Posts Tagged ‘the independent’
Sergei Magnitsky – the final insult: Russia continues to ‘desecrate the memory’ of the whistleblower lawyer
irst he was imprisoned. There he died after being denied medical treatment. Then he was put on posthumous trial. Now the Russian lawyer who dared to expose a £140m fraud is accused of perpetrating the crime himself.
Russian investigators have opened a second posthumous criminal investigation into the whistleblower lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who exposed an alleged £140m fraud by Moscow tax officials, it was claimed.
Mr Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison in 2009 after suffering beatings and being deprived of medical treatment, became the first dead person to be put on trial in modern Russia when he was last year convicted of tax fraud in proceedings described by critics as evidence of “Sovietisation”. The Kremlin denied the prosecution was an act of revenge to distract attention from corrupt officials but supporters said a further criminal investigation has now come to light, this time accusing Mr Magnitsky of the massive theft which he had himself uncovered.
The death of the 37-year-old auditor opened a new rift between Moscow and Washington, which passed a “Magnitsky Act” banning nearly 20 Russian officials implicated in the lawyer’s death from the United States and threatening to add more senior figures to the list.
Bill Browder, the British-American financier who employed Mr Magnitsky and has since led the campaign to expose corruption in Russia, said that the lawyer had now been named as the ringleader of four suspects accused of masterminding the $230m (£140m) tax refund theft.
Campaigners said the investigation, disclosed in official papers obtained on behalf of the Magnitsky family, belied efforts by President Vladimir Putin to improve Russia’s international standing ahead of next month’s Winter Olympics by releasing prisoners including the former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot.
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Retired Russian police officer accused of complicity in tax fraud and murder of whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky ‘receiving Kremlin help’
A retired Russian police officer accused of complicity in a massive tax fraud and the murder of whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was claimed to be receiving Kremlin help in bringing a multi-million pound libel case in London.
Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Karpov, an unemployed former interior ministry investigator who lives in a luxury Moscow flat, is suing British businessman William Browder, a millionaire hedge fund investor who employed Mr Magnitsky and is leading a campaign against corruption in the Russian government, for substantial damages in the High Court.
A pre-trial hearing was told yesterday that the case is likely to cost a minimum of £6m and that Mr Karpov has admitted he cannot afford to fund the proceedings himself. He is refusing to name a businessman friend who he insists is guaranteeing bank loans to fund the case and he says has no connection with the Russian state.
Mr Browder is seeking to have the libel suit, which arises from a series of internet postings made on his behalf about the Magnitsky scandal, thrown out as an abuse of the legal system on grounds including the claim that Mr Karpov has no links with Britain. In turn, Mr Karpov is seeking to have elements of Mr Browder’s defence struck out, including any suggestion that he could have had a hand in or responsibility for Mr Magnitsky’s death.
The case is likely to raise fresh debate about the use of the English courts for so-called “libel tourism”. Mr Karpov has said he is justified in bringing his proceedings in part because the website used to post the material he claims is defamatory is based in the United Kingdom.
Antony White QC, for Mr Browder and his company, Hermitage Capital Management, told the court there was “evidence” that previous libel proceedings brought by Mr Karpov in Russia linked to the Magnitsky case had been instigated from within the Kremlin, adding there were grounds to suspect that a similar arrangement was in place in the London case.
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Russia drops inquiry into death of Sergei Magnitsky
Investigators have dropped an inquiry into the death in jail of Sergei Magnitsky, stating that the whistleblowing lawyer’s agonising death, which became an international scandal, was not the result of malpractice.
“A decision has been taken to end the criminal case because of the absence of a crime,” the state Investigative Committee said. “No pressure was exerted on him, nor was there any physical violence or torture.”
Magnitsky was imprisoned for 11 months without trial in Moscow’s notorious Butyrka jail after exposing an alleged embezzlement scam by interior ministry officials. A Kremlin-ordered human rights council since found that he was beaten up immediately before his death, on 16 Novermber 2009, but there has been little effort to punish the officials responsible. As the case unfolded, Magnitsky’s name has become politicised. President Vladimir Putin stated in December that Magnitsky had died from heart problems and not from torture, and state-run television has run a number of smear programmes against him.
“This was expected,” said Magnitsky’s mother, Natalia Magnitskaya, after today’s decision. “I don’t believe that it is possible to obtain justice in Russia today because there are people in power interested in concealing it.”
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Trial by Russian television convicts whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky as MI6 agent
As Russia prepares to mount a posthumous trial of Sergei Magnitsky, state-controlled television has aired a documentary accusing the dead whistleblowing lawyer and his bosses of being part of an MI6-led conspiracy.
