Posts Tagged ‘posthumous’
Moscow Court Rules That Probe Of Dead Lawyer Magnitsky Is Legal
Moscow City Court has ruled that investigations of deceased attorney Sergei Magnitsky are proper and legal and can continue.
The court on February 27 rejected an appeal by Magnitsky’s relatives to halt government investigations of the deceased attorney for the British-based Hermitage Capital Management.
Magnitsky, 37, was jailed after accusing Interior Ministry officials of involvement in a massive corruption scandal.
He later died in pre-trial detention in 2009 after suffering abuse and medical neglect.
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Prosecuting the Dead
In 897 AD in what was called “the Cadaver Synod”, Pope Formosus was tried for various violations of Church laws. He was found guilty, his edicts were annulled, his robes were taken from him, and three fingers on his right hand were severed, before the former Pope was thrown in the Tiber River. Bizarrely, Pope Formosus had died of natural causes several months earlier. They prosecuted a dead man. Fast forward over a thousand years to 2012. Russia is about to put on trial a dead man, Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer, who died in prison from the effects of his imprisonment and torture by the Russian Government in November 2009.
Magnitsky’s death has caused universal condemnation by world leaders, international organizations, such as the European Union, as well as human rights groups. His crime was exposing a massive tax fraud scheme by the Russian government and officials within the Medvedev/Putin regime in the amount of over $230 million dollars. Not content to leave Magnitsky in peace, the Russian government has hounded his family and harassed his mother, Natalia Magnitskaya. They are even going to bring charges in absentia against Magnitsky’s former employer, William Browder, a British citizen, of the Hermitage Capital Fund.
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Senators Cardin, Wicker, Shaheen: Spoke on human rights violations in Russia and the case of Sergei Magnitsky
Morning Business
Feb 16 2012
10:46 AM
Colloquy: (Senators Cardin, Wicker, Shaheen)
Spoke on human rights violations in Russia and the case of Sergei Magnitsky.
Senator Cardin: (10:08 AM)
“Just last week as part of a bilateral Presidential commission, Attorney General Holder met with Russian Minister of Justice to discuss the rule of law issues. That same week, Russian officials moved in their criminal prosecution of Sergei Magnitsky. I remind you that Mr. Magnitsky has been dead for more than two years. Last may, I joined with Senator McCain and Senator Wicker and 11 other of our senators from both parties to introduce the Sergei Magnitsky rule of law accountability act. We now have nearly 30 cosponsors, and I urge more to join us and look at ways to move forward on helping halt abuses like this in the future. After exposing the largest known tax fraud in Russian history, Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax lawyer, working for an American firm in Moscow, was falsely arrested for crimes he did not commit and tortured in prison. Six months later, he became seriously ill and was consistently denied medical attention despite 20 former requests and then on the night of November 16, 2009, he went into critical condition, but instead of being treated in a hospital, he was put in an isolation cell, chained to a bed, beaten by eight prison guards with rubber batons for one hour and 18 minutes until he was dead. Sergei Magnitsky was 37 years old, left behind a wife, two children and a dependent mother. While the facts around his arrest, detention and death has been independently verified and accepted at the highest levels of Russian government, those implicated in his death and the corruption he exposed remain unpunished, in positions of authority, and some have even been decorated and promoted. Following Magnitsky ‘s death, they have continued to target others, including American business interests in Moscow. These officials have been credibly linked to similar crimes and have ties to Russian mafia, international arms trafficking and even drug cartels. The money they stole from the Russian budget was bartered through a network of banks including two in the united states. Calls for investigation have fallen on deaf ears, and in a turn of events, law enforcement officers accused by Magnitsky and those most involved in his murder are – and those that are accused by Magnitsky and those most complicit in his murder are moving to try him for the very tax crimes they committed. think of the irony here. He exposed corruption in Russia. As a result, he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed. Now, those who perpetrated the crime on him are charging him after his death with the crimes they committed. We cannot be silent.”
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Russia’s Perversion of Justice
From the gulags to the “doctor’s plot,” Russian history is replete with politically orchestrated show trials. But an upcoming case may achieve the unlikely feat of raising the bar for legal and political corruption. That is because the defendant in the case, attorney Sergei Magnitsky, has been dead for two years. What’s more, his trial is being sought by the very government and police officials who may have been complicit in his death.
Earlier this month, officials with the Russian Interior Ministry announced their plan to resubmit a tax evasion case that would see Magnitsky go on trial posthumously. Magnitsky first incurred these officials’ ire in 2007, when he was an attorney with of the Moscow-based American law firm Firestone Duncan and an outside counsel for the investment fund Hermitage Capital. In June 2007, police from the ministry raided both Firestone Duncan and Hermitage Capital’s Moscow offices on the pretext of tax evasion charges. In the course of the raid, they took away the official documents and seals of the fund’s Russian investment companies – despite the fact these documents were outside the scope of their search warrant.
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U.S. Reiterates Demand for Justice in Magnitsky Case
Days after Russian authorities decided to try lawyer Sergei Magnitsky posthumously, the U.S. Department of State reiterated its calls to bring those guilty for his death in detention to justice.
