25 May 2016 – The Russian Investigative Committee has rejected William Browder’s criminal complaint against Russian General Prosecutor Yuri Chaika. The complaint asked the Russian authorities to investigate Chaika for making knowingly false accusations of triple homicide against William Browder in a December 2015 letter Chaika published in the Russian newspaper “Kommersant.” In that article, Chaika accused Browder of murdering three Russian citizens.

“Chaika shouldn’t be allowed to abuse his position and make such wild and knowingly false statements against me purely to seek revenge for his false assumption that I was involved in exposing the abuse and corruption of his office,” said William Browder, author of the New-York Times best-seller “Red Notice. How I Became Putin’s No 1 Enemy.“

Chaika’s Kommersant letter also blamed William Browder for financing and backing the YouTubeexpose of corruption and criminality involving Chaika’s sons prepared by Russian anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny.

1. Ustyugov, an official in the Russian Investigative Committee, issued the rejection to William Browder’s complaint, stating there were “no grounds to register this application as a crime report and conduct a probe into it.”

The Russian Investigative Committee’s official who prepared the refusal was officer Marina Lomonosova, who previously was in charge of investigating the death of Sergei Magnitsky in Russian police custody.

Judge Artur Karpov of Basmanny District Court of Moscow agreed with the Investigative Committee’s inaction, saying “there were no reasons to distrust the documents provided by the criminal prosecution bodies.”

Moscow district city Judge Artur Karpov has previously refused complaints from Sergei Magnitsky’s mother seeking an investigation of her son’s torture and murder in detention. He also sanctioned arrests of Bolotnaya Square protesters and the house arrest of Alexei Navalny.

For more information, please contact:

Justice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

www.billbrowder.com

https://twitter.com/Billbrowder

21 May 2016 – Within 24 hours of the fail­ure of Russian-sponsored lob­by­ists to remove the name “Mag­nit­sky” from the Global Mag­nit­sky Act at the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, at 19:39 on 19 May 2016, the Russ­ian Gen­eral Prosecutor’s Office responded by mak­ing a pub­lic announce­ment of the con­tin­u­a­tion of crim­i­nal cases against William Brow­der, leader of the Global Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice Move­ment, and his colleagues.

 

Lob­by­ists rep­re­sent­ing a Russ­ian national who is under inves­ti­ga­tion for money laun­der­ing by the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice, approached a num­ber of mem­bers of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee and staffers in the week of May 16, 2016 try­ing to con­vince the con­gress­men to vote in favor of an amend­ment to remove the name of Mag­nit­sky from the Global Mag­nit­sky Act.

 

They made a num­ber of defam­a­tory com­ments about William Brow­der, the head of the Global Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice Cam­paign, to jus­tify their request. Their efforts failed, except on Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dana Rohrabacher, who pro­posed the amend­ment. The House For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee rejected the amendment.

 

“In response to the fail­ure of Russ­ian state-sponsored smear cam­paign against William Brow­der in Wash­ing­ton, the Russ­ian Gen­eral Prosecutor’s Office decided to re-announce its ille­git­i­mate and polit­i­cally moti­vated pro­ceed­ings against him in Rus­sia as “news.” These alle­ga­tions are three years old and have been pre­vi­ously rejected as mer­it­less and polit­i­cally moti­vated by INTERPOL and by the Coun­cil of Europe, com­pris­ing 47 mem­ber states,” said Her­mitage representative.

 

The re-announced crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings in Rus­sia relate to The Her­mitage Fund trad­ing shares in Gazprom nearly twenty years ago. The share pur­chases had been reviewed at the time by Gazprom itself, the Russ­ian Fed­eral Secu­ri­ties Com­mis­sion, the Russ­ian tax author­i­ties and the Prosecutor’s Office who all con­firmed the law­ful­ness of the transactions.

 

“The unfounded, arbi­trary and selec­tive accu­sa­tions in this case are hall­marks of polit­i­cally moti­vated abuse of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which has been char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Mag­nit­sky case in Rus­sia,” said Her­mitage representative.

 

The Russ­ian state attack on William Brow­der esca­lated since the press con­fer­ence of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin in Decem­ber 2012 where he was asked about Sergei Mag­nit­sky on seven occa­sions. In response, Pres­i­dent Putin said that he knew that Sergei Mag­nit­sky was not a human rights defender, but “Mr Browder’s lawyer,” and promised to “delve deeper” in the case. A month later, in Jan­u­ary 2013, Russ­ian author­i­ties opened crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against William Brow­der in rela­tion to invest­ing in Gazprom shares nearly 20 years ago. This same case was the sub­ject of the Russ­ian Gen­eral Prosecutor’s announce­ment on 19 May 2016, one day after Russ­ian pro­pa­ganda efforts failed to remove the name of Sergei Mag­nit­sky from the title of the Global Mag­nit­sky leg­is­la­tion in Wash­ing­ton, in spite of enlist­ing a web of lob­by­ists and con­sul­tants of all kinds.

 

The Russ­ian anti-Magnitsky offen­sive in Wash­ing­ton was coor­di­nated with the attacks on civil activists at home, with at least two new crim­i­nal probes announced against anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny – one for allegedly slan­der­ing Pavel Kar­pov, sanc­tioned for his role in the Mag­nit­sky case; and another for involve­ment in a pur­ported CIA oper­a­tion to mur­der Sergei Mag­nit­sky in Russ­ian police cus­tody on instruc­tions from William Browder.

 

“The Russ­ian Prosecutor’s Office is spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and abus­ing its crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to pro­tect cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials and crim­i­nals who stole US$230 mil­lion. It is this brazen impunity which neces­si­tates West­ern Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions,” said William Browder.

 

Sergei Mag­nit­sky, Hermitage’s lawyer who uncov­ered the US$230 mil­lion fraud and tes­ti­fied about the com­plic­ity of Russ­ian offi­cials in it, was falsely arrested, detained for 358 days with­out trial, tor­tured and killed in Russ­ian police cus­tody at the age of 37, leav­ing a wife and two children.

 

The unprece­dented events of this case are described in the New-York Times best-seller “Red Notice. How I Became Putin’s No 1 Enemy” by William Brow­der, leader of the global Mag­nit­sky jus­tice move­ment, and in a series of explo­sive cam­paign videos on Youtube chan­nel “Russ­ian Untouch­ables.”

 

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact:

 

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

billbrowder.com

twitter.com/Billbrowder