The documentary, which aired on Russia’s NTV on Wednesday night, said that Mr Magnitsky and William Browder, the US-born British head of the investment fund that hired him, were involved in the “crime of the century” against the Russian state.
Both the television programme and the trial, which starts on Monday, appear to be part of a vitriolic rearguard action by the Russian state, after Mr Magnitsky’s fate became the catalyst for international pressure on Moscow. Mr Magnitsky was arrested in 2008 while investigating an alleged $230m fraud perpetrated by a group of corrupt Russian officials that defrauded the Russian state. However, instead of locking up the culprits, Russian investigators moved against Mr Magnitsky himself. Locked up in Moscow’s Butyrka prison, he was refused medical treatment for a pancreatic condition, mistreated, and died in 2009.
Since then, his case has become an international rallying cry, with the US Congress passing a resolution banning Russian officials involved in his death from travelling to the US or owning property there. Enraged by the move, Russia retaliated by drawing up its own list of US officials to be banned from Russia, and also outlawed US citizens from adopting Russian orphans. President Vladimir Putin also said on live television in December that Mr Magnitsky had died of heart failure, not mistreatment, and added that the case needed further investigation, as the lawyer himself had been no angel.
Since those words, the Russian state appears to have ratcheted up a campaign against the memory of the dead lawyer, his family, and his former employer, Hermitage Capital. Hermitage, headed by Mr Browder, had employed Mr Magnitsky to investigate the fraud.
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Family of Sergei Magntisky accuse Russian embassy in London of ‘deliberately disseminating false information’
The mother and the widow of Sergei Magntisky, a whistle-blower who died in a Moscow prison cell after months of torture, have accused the Russian embassy in London of “deliberately disseminating false information” by claiming his family wanted his posthumous trial.
The mother and the widow of Sergei Magntisky, a whistle-blower who died in a Moscow prison cell after months of torture, have accused the Russian embassy in London of “deliberately disseminating false information” by claiming his family wanted his posthumous trial.
Mr Magntisky died three years ago after exposing a massive tax fraud carried out by elements of the Russian Interior Ministry and underground criminal networks. But instead of going after the perpetrators of the fraud, Russian prosecutors have taken the unprecedented step of launching a posthumous prosecution of Mr Magnitsky, blaming him for carrying out the scam he uncovered.
After a series of reports in the British press following the latest court hearing in Moscow earlier this month, the Russian Embassy in London put out a statement stating that the trial was going ahead because Mr Magnitksy’s family “insisted on his posthumous rehabilitation”. The statement added: “According to the information available, this is precisely what the mother of Sergei Magnitsky and his advocates insist on.”
But that claim has been angrily denied in a letter to the embassy by Natalia Magnitskaya and his widow Natalia Zharikova which has been seen by The Independent.
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Acquitted: the only man charged over Sergei Magnitsky death
A Moscow court has exonerated the only person to be put on trial for the death of the Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, days after President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that the lawyer was not tortured in prison and in fact died of natural causes.
Mr Magnitsky died in Moscow’s Butyrka prison in 2009, after being refused treatment for a pancreatic illness. The court found that Dmitry Kratov, a doctor at Butyrka who allegedly signed medical records detailing Mr Magnitsky’s complaints but then refused treatment, had no case to answer.
Nobody has been charged for the fraud that Mr Magnitsky uncovered, despite evidence that a group of Russian officials conspired to defraud the state of around 5.4 billion roubles (£140m). Instead, he was locked up by the officials he was investigating.
The only case to have been opened with regard to the crimes Mr Magnitsky was investigating or to his death, aside from a posthumous inquiry into the lawyer himself, was the negligence case against Mr Kratov. In a highly unusual move, the prosecutors said they did not feel there was a case to answer and asked the judge to announce an innocent verdict.
At a press conference last week Mr Putin said Mr Magnitsky died of natural causes, a statement that could have been interpreted as a signal to halt investigations into his death. “There is no doubt that people responsible for Magnitsky’s death are being protected by the President of Russia,” said a representative of Hermitage Capital, the London-based investment fund for which Mr Magnitsky worked. “Russia normally has a 99 per cent conviction rate. In this case, there was overwhelming evidence of Kratov’s involvement and his acquittal goes against any logic or concept of justice.”
“I am sincerely sorry that Sergei Magnitsky died,” Mr Kratov told the court yesterday. “But I had no possibility to affect his fate.” The court said Mr Kratov could file for compensation for the unfair accusations.
