resign.
Some observers have suggested it was their unwillingness to compromise with former KGB agent Putin that forced them to leave the council. But Panfilova downplayed the allegation on Wednesday, saying her departure was due to her desire to focus on civil activism rather than a falling out with the authorities.
“I believe that the society is doing much more, much better to counter corruption … than three years ago, and more than the authorities do,” she said.
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Human Rights Activists Quit Ahead of Putin’s Inauguration
RIA Novosti
Several of Russia’s leading human rights advocates plan to quit the presidential Human Rights Council after President-elect Vladimir Putin takes up his post on May 7, Russian media reported on Wednesday.
According to Vedomosti business daily, among those planning to leave the human rights body are the head of Transparency International Russia, Yelena Panfilova, a political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin and the head of the non-government organization of working refugees, Civil Cooperation, Svetlana Gannushkina.
Panfilova, who delivered a report on corruption at the last council meeting on Saturday, said that she remained in the council only because of the pledge she gave to the mother of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in pre-trial detention in 2009, to investigate his death.
“I think I’ll do much more with my civil activity within my current job,” Panfilova said in an interview with Kommersant daily on Wednesday.
Another council member, political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, made the decision to leave the body after his report on electoral violations which was rejected under the pretext of the president’s tight schedule.
Oreshkin told Vedomosti that he was going to deliver the facts showing up to 14 percent of ballot stuffing in Putin’s results during the March presidential elections where he secured a landslide victory which critics said was achieved through numerous violations.
“I regard Putin as an illegitimate president. I won’t be able to work in his council,” Vedomosti quoted Oreshkin as saying.
Gannushkina of human rights group Civil Assistance will also quit the council, Vedomosti said.
Veteran human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseeva however said that the human rights advocates should closely cooperate with the state authorities and not ignore them.
In December last year, amid mass street protest against alleged fraud in Russia’s parliamentary elections, a prominent human rights activist Irina Yasina and journalist Svetlana Sorokina left the Kremlin council on human rights over what they described as “falsifications” during the December 4 vote and “brutal reprisal” against pro-democracy protesters.
The presidential human rights council is known for its independent stance but it has no legal authority and had its recommendations ignored in the past. займы онлайн на карту срочно hairy girls https://zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php hairy woman
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Kremlin rights council hints lawyer case fabricated
The Kremlin human rights council appeared to blame authorities on Tuesday for fabricating a case against anti-graft lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in jail.
“People whom Magnitsky had long accused of being involved in a crime were somehow included in the investigative groups … This points to a personal interest in their further course of action,” council member Yelena Panfilova told reporters.
The council rejected claims by Russian investigators who blamed medics on Monday for the death in 2009 of the 37-year-old lawyer after nearly a year in Russian jails. He worked for Russia’s biggest equity fund Hermitage Capital and his death spooked foreign investors and sparked a global outcry.
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Medvedev Admits Lawyer Died From ‘Criminal Actions’
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has admitted the death in prison of a Russian lawyer who accused officials of corruption was the result of “criminal actions.”
Medvedev said the case of Sergei Magnitsky, who died in November 2009 after nearly a year in Russian prisons, was a “sad one.”
“Magnitsky’s case is a very sad one,” Medvedev said. “Ailing people shouldn’t die in prison. If they fall ill, they must be taken out for treatment before a court decides their fate.”
Medvedev made his remarks at a meeting with top Russian human rights officials in the southern city of Nalchik, the hometown of Magnitsky, who worked for Russia’s top equity fund, Hermitage Capital.
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No matter how much damaging information civic activists or foreign investors have dug out, the fight against corruption will still depend entirely on the country leadership’s political will
WPS: What the Papers Say
On Monday May 16th, 2011, the lawyers of Hermitage Capital Investment Fund Managing Director William Browder attended the IAM Investigation Committee. According to Investigation Committee official representative Irina Dudukina, they were acquainted with the order on the prolongation of the investigation of the criminal case against their client. There is little doubt that all of this is a direct response to the actions of Hermitage Capital. As is known, some time ago Fund lawyers filed an appeal to the Prosecutor’s Office of Switzerland and thus began a criminal investigation of money laundering by Russian officials and members of their families. Representatives of the Fund argue that part of the funds stolen from the Russian budget have been placed on the accounts in Swiss banks. Earlier Fund lawyer Sergey Magnitsky, who was accused of tax evasion and died in prison in 2009, insisted on the investigation of that crime.
If William Browder, who now lives abroad, was interrogated by an investigator, probably he would have been behind the bars already, like it was with Magnitsky, and it cannot be excluded that he we would end up like his colleague.
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Russian TV investigates searches at senior tax official’s office, home
REN Tv
Text of report by privately owned Russian television channel REN TV on 6 April
[Presenter] Several tax offices in Moscow today were closed to ordinary visitors as they were receiving unusual ones: early this morning searches were conducted there, including in the Federal Tax Service central office. According to some reports, the searches were linked to an investigation into fraud with VAT refunds. Valentin Trushnin has more.
[Correspondent] Reports that a deputy head of the Moscow city directorate of the Federal Tax Service [Olga Chernichuk] may have been stealing, and stealing billions, did not come as a surprise to the country’s chief tax official, [Federal Tax Service head] Mikhail Mishustin. He knew of the impending searches in advance. Ordinary people were not shocked by this news either. It was probably only Olga Chernichuk who was surprised when investigators simultaneously appeared at her office, flat and dacha. At the Federal Tax Service’s Moscow directorate she was in charge of the most corruption-intensive area, that of VAT refunds.
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For Yeltsin, Kremlin Seeks Yukos Review
President Dmitry Medvedev paid tribute to late President Boris Yeltsin on what would have been his 80th birthday Tuesday by enlarging the Kremlin’s human rights council and ordering it to examine the cases of Sergei Magnitsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
It was unclear whether the changes, announced at the unveiling of a Yeltsin monument in Yekaterinburg, capital of Yeltsin’s native Sverdlovsk region, would add clout to the previously largely toothless council.
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