Posts Tagged ‘borshchev’
Activists say they’ll show how prison guards’ beating contributed to Russian attorney’s death
Activists plan to present evidence Tuesday that a Russian lawyer who accused officials of corruption died after a brutal beating by prison guards, saying investigators’ findings that a lack of medical treatment killed the man fell short of the full truth.
Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who worked for a large U.S. investment fund, died in prison in November 2009 after the pancreatitis he developed there went untreated. He had been arrested by Interior Ministry officials after he had accused them of using false tax papers to steal $230 million from the state.
Magnitsky’s case is being scrutinized by human rights activists and potential Western investors as a gauge of the Kremlin’s commitment to addressing corruption and allowing an independent legal system. Several prison officials were fired but no one has been charged either for his death or in the alleged tax fraud.
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Russia blames doctors, not police, in death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky
Russian authorities, under persistent international pressure to charge police officials in the pretrial detention death of a 37-year-old lawyer, on Monday blamed prison doctors instead.
Human rights activists, colleagues of Sergei Magnitsky and even U.S. senators have urged Russia to call Interior Ministry officials to account for arresting, prosecuting and then denying medical treatment to Magnitsky, who died in custody in November 2009.
But on Monday, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee, told the Interfax news agency that doctors would be prosecuted because of “flaws” in treatment that caused Magnitsky’s death.
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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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Poor Care Led to Death of Lawyer, Russia Says
Russia’s Investigative Committee on Monday acknowledged for the first time that 37-year-old Sergei L. Magnitsky died in pretrial detention because prison authorities denied him medical care, setting the stage for prosecution in a case that has come to epitomize Russia’s trouble establishing rule of law.
Mr. Magnitsky was drawn into a feud between his employer, an international investment company, and Russian law enforcement authorities, testifying that senior Interior Ministry officers had used his employer’s companies to embezzle $230 million from the Russian treasury. He was arrested and held without bail on charges of evading about $17.4 million in taxes. He died in 2009 after 11 months in custody.
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Russia says attorney died from lack of medical aid in jail, activist blames beating by guards
Russian investigators admitted Monday for the first time that a Russian lawyer who accused officials of corruption died in jail due to a lack of medical treatment _ but a rights activist said the death came after a brutal beating by prison guards.
Sergi Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who worked for a large U.S. investment fund, died in prison in November 2009 after the pancreatitis he developed there went untreated. He had been arrested by Interior Ministry officials after he had accused them of using false tax papers to steal $230 million from the state.
Magnitsky’s case is being scrutinized by human rights activists and potential Western investors as a gauge of the Kremlin’s commitment to addressing corruption and allowing an independent legal system. Several prison officials were fired but no one has been charged either for his death or in the alleged tax fraud.
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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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Panels probe Yukos and Magnitsky cases
The cases of Yukos and Magnitsky came into the public focus again over the week as experts of the European Court of Human Rights discussed the trials of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev and Russia’s Prosecutor-General probed the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. And a panel at the Russian president’s Human Rights Commission is currently working on a report to shed more light on these high-profile cases.
According to a report published by the European Court of Human Rights, the trial against former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky was not politically motivated.
In 2005 Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were sentenced to eight years in prison for embezzlement and tax evasion. In spring 2009 they faced another trial on charges of stealing oil and money-laundering. In December 2010, they were sentenced to 13.5 years in prison but the term was cut by one year later. In accordance with the court’s final sentence, the two will get out of prison in 2016.
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No Charges For Top Investigator In Magnitsky Case
Russian officials have exonerated one of their own in the prison death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management.
Russia’s powerful central prosecutors, the Investigative Committee, said Monday that Oleg Silchenko, the Interior Ministry official who ordered Magnitsky’s arrest and oversaw the investigation of the lawyer, had “not allowed” any illegal treatment in the case. The committee would not comment beyond its three-paragraph statement.
Silchenko was cleared despite a finding by the head of Russia’s prison oversight panel that Silchenko was to blame for Magnitsky’s treatment. Magnitsky died in a notorious Moscow prison in November 2009 at the age of 37. Human rights officials say he was tortured and denied adequate medical care; the latter claim was echoed by the oversight panel’s Valery Borshchev.
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Russian Investigator Cleared in Prison Death
Russian prosecutors exonerated the lead investigator in the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a hedge-fund attorney who died in jail after what colleagues said was an attempt to expose a massive theft of government funds in 2009.
Acitivists conducting an independent probe of the case called the ruling a whitewash of the case, despite President Dmitry Medvedev’s repeated promises of a full investigation. The handling of Mr. Magnitsky’s death has emerged as a litmus test of Mr. Medvedev’s willingness to investigate corruption in the security services, whose strength and clout have crept throughout the Russian economy.
Russia’s powerful Investigative Committee issued a three-paragraph statement Monday absolving the investigator in the case, Oleg Silchenko, of any blame, saying he had “not allowed” any legal violations in the case.
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