Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Magnitsky’s Defense Requests Recusal of Prosecutor as Posthumous Trial Begins

Moscow Times

Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court began proceedings into the posthumous tax evasion trial against deceased lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on Friday.

Prosecutors say Magnitsky, who died in a pretrial detention facility in 2009, acted as an accomplice to Hermitage Capital and the fund’s director, William Browder, in a tax evasion scheme that saw the men steal $230 million from the state budget. The allegations were made shortly after Magnitsky himself accused tax officials of stealing the $230 million by using fake tax refunds.

At the very beginning of Friday’s hearing, Magnitsky’s defense lawyers asked to recuse the prosecutor, Mikhail Reznicheno, citing the fact that he’d given defense lawyers limited time to read 60 volumes of case materials, the BBC’s Russian service reported.

Magnitsky’s defense lawyers also asked prosecutors to clarify the procedure for a trial against a dead person, requesting that the Tverskoi District Court submit a request for such clarification to the Constitutional Court, which earlier issued a decree stating that posthumous trials violate the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

“There was no reason for the investigation. I believe the case was re-opened only because of an incorrect understanding of the decree of the Consitutional Court,” Nikolai Gerasimov, a lawyer for Magnitsky, said in comments carried by Lenta.ru.