Posts Tagged ‘telegraph’
Russia wants Bill Browder on Interpol list
Last month, Moscow issued an arrest warrant against the founder of Hermitage Capital management on charges that he stole shares in gas giant Gazprom 15 years ago.
Mr Browder said the action was a “politically-motivated” response to his campaign to expose a criminal network linked to the death in detention four years ago of his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered an alleged $230m (£150m) fraud against the Russian state.
The request will be considered by Interpol’s commission this Thursday and Friday. A so-called “blue notice” would require all 190 member countries “to provide information about an individual’s location and activities” and could be used for arrest and extradition.
Mr Browder was a prominent Russian investor before being barred entry in 2006. The following year, Mr Magnitsky unearthed evidence of a huge alleged tax fraud by a criminal group that included officials in the police and tax authorities, and went public.
He was later jailed on disputed tax evasion charges and died in prison in November 2009 after being denied medical help. Mr Browder has since campaigned for justice and sparked a major diplomatic incident after succeeding in having 60 Russians – including senior state officials – barred from the US. Russia responded by banning US adoptions of Russian children and launching a controversial posthumous trial of Mr Magnitsky.
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Russia bans Americans in retaliation over Magnitsky Act
Russia has banned 18 Americans, including two officials who served under President George W Bush’s administration, from entering the country, as the fall-out from the death of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky escalates.
The US Treasury on Friday named 18 Russians who are subject to visa bans and asset freezes in the US, including 16 people connected to the case of Mr Magnitsky, who died in jail in 2009 after exposing a $230m (£149m) tax fraud, which pointed the finger at a string of Russian officials.
Mr Magnitsky was a former employee of London-based fund manager, William Browder, founder of Hermitage Capital Management, who in 1996 moved from the UK to Russia to invest in newly privatised countries in Eastern Europe only to discover large-scale financial fraud.
Russia on Saturday took revenge for the ban against its own citizens, accusing the US of “outright blackmail” and branding a law passed by America at the end of last year – the Magnitsky Act – “absurd”.
“The war of lists is not our choice, but we cannot ignore outright blackmail,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the Magnitsky Act was an intervention into its domestic affairs and had delivered a “strong blow to bilateral relations”.
Russia alleges the 18 names on its own list include people who are “implicated in legalisation of torture and perpetual detentions in Guantanamo prison, to the arrests and kidnapping of Russian citizens”.
“It’s time for Washington politicians to finally understand that there are no prospects in building relations with a country like Russia with the spirit of mentoring and undisguised dictating,” Russia’s foreign ministry said.
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Magnitsky was a martyr, trampled by a corrupt system, says Boris Johnson in the Telegraph
In today’s Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson writes about the trial of Sergei Magnitsky, held after his death. Boris begins: “Today, in Moscow, there begins the trial of a 37-year-old accountant by the name of Sergei Magnitsky. Mr Magnitsky is accused of tax offences dating back perhaps 10 years.”
“What is astounding about this case is that Magnitsky is not only innocent of all charges. He is also dead. He died in prison in November 2009, after almost a year in which he was kept in squalor, denied family contact and deprived of medical treatment — detention that culminated in a savage and fatal beating by his captors.
It says something about the Russian state that it should now put this ghost on trial, in what must be the most grotesque parody of legal proceedings since the animal trials of the Middle Ages. It says something about Russian justice that Magnitsky — and his family — are now being persecuted by the very legal establishment whose corruption he exposed. And that message is that there are no lengths to which the Russian kleptocrats will not go to protect themselves and their ill-gotten loot, and to grind the faces of their enemies.
Magnitsky was a whistleblower. He uncovered a scam, a gigantic criminal conspiracy by which the Russian police and tax officials colluded with the judiciary and mafia to steal millions from the Russian state. When he refused to change his evidence and give in to his interrogators, they killed him – only eight days before they would have been legally obliged to bring him to trial or let him go.