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US starts a new ‘cold war’ over Magnitsky affair: Furious Russia vows to list Americans blocked from entering country, after US votes to name and shame corrupt officials
The Independent. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described ‘biased approach’ as ‘nothing but a vindictive desire to counter Russia in world affairs’
SHAUN WALKER, JEROME TAYLOR MOSCOW FRIDAY 07 DECEMBER 2012
One of Russia’s top foreign policy officials responded furiously and promised that Russia would indeed answer with its own list of Americans to be banned from entry to Russia.
“The reciprocal list will be fairly significant, if we name those behind Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib, and the CIA secret jails, Mikhail Margelov, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia’s Federation Council.
“The list will include those who have violated human rights [in the Middle East], and that would be according to global opinion, and not just the opinion of this Mr Browder, who some experts feel is simply using the Magnitsky List as a diversion.”
However, according to a poll by the Levada Centre, an independent Russian polling agency, 39 percent of Russians who had heard about the Magnitsky Act approved of it, rising to 45% among Muscovites.
Yesterday the US Senate voted to name and shame Russian officials involved in corruption and to forbid them from travelling to America or investing there.
The overwhelming vote in favour of the new law prompted a furious response from Moscow – as well as demands from two former British Foreign Secretaries, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and David Miliband, for a similar ban to be introduced by the UK.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs hit back, describing the “biased approach” as “nothing but a vindictive desire to counter Russia in world affairs”.
The Ministry published a series of furious remarks on its official Twitter feed: “It is perplexing and preposterous to hear human rights complaints from the US, where torture and kidnapping are legal in the 21st century. Apparently, Washington has forgotten what year this is and still thinks the Cold War is going on.
“The US decision to impose visa and financial sanctions on certain Russian citizens is like something out of the theatre of the absurd. Obviously, US passage of the ‘Magnitsky Law’ will adversely affect the prospects of bilateral cooperation.”
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Russian whistleblower Alexander Perepilichnyy was warned his name was on gang hit list
Alexander Perepilichnyy, the businessman who died suddenly outside his Surrey mansion two weeks ago, was warned that his name had been found on a hit list after police in Moscow broke up a criminal gang, The Independent can reveal.
An acquaintance of the 44-year-old Russian said Mr Perepilichnyy had first received the warning in November 2011 from a family member who had been briefed by a police official. According to the acquaintance, the family member was told that his name was one of many on a list that also contained detailed dossiers on some of the targets.
“It was like an order book,” the source told The Independent. “His name was in it.”
After negotiating with the police, the family member was able to view the file. “It was detailed although it contained errors,” the source added. “It had information like the houses he had lived in but it was a year or so out of date.”
Because the details were incorrect, the source said, Mr Perepilichnyy was not overly troubled and he did not speak of any further threats to his safety before his death. Surrey Police today said they had had no previous contact with Mr Perepilichnyy and had no reason to believe he was concerned for his safety.
The new revelations came as a Moscow based lawyer claimed today that the Russian exile wanted to make peace with the group of officials he had accused of being behind a Swiss money laundering scheme in the run up to his death.
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Mary Dejevsky: Britain should pass its own Magnitsky Act
It is possible that a 44-year-old Russian, whose body was found outside his house in Weybridge two weeks ago, died of natural causes. Such things happen. But this does not alter the fact that Alexander Perepilichnyy’s death is mighty convenient. Who benefits? Other Russians whose nefarious activities stood to be exposed by his cooperation with Swiss banking investigators. Nor would they be just any other Russians, but state officials, police, tax officers and others implicated in the case of Sergei Magnitsky.
A self-taught lawyer, Magnitsky worked for a law firm representing Hermitage Capital, one of the largest foreign investors in post-Soviet Russia. After Bill Browder, the company’s US-born chief executive was suddenly declared persona non grata, Magnitsky tracked a vast tax scam to which Hermitage had fallen victim. His mistake was to have had the courage to name names – specifically those of certain officials in the Interior Ministry. He was arrested in 2008, held in prison without charge, denied medical treatment for serious stomach illnesses and beaten. He lived only a year.
Browder has made strenuous efforts to secure posthumous justice for his lawyer. One of his main lines of activity has been lobbying the US Congress to pass a Magnitsky Act, which would allow the authorities to refuse visas and freeze the assets of individuals implicated in the case. The notion that one person might lobby the US Congress successfully for something that might be seen as marginal to the US national interest almost beggars belief. Browder’s own persuasive force was surely a factor, along with his deep pockets. But so did some fortunate timing. The measure was passed 10 days ago.
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