Posts Tagged ‘ben hoyle’
British tycoon William Browder fears extradition to Russia
A British businessman is facing extradition from the UK to Russia after Moscow issued a request for an Interpol “blue notice” to locate and arrest him.
William Browder, a US-born businessman based in London who is campaigning against Russian officials implicated in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, his former lawyer, said the warrant meant that he risked being sent to Russia, tortured and killed if he were to travel anywhere in the world.
The move came to light on a day in which President Putin’s use of the courts to constrain freedom of speech was highlighted, with the Levada Centre, Russia’s only independent polling organisation, saying that it might have to close because of legal harassment.
Human rights organisations detect similar political motivation behind a crackdown on NGOs in Russia.
Mr Browder’s London-based company, Hermitage Capital Management, was one of the largest foreign investors in Russia from the mid 1990s until it became the victim of a massive tax fraud in 2007. He hired Mr Magnitsky to investigate.
The lawyer concluded that officials from the Russian Interior Ministry had colluded with police and organised criminals in a $230 million (£150 million) scam, but Mr Magnitsky was then arrested and accused of the fraud that he had apparently exposed.
In March he was posthumously put on trial, having died while in pre-trial detention. Mr Browder was named as an absent co-defendant.
Mr Browder said that Russia had now formally requested Interpol to lodge an “All Points Bulletin” to locate him. The organisation’s oversight committee, the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s files, will rule on the application this week.
Read More →
Facebook
Twitter
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
del.icio.us
Google Bookmarks
Yahoo! Buzz
Tumblr
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
NewsVine
Digg
Dead lawyer has a case to answer, judge in Sergei Magnitsky trial rules
A Moscow court yesterday began the first trial of a dead man in modern Russian history.
Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison three years ago after accusing police and government officials of stealing $230 million in a tax fraud, was put on trial for tax evasion despite the objections of his family, who have called it illegal and refused to have anything to do with the proceedings.
Nikolai Gerasimov, the late Mr Magnitsky’s state appointed defence lawyer, told Tverskoi district court that “there were no grounds for this prosecution to take place” and added that he had no business being there himself without the victim’s family’s approval.
However the judge Igor Alisov rejected each of Mr Gerasimov’s objections, stating that “the court has the right to examine the case against the dead man, including with the aims of rehabilitating him”.
Human rights activists, Mr Magnitsky’s family and his co-accused, the US born British businessman William Browder, who was also absent yesterday, have all described the trial as politically motivated.
They claim that it is an attempt to discredit the memory of Mr Magnitsky, whose name has become a touchstone for Russia’s deteriorating relations with the West. In December President Obama signed a law, now known as the Magnitsky Act, which introduced sanctions against a list of Russian officials linked to the lawyer’s death.
President Putin’s government retaliated with reciprocal legislation and a ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans, which has also been attacked by rights activists in Russia and abroad. buy viagra online hairy women https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php быстрые займы на карту
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
‘Farcical and sinister’ trial of lawyer in tax fraud case who died in prison
A macabre new chapter in legal history will begin in Moscow today when the Russian authorities put a dead man on trial for tax evasion.
Sergei Magnitsky’s mother, Natalya, said that the proceedings were immoral, illegal and designed to turn her son, a lawyer and anti-corruption whistleblower who died in prison three years ago, into a criminal.
Magnitsky’s co-accused, Bill Browder, a US-born British investor who was once one of the most vocal Western cheerleaders for the Putin Administration, said last night that the case would “bring Russia to an entirely new level of depravity; even during the worst moments of Stalin’s purges they never prosecuted dead people”.
Amnesty International has called the hearing — in a closed Moscow courtroom — “farcical but also deeply sinister”. According to Russian law, a criminal case can be restarted after a defendant’s death but usually only if the deceased’s relations are seeking his or her rehabilitation. Natalya Magnitskaya has written repeatedly to the authorities to say that neither she nor any of her son’s relations want the process to go ahead.
Last week Magnitsky’s brother-in-law was summoned for questioning by the Interior Ministry and then given a gag order. A scheduled pre-trial hearing in January was twice postponed because the family refused to recognise the case. The State has had to find its own defence lawyers as well as a prosecution team.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