Magnitsky’s tragedy was to be hired by a US-born British citizen called Bill Browder, who runs Hermitage Capital Management — a fund that used to be one of the biggest investors in Russia. Bill Browder’s misfortune was to fall out with Vladimir Putin, and in a big way. To understand the Magnitsky affair, you have to go back to the collapse of communism and the decision of a semi-inebriated Boris Yeltsin to allow the assets of the Russian people, and incalculable wealth, to fall into the hands of about two dozen more or less cunning and opportunistic businessmen — the oligarchs.”
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Justice is put to the sword by Moscow’s greed and corruption
Today, in Moscow, there begins the trial of a 37-year-old accountant by the name of Sergei Magnitsky. Mr Magnitsky is accused of tax offences dating back perhaps 10 years.
What is astounding about this case is that Magnitsky is not only innocent of all charges. He is also dead. He died in prison in November 2009, after almost a year in which he was kept in squalor, denied family contact and deprived of medical treatment — detention that culminated in a savage and fatal beating by his captors.
It says something about the Russian state that it should now put this ghost on trial, in what must be the most grotesque parody of legal proceedings since the animal trials of the Middle Ages. It says something about Russian justice that Magnitsky — and his family — are now being persecuted by the very legal establishment whose corruption he exposed. And that message is that there are no lengths to which the Russian kleptocrats will not go to protect themselves and their ill-gotten loot, and to grind the faces of their enemies.
Magnitsky was a whistleblower. He uncovered a scam, a gigantic criminal conspiracy by which the Russian police and tax officials colluded with the judiciary and mafia to steal millions from the Russian state. When he refused to change his evidence and give in to his interrogators, they killed him – only eight days before they would have been legally obliged to bring him to trial or let him go.
Magnitsky’s tragedy was to be hired by a US-born British citizen called Bill Browder, who runs Hermitage Capital Management — a fund that used to be one of the biggest investors in Russia. Bill Browder’s misfortune was to fall out with Vladimir Putin, and in a big way. To understand the Magnitsky affair, you have to go back to the collapse of communism and the decision of a semi-inebriated Boris Yeltsin to allow the assets of the Russian people, and incalculable wealth, to fall into the hands of about two dozen more or less cunning and opportunistic businessmen — the oligarchs.
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Sergei Magnitsky’s Russian trial condemned as ‘absurd’
A Moscow trial to prosecute the dead whistle-blowing lawyer who exposed huge tax fraud among Russian officials has been labelled a “Stalin show trial” and an “absurd” attempt to discredit him.
Sergei Magnitsky died in custody in November 2009 at the age of 37 after being abused and denied essential medical treatment by prison officials.
The lawyer had been jailed after being accused of the very same crime that he revealed, which involved senior policemen and tax officials.
The case against him was closed a fortnight after his death but was later restarted and Moscow’s Tverskoy Court is to hold an initial hearing in the unprecedented posthumous trial starting on Monday.
William Browder, the head of the UK-based investment fund that Mr Magnitsky worked for, is also to be tried, albeit in absentia.
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From Russia with hate – are Russian assassins on the loose in Britain? With the death of a businessman in Surrey now being treated as suspicious, we look at the spate of hits that have taken place in Britain
Daily Telegraph
Apparently healthy people do drop dead, so Surrey Police were not unduly exercised by the sudden demise of Alexander Perepilichny. The body of the Russian businessman was found near his home on the St George’s Hill estate in Weybridge on Saturday, November 10. A member of staff at his house, rented for £12,500 a month, happened upon the body as darkness fell. Perepilichny, aged 44, had been seen jogging earlier that day and was still in his running gear. There were no signs of violence, nothing to suggest foul play. The gated community, a collection of secluded detached houses selling for £3 million and above, is one of the most exclusive in Britain, favoured in the past by singers and soccer stars, and supposedly one of the most secure. For officers assigned to the case, Perepilichny’s death initially represented a personal tragedy, but nothing more.
Only later, when the alert was raised by his associates, did they begin to consider the possibility that something darker may have occurred. Following an inconclusive first autopsy, a second was ordered. A toxicology report is not expected for months.
Assassinations, successful or attempted, are rare things in Britain, but when they happen there is a reasonable chance that a Russian will be involved. Russia is a far less violent place than it was even five years ago, but for the many criminal entities in that vast country, some rooted deeply in government, there are still vendettas to be pursued and inconvenient people to be rubbed out. The fact that the target has sought shelter in the United Kingdom may serve as a deterrent to a would-be assassin, but it would not put them off completely.
