Posts Tagged ‘wall street journal’
WSJ: Russia’s Dead Soul
We wrote recently about Russia’s horrific injustice and state brutality as epitomized by the outrageous case of Sergei Magnitsky, a fairly young lawyer who found himself framed, tortured and effectively murdered by Vladimir “KGB” Putin’s police state for having stumbled, apparently inadvertently, into one of the largest cases of tax fraud in Russia’s history. As befits the perverted nature of Putinian Russia, it was police committing the fraud.
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Russia Charges 2 Doctors Over Magnitsky’s Death
Russia said it charged two doctors at a Moscow jail with causing the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, AFP reported.
Magnitsky’s death ignited worldwide outrage, and he has been hailed as a martyr by activist groups. The Investigative Committee said it had “established a direct link between Magnitsky’s death and actions of the doctors in the jail,” and charged doctors Larisa Litvinova and Dmitry Kratov.
Litvinova is charged with negligence and manslaughter, and AFP reports she could face three years behind bars. Kratov is charged with carelessness and could face up to five years in prison. Neither appeared to be contacted for comment by AFP.
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Russia Starts Probe Into Lawyer’s Death
Russian investigators on Monday launched a criminal investigation of two prison officials—one of them a doctor—in the case of the 2009 death of a hedge-fund lawyer who was jailed after alleging officers of Russia’s Interior Ministry took part in a $230 million tax fraud.
Human-rights activists hailed the probe as a possible sign of progress, noting that it was the first time government officials specifically blamed anyone since Sergei Magnitsky’s death in a Moscow jail.
More criminal cases are possible, said Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, the government’s leading investigative organ.
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Russia Probe Cites Officials in Death
Russian investigators on Monday blamed prison personnel in the 2009 death of a jailed hedge-fund attorney—the first time the government has acknowledged any official wrongdoing in the case.
Human-rights activists welcomed the announcement, but said they feared that the government could use the prison officials as scapegoats while ignoring any higher-level complicity.
The lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, had accused Interior Ministry officials of stealing $230 million in Russian budget funds in concert with tax officials.
Mr. Magnitsky’s employer, the U.K.-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital, has alleged that instead of investigating the theft, investigators tried to force him to recant by jailing him in squalid conditions and withholding vital medical care.
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Measuring Russian Risk
Bill Browder’s Feb. 24 op-ed, “Sergei Magnitsky and the Rule of Law in Russia,” notes Moscow’s attempts to reassure Western investors of Russia’s openness and attractiveness.
But this ignores the hard, cruel reality that the Russian state has become—a gangster film from top to bottom. And as in all gangster movies, the spoils are doled out by the dons and the dons are ever-wary of being knocked off themselves.
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Biden Decries Russian Corruption During Visit
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told a university audience here Thursday that “only bold and genuine change” on corruption, the rule of law and democracy in Russia will guarantee improved economic relations between the former Cold War superpowers.
Speaking at Moscow State University on a weeklong European swing, he addressed what he called impediments to business investment, citing the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who was arrested and died in custody in 2009 after accusing the police of corruption; demonstrators who were beaten and detained last year while advocating for the right to peacefully assemble; and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch whose second trial on new charges of embezzlement and money laundering was clouded with allegations of misconduct.
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Davos Man and Khodorkovsky
The Russian phrase for it is pryamoi razgovor, and it’s rare to hear from Russia’s political elite: straight talk. But that’s what a senior adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev delivered last week about the latest show trial of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Mr. Khodorkovsky was Russia’s richest man until he earned the ire of Vladimir Putin by supporting liberal political causes and attempting to open his oil company to the West. Imprisoned in 2003 on charges of tax evasion, he was set to go free this year. But he was retried last year for different crimes and sentenced to six more years in Siberian prison.
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