Posts Tagged ‘posthumous’
Dead Lawyer, a Kremlin Critic, Is Found Guilty of Tax Evasion
The steel cage reserved for the defendants was empty Thursday, which was not surprising since one of them is dead and the other lives in London. As the judge, his voice nearly inaudible, read out his verdict, one of the main defense lawyers paid no attention, tapping nonchalantly on his tablet computer instead.
If the posthumous prosecution of Sergei L. Magnitsky, the lawyer who was jailed as he tried to expose a huge government tax fraud and died four years ago in a Russian prison after being denied proper medical care, seemed surreal from the moment the authorities announced it, the verdict and sentencing on Thursday did not disappoint.
By all accounts, it was Russia’s first trial of a dead man, and in the tiny third-floor courtroom of the Tverskoi District Court, it took the judge, Igor B. Alisov, more than an hour and a half to read his decision pronouncing Mr. Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion.
Mr. Magnitsky was convicted along with a former client, William F. Browder, a financier who lives in Britain and was tried in absentia on the same charges. Mr. Browder, once Russia’s largest foreign portfolio investor, was sentenced to nine years in prison — a sentence that he will almost certainly never serve. Interpol in late May refused a request by the Russian government to track Mr. Browder’s whereabouts, a relatively rare instance of a law enforcement inquiry’s being set aside as politically motivated.
Mr. Browder, who has been barred from Russia since 2005, said in a telephone interview from London on Thursday that he believed that the Kremlin was acting out of desperation.
“Russia is a criminal regime,” Mr. Browder said. “The Russian state is a criminal state. And in order to operate in Russia, you have two options as a businessman: you can become part of the criminality, in which case you become a criminal, or you can oppose it, in which case you become a victim, and there’s no way you can avoid it.”
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Russia convicts lawyer Magnitsky in posthumous trial
Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison in suspicious circumstances, was found guilty of tax evasion on Thursday in a posthumous trial that has further damaged President Vladimir Putin’s reputation in the West.
The Moscow court also convicted Magnitsky’s former client William Browder, a British investment fund boss who has led an international campaign to expose corruption and punish Russian officials he blames for Magnitsky’s death in 2009.
Browder, tried in absentia, was sentenced to nine years’ jail in the case, which deepened U.S. and European Union concerns over human rights and the rule of law in Putin’s Russia.
“Today’s verdict will go down in history as one of the most shameful moments for Russia since the days of Josef Stalin,” Browder, who is unlikely to be extradited from Britain to Russia, said in an emailed statement.
Amnesty International called Magnitsky’s prosecution – Russia’s first posthumous trial – “deeply sinister”, saying it “set a dangerous precedent that could open a whole new chapter in Russia’s worsening human rights record.”
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Magnitsky found guilty of tax evasion
Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court has found Sergei Magnitsky, an auditor for Hermitage Capital who died in a Russian prison in 2009, guilty of tax evasion, RAPSI reported from the courtroom.
This is the first time that a Russian court has tried a dead person.
The ruling came Thursday afternoon and also found Hermitage Capital head William Browder, a portfolio investor who came to Russia in the late 1990s, guilty of tax evasion in absentia.
Browder, who lives in London, was sentenced in absentia to nine years in a penal colony after being convicted of tax evasion. The court has also closed the case against Magnitsky in connection to his death.
Browder called the verdict “shameful” and vowed “to fight for justice for Sergei Magnitsky and his family until the job is done,” according to an emailed note.
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Magnitsky verdict: trial denounced as ‘the height of absurdity’
The posthumous trial of the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been denounced as the “height of absurdity” after a court in Moscow pronounced Mr Magnitsky guilty of tax fraud offences earlier today.
Magnitsky died in detention in 2009 in circumstances suggesting that this was the result of torture or other ill-treatment, yet was put on trial by the Russian authorities after his death under special provisions in Russian law. These allow the family of a deceased person, who died while still under investigation, to request that the investigation is completed and the deceased person rehabilitated.
The Russian Prosecutor’s Office used the provision to put Magnitsky himself on trial, despite the lawyer’s family consistently objecting to this and refusing to testify as witnesses or attend the trial. Because of their refusal, a lawyer was appointed by the state to represent Magnitsky’s family in court. Even though the state-appointed lawyer himself raised concerns that the case was unacceptable, the court pressed ahead with the case.
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The height of absurdity’: Moscow court finds whistle-blowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky guilty of fraud – three years after his death
One of the more grotesque trials of recent Russian history came to an end as a Moscow court posthumously convicted the whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky of tax evasion.
Mr Magnitsky died in prison in 2009 after being ill-treated and not receiving treatment for pancreatitis. He had uncovered what he described as a massive fraud scheme that he alleged involved a number of Russian officials, but was then locked up by some of the same officials he was investigating.
Moscow’s Tverskoy Court was packed with journalists, but the defendant’s cage stood empty, as Judge Igor Alisov handed down the bizarre verdict. He convicted Mr Magnitsky of tax evasion, though for obvious reasons was unable to hand down a sentence.
