Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

The Magnitsky Money: From Russia…And Then What?

Radio Free Europe

What if $230 million went missing and no one wanted to get it back? That is the puzzling question posed by Russia’s years of unwillingness to investigate the well-documented fraud claims made by lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky.

At least half a dozen European Union countries, plus Switzerland, have been looking into where the so-called Magnitsky money might have gone. But Russia has done virtually nothing to investigate the allegations and documentation that Magnitsky brought to authorities before his death in pretrial detention in 2009.

Earlier this month, attention was focused on Moldova, which is looking into a complaint filed in June 2012 by Hermitage Capital Management, the firm that Magnitsky represented and which was also an alleged victim of the fraud.

‘Documentary Evidence’

Hermitage CEO William Browder — whom Russia has accused of fraud in an unrelated case — told RFE/RL’s Moldovan Service what he is seeking in Chisinau.

“We have given [the Moldovan authorities] documentary evidence that shows money flowing into accounts at Banca de Economii and then money flowing out from those accounts,” Browder says. “We’d like to have the information on who managed those accounts, who was responsible for opening those accounts, what kind of due diligence was done in terms of who was behind those accounts. And ultimately we’d like to have the police and the prosecutor prosecute any person in Moldova or elsewhere who was responsible for laundering this money through Moldova.”