Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

William Browder: Many people in London or Geneva have blood on their hands from handling blood money from former Soviet states

Ukrainian Week

William Browder, the Founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, turned campaigner and began to wage war for justice after one of his lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, was killed in a Moscow prison.

As a result of Browder’s relentless campaign, the US adopted the so-called Magnitsky Act which imposes restrictions against a number of Russian citizens allegedly involved in Magnitsky’s tragic death. Magnitsky’s “crime” was that he uncovered a huge corruption scheme with trails leading to Russian official circles. In an interview for The Ukrainian Week, William Browder spoke about his fight for justice.

UW: What was the Magnitsky case all about?

Effectively what happened in the Magnitsky case is that the Russian government has refused to hold anyone accountable for the false arrest, torture and death of Sergey Magnitsky, or for the crimes that he uncovered. As a result the only way that we could get any measure of justice was to look outside of Russia in the form of different sanctions passed in different countries, freezing the assets of people who did this and so on. In order to do that, we had to tell the story of what happened to Sergey Magnitsky. The Russian government has been trying to thwart our every step of the way in terms of our objective of getting sanctions.

One of their options was through this latest High Court case in London which was filed by an unemployed ex-police officer, Pavel Karpov, in which he accuses us of libel. The objective of this was also to get an injunction so we could not say things about him or others. The High Court threw the case out saying that it was an abuse of the courts and that the whole approach here was artificial and incredible. As a result, the main tool they were trying to use to silence us failed and so, a big barrier to our speaking the truth and seeking justice has been taken away.