Investigators of the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday they were ready to submit the case of the late Sergei Magnitsky, a Hermitage Capital auditor, and Hermitage Capital CEO William Browder to court.
“Pursuing criminal charges against Sergei Magnitsky serves no purpose other than to deflect attention away from the circumstances surrounding this tragic case,” office of the spokesperson said in a statement.
“We’ve seen the press reports about the reopening of the Magnitskiy case,” Department of State Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a press briefing earlier in the day. “We continue to call for Russian authorities to bring those responsible for Sergei Magnitskiy’s death to justice.”
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State Department unaware Russia trying dead anti-corruption lawyer
The State Department had a response ready at today’s press briefing in case it was asked about the trial of those responsible for the death of Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The problem is that the Russian’s aren’t trying his killers — they are trying Magnitsky himself — even though he died over two years ago.
On Feb. 7, the New York Times reported that the Russian government is moving forward with tax evasion charges against Magnitsky, even though he died in detention in November 2009, reportedly after being abused and then refused medical attention by his captors. The title of the article was “Russia Plans to Retry Dead Lawyer in Tax Case.”
Asked about the plan to try Magnistky posthumously at Thursday’s press briefing, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland read from her briefing book the following comment:
“We’ve seen the press reports about the re-opening of the Magnitsky case. We continue to call for Russian authorities to bring those responsible for Sergei Magnitsky’s death to justice.”
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Russia’s posthumous trial of lawyer shows corruption is still rife
This week it was announced that the Russian authorities are planning to resubmit a tax evasion case for trial. Nothing out of the ordinary, you might think, except for the fact that the defendant is deceased.
The accused in question is Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in a Moscow prison cell in November 2009. Magnitsky was initially detained in November 2008 on suspicion of assisting one of his clients – UK-based investment fund Hermitage Capital – evade about $17.4m in taxes. Although the original allegations were lodged against Hermitage, during the investigation Magnitsky discovered what he believed to be a cover-up for Russian state officials to embezzle an estimated $230m from the Russian treasury.
Subsequently, Magnitsky testified against two senior officials in the interior ministry, Lt Col Artyom Kuznetsov and Major Pavel Karpov, and accused them of tax fraud. Shortly after, Magnitsky himself was arrested and detained in prison on charges of fraud and tax evasion. It is thought that the charges placed against him were designed to make him back down and sweep the whole embezzlement scandal under the carpet. However, Magnitsky never made it to trial. After a year of being detained, he died in a prison cell aged 37 and the exact causes and circumstances surrounding his death remain a mystery.
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Editorial: “Trial After Death”
Vedomosti
Absurdity is becoming a reality. Sergey Magnitskiy, the Hermitage Capital attorney who died (or was murdered, according to human rights advocates) in November 2009 in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention facility, might be put on trial. The MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] Department of Investigations reported yesterday that his case file might be turned over to one of the courts in the capital soon.
The investigators’ actions in the Magnitskiy case are surprising for many reasons. Putting a dead man on trial when the people responsible for his death were never punished will be perceived as a subtle insult to the memory of the deceased and to his family and friends. According to many experienced attorneys and law enforcement personnel, they have never been involved in the criminal prosecution or defense of deceased individuals. Proceedings in which the accused died long before the trial were characteristic of the Inquisition or the Stalin era (the case of the conspiracy in the Red Army, for example, and the Doctors’ Plot). Rehabilitation proceedings, in which the case is reviewed in light of new evidence, are the only exception.
The problem, however, is not confined to the moral aspect of the future trial. The legal grounds for simultaneous proceedings against a live individual and one who died more than two years ago are questionable. Cases of this type are often separated for the quick cessation of the prosecution of the deceased. The line of reasoning for the reopening of the case is also questionable. The reader may recall that the criminal prosecution of the Hermitage Capital attorney was originally terminated soon after his death, in spring 2010. In August 2011 the General Prosecutor’s Office rescinded the order to close the case, citing the Constitutional Court ruling of 14 July 2011. Sections 24 and 254 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, allowing a case to be closed following the death of a suspect, an accused individual, or a defendant without the consent of the relatives of the deceased, were declared unconstitutional by the court at that time. “The denial of the opportunity to assert an individual’s rights and legal interests in a criminal trial … would be tantamount to the disparagement of that individual’s honor and dignity by the state,” the judges declared.
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Putin’s courts will soon put Sergei Magnitsky on trial, but he won’t be attending.
Few things illuminate the dark underbelly of Vladimir Putin’s Russia more starkly than the fact that a man who is among the most furiously denounced by the regime, and harshly prosecuted by law enforcement, is a mild-mannered corporate lawyer who’s been dead for more than two years.
The case of Sergei Magnitsky — who uncovered what might well be the crime of the century and then made the mistake of testifying about it — has grown into a huge international scandal ever since he died, under highly suspicious circumstances, in a police holding cell in November 2009.
The story of how Magnitsky exposed a vast corruption ring at the highest official levels, and then was allegedly framed, tortured and murdered, has been well documented. It is detailed in reports by Moscow’s independent prison watchdog, the Kremlin’s in-house human rights commission, as well as a 75-page investigation commissioned by his employer, Hermitage Capital, a London-based asset management firm founded in 1996 that remains one of the largest foreign investors in Russia.
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