Britain is home to 300,000 Russians, and London in particular has benefited from an influx of billionaires and millionaires grown fat on the privatisation of Russia’s state assets in the Nineties. Some 100 Russian millionaires accounted for a quarter of Tier 1 UK visas in the year to June. The privileged permits allow long-term, non-domicile residence here in return for a minimum investment in British property, shares and bonds of £1 million.
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Mystery death of Russian businessman now examined by Major Crimes Unit
An investigation into the sudden death of a Russian supergrass in Surrey is now being reviewed by specialist detectives amid mounting concern that he could have been murdered.
Alexander Perepilichnyy’s, 44, who moved to Britain three years ago after falling out with a Moscow crime syndicate, was found dead outside his mansion on an exclusive private estate near Weybridge last month.
His death has so far been described as “unexplained” and Surrey police initially stated that it was not being treated as suspicious.
But after it emerged that Mr Perepilichnyy’s was co-operating with the Swiss authorities in a major corruption investigation linked to a string of other deaths, police chiefs ordered that the case be passed to force’s Major Crimes Unit.
Police sources said the unit, which investigates complex murder cases, would be now taking a fresh look at the circumstances of Mr Perepilichnyy’s death.
Detectives will speak to his friends and business associates in a renewed effort to establish how a 44-year-old man, who was apparently in good health, came to suddenly collapse and die.
One theory being explored is that he could have been poisoned in a similar fashion to Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent who died in London in 2006 after being contaminated with radioactive Polonium 210.
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President Vladimir Putin’s cruel tyranny is driven by paranoia
Apologists for the Kremlin are struggling. The Russian regime’s dogged defence of the blood-drenched Syrian dictatorship, and its persecution of the Pussy Riot musicians for their stunt in Moscow’s main cathedral, display its nastiest hallmark: support for repression at home and abroad.
Mr Putin’s return to power has eclipsed the liberal-sounding talk of his predecessor as president, Dmitry Medvedev. Russia’s leader has in recent weeks signed laws that criminalise defamation, introduce £6,000 fines for participants in unauthorised demonstrations, require non-profit outfits financed by grants from abroad to label themselves as “foreign agents”, and create a new blacklist of “harmful” internet sites.
Now comes the prosecution of Pussy Riot, a bunch of feminist performance artists made famous by their imprisonment and show trial. Their “crime” was to record a brief mime show at the altar of the cathedral of Christ the Saviour. They then added anti-Putin “music” (featuring scatological and blasphemous slogans) to suggest that they had actually held a concert there.
Many might find that in bad taste and would accept that police can arrest those using a holy place for political protest. But the three women on trial (who all deny involvement) have been in custody since March. They face up to seven years in prison on a charge of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility”. It all smacks of a grotesque official over-reaction and the growing and sinister influence of the Orthodox hierarchy.
Also a distant memory is Russia’s “reset” with America, which was supposed to herald a new era of cooperation. Since Mr Putin’s return, Russia’s foreign-policy rhetoric has been venomously anti-Western. It recently warned Finland, with startling bluntness, to stop working with Nato. The hostility is still largely a one-way street. Western companies grovel before Mr Putin (he recently kept oil-industry chiefs waiting for hours in an airless room with no chairs; they uttered not a squeak of complaint).
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Magnitsky-linked criminal at debate
Russian delegates at a debate, calling for action against individuals linked to Sergei Magnitsky’s death, handed their passes to a convicted criminal connected to the crime.
Russian delegates at a cross-border parliamentary debate, calling for action against individuals linked to the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, handed their passes for the event to a convicted criminal connected to the crime.
Dmitry Klyuev, who served a two-year suspended sentence for attempted fraud and has been accused of laundering money for a fraud uncovered by Mr Magnitsky, was pictured at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) assembly in Monaco over the weekend, wearing a delegation badge. He was accompanied by his lawyer, who also appeared to have been given one of the Russian officials’ access passes.
US Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain accused Mr Klyuev of running a “transnational criminal organisation”.
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