Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Russia appoints lawyer to represent Magnitsky ahead of posthumous trial

The Lawyer

The Russian government has appointed a lawyer to represent Sergei Magnitsky in a trial now set to take place on 4 March.

The court date was announced during a preliminary hearing earlier today at Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court. The hearing date was originally scheduled for 28 January but was postponed after Magnitsky’s family and their lawyers refused to take part in the trial (29 January 2013).

It was confirmed today that the state has now appointed Nikolai Gerasimov to represent dead lawyer Magnitsky and Kirill Goncharov to represent Bill Browder, the founder of UK-based investment fund Hermitage Capital, throughout the trial.

Both lawyers are members of the Moscow Bar Association and their appointments come in spite of a formal appeal by Natalya Magnitskaya, Magnitsky’s mother, to Bar Association chairman Henri Reznik to urge all of its members to not participate as ‘state-appointed counsel’ in the trial (29 January 2013).

According to a statement by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office in November 2012, both Magnitsky and Browder stand accused of evading an estimated 522 million roubles in taxes. The decision to try Magnitsky posthumously first emerged in August 2011, when a Russian constitutional court ruled that the death of a defendant should not automatically render an investigation closed.