Posts Tagged ‘bloomberg’
Russia to Prosecute Officials Linked to Magnitsky’s Death
Bloomberg
Russian prosecutors plan to charge officials linked to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management Ltd. who died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after almost a year in pre-trial detention. Officials will face criminal prosecution for refusing timely medical treatment to Magnitsky, who was 37 when he died of heart failure, including on the day of his death, Russia’s Investigative Committee said today on its website.
“The failure to provide Magnitsky with adequate medical treatment was a direct cause of his death,” the committee said, citing the results of a medical probe.
The announcement came less than two months after President Dmitry Medvedev said all guilty parties in Magnitsky’s “tragic” death should be punished. The lawyer said he was abused and denied medical care to force him to drop allegations of a $230 million tax fraud by Interior Ministry officials.
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Kremlin Ombudsman Urges Prosecution Over Hermitage Death
A senior Russian investigator should be prosecuted for his role in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the Hermitage Capital Management Ltd. lawyer who died in November 2009 after almost a year in pre-trial detention, a presidential human rights ombudsman said.
The comments from Valery Borshchev, a member of the human rights council set up by President Dmitry Medvedev, came a day after the Investigative Committee said Oleg Silchenko hadn’t committed any legal violations in prosecuting Magnitsky, who was 37 when he died of heart failure. Borshchev’s committee is conducting its own probe.
Silchenko refused Magnitsky’s request for an ultra-sound scan and operation, Borshchev said today by telephone. “This refusal played a central role in Magnitsky’s death, so this is enough to bring charges against Silchenko,” he said.
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Browder’s Russia Money-Laundering Allegations Spark Swiss Investigation
Switzerland has opened a money- laundering probe at the request of Hermitage Capital Management Ltd., the first criminal investigation outside Russia linked to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison.
The allegations involving a former Russian tax official are the most recent lodged by Hermitage founder William Browder as he asks authorities around the world to sanction officials he blames for Magnitsky’s death. The lawyer, who alleged Interior Ministry officials fraudulently collected a $230 million tax refund using documents seized from Hermitage, died in 2009 after a year in pre-trial detention.
“It’s been impossible to get any kind of real criminal investigation in Russia,” Browder said yesterday by phone. “It’s highly significant that a Western law enforcement agency is taking this seriously and is launching an investigation.”
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Hermitage Capital Sues Russian Ministry Over Tax Investigation
Hermitage Capital Management, the $1.2 billion hedge fund run by William Browder, sued Russia’s Interior Ministry, accusing it of opening an improper tax investigation that defrauded the government out of $230 million.
Hermitage filed a lawsuit at Russia’s Constitutional Court last month that says the ministry had no justification for opening a 2007 tax probe into a company the hedge fund advised on investments in the country. The probe allowed the ministry to obtain Hermitage documents that were used to steal taxes the London-based hedge fund had paid to the Russian government, Hermitage said in a statement released today.
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New ski resorts — in Russia’s restive Caucasus
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Russia’s government unveils a plan to build five ski resorts in the majestic, largely uncharted slopes of the Northern Caucasus. And asks executives at the World Economic Forum to join in the $15 billion investment.
The problem: The Wednesday night presentation came two days after a bomb blast pummeled the international arrivals terminal of Moscow’s largest airport, killing 35. Suspicions immediately fell on extremists from the Northern Caucasus — including Chechnya, which fought two wars with Moscow over the last 16 years, and the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan, future home to one of the new resorts.
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Hermitage Fund’s William Browder
The Hermitage Fund founder and former Putin ally on how exposing corruption in Russia upended his business and changed his worldview.
My grandfather was the general secretary of the American Communist Party. And as I was finishing business school in 1989, I had a romantic attraction to the Soviet Union as it was opening for business. As an investment banker in 1992, I went to the Russian town of Murmansk to advise the managers of a state-owned fleet of 100 ships. Each ship cost $20 million, but the managers were being offered the chance to buy 51 percent of the entire fleet for $2.5 million. I realized that to make money in Russia, you had to invest directly in assets that were being privatized. In 1996, I moved to Moscow and set up the Hermitage Fund, which became the largest foreign investment fund in the country.
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