“Magnitsky masterminded a massive tax evasion scheme in a … conspiracy with a group of people,” said Mr Alisov in barely audible tones as he took 90 minutes to read out the verdict. The court claimed that Mr Magnitsky was aided by William Browder, the British head of Hermitage Capital, the investment fund that had hired Mr Magnitsky to look into corruption. Mr Browder was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison.
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President thinks that Magnitsky case reflects scope of violations in Russia
A ruling issued on Thursday in the late Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky’s case raises concern and reflects the scope of violations in Russia, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė said.
“It’s a symbolic act reflecting the scope of human rights violations and a worsening situation of ensuring human rights in Russia and the government’s attitude to human rights. It’s symbolic and should be valued negatively,” Grybauskaitė said in response to a question by BNS at a joint press conference with visiting German President Joachim Gauck.
According to the Lithuanian president, the EU does not have a common position as yet on whether to introduce sanctions against Russian officials related to Magnitsky’s death in detention, similar to those introduced by the United States.
“The EU does not have a common position as yet on the introduction of potential sanctions. And in response to the very fact of conviction, so it, obviously, concerns us,” Grybauskaitė said.
On Thursday, a Moscow court found late Magnitsky and his former employer William Browder, head of investment fund Hermitage Capital, guilty of tax evasion.
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Russia convicts Magnitsky of tax evasion in posthumous trial
A Russian court has found deceased lawyer Sergei Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion, in a posthumous trial that has elicited widespread criticism in the west.
Magnitsky was convicted of tax evasion alongside his former client William Browder, the US-born chief executive of Hermitage Capital, who Russian authorities allege evaded about $17m in taxes.
Mr Browder, who lives in the UK and was tried in absentia, received a nine-year sentence. He has denied all charges against him. The judge closed the criminal case against Magnitsky but refused to rehabilitate him.
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the German justice minister, condemned the verdict, saying on Twitter: “The conviction of the dead Magnitsky is further evidence of the Sovietisation of Russia.”
A spokesperson for Lady Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said the verdict “does not provide any answer to the real questions regarding the death of Mr Magnitsky”, adding that the EU would continue to raise the “disturbing” matter with the Russian government.
Magnitsky’s conviction comes almost four years after he died amid murky circumstances in a pre-trial detention centre after he had accused Russian police of complicity in a $230m tax fraud.
Mr Browder has used the subsequent years to launch an anti-corruption campaign in Magnitsky’s memory, and has been successful in his efforts to ban the officials he says were involved in Magnitsky’s death from travelling to the US or holding bank accounts there.
On Thursday Mr Browder condemned the verdict against his former lawyer. He told the Financial Times that with “the malicious pain” the trial had inflicted on Magnitsky’s family, President Vladimir Putin had “brought shame on Russia and firmly found himself a place in history for being the first western leader in a thousand years to prosecute a dead man”.
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Dead Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky convicted of tax evasion
Russian who died in prison while awaiting trial is found guilty along with British client William Browder. A Moscow court has convicted the late investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky of tax evasion after Russia’s first posthumous trial.
The court also convicted Magnitsky’s former client William Browder, a Briton who has spearheaded an international campaign to expose corruption and punish Russian officials he blames for the lawyer’s death in a Moscow jail while awaiting trial in 2009.
Browder was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison for tax evasion. He lives in Britain and Russia’s options for jailing him are limited. Interpol has refused to include him on its international search list after deciding that Russia’s case against him was political.
Magnitsky died after a year in jail during which he said he was mistreated and denied medical care in an effort to get him to confess to tax evasion and give evidence against Browder, who is head of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management.
The Kremlin’s human rights council said there was evidence the suggested Magnitsky was beaten to death, but the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, dismissed allegations of torture or foul play, saying last year that the lawyer died of heart failure.
Russian authorities closed the case against Magnitsky after his death but reopened it in 2011, a move that former colleagues say was illegal because they did not have the consent of his relatives.
“This show trial confirms that Vladimir Putin is ready to sacrifice his international credibility to protect corrupt officials who murdered an innocent lawyer and stole $230m (£150m) from the Russian state,” Hermitage Capital said in a statement. займы без отказа онлайн займы https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php займ на карту
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Moscow court finds Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion
The Tverskoy District Court in Moscow has convicted the late British Hermitage Capital Fund auditor Sergei Magnitsky of tax evasion, RAPSI reports from the courtroom on Thursday.
During Wednesday’s hearing, the state prosecutor asked the court to convict Magnitsky of tax evasion but to dismiss the case against him due to his death. Magnitsky died in a Moscow remand center in 2009.
Hermitage Capital maintains that it paid 5.4 billion rubles ($180 million) in taxes, but the money was stolen by corporate raiders with the help of law enforcement officials.
Magnitsky, who died in pretrial detention in Moscow in 2009, was prosecuted for this theft. The case was closed after his death, only to be reopened later. Under Russian law, a person can be prosecuted after their death. займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/apply-for-payday-loan-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php payday loan
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