Press Release
Hermitage Capital

19 March 2013 – The family of Sergei Magnitsky has rejected the claims of the Russian investigative authorities that there were no signs of crime in his death in custody at the age of 37.

“This [the decision by Russian authorities to close the case into the death of Sergei Magnitsky] was expected. I don’t believe that it is possible to obtain justice in Russia today because there are people in power interested in concealing it and someone is directing this process,” said the mother of Sergei Magnitsky.

“They have concealed from us the details of the death of my husband. However, even what is already known shows that his death was no accident,” said Mr Magnitsky’s widow.

“Today’s decision by the Russian investigative authorities is a clear indication that they have decided to ignore the conclusions of two independent domestic commissions on the case. It is a sign of an overwhelming government cover up, and the extent the Russian government is ready to go to protect those exposed by Mr Magnitsky for committing enormous crimes against the state,” said Hermitage Capital representative.

There is a wealth of information that was previously released on Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in custody as well as evidence of his beating just before he was found dead on the floor of an isolation cell (http://russian-untouchables.com/rus/docs/P01E.pdf). None of this evidence has been properly investigated, and no officials have been prosecuted for the $230 m theft uncovered by Mr Magnitsky which led to his arrest after testifying against those officials.

In October last year, Natalia Magnitskaya, the mother of Sergei Magnitsky, filed a claim with the European Court of Human Rights. The complaint asks the ECHR to prosecute the Russian Federation for violating five articles of the European Convention of Human Rights: Article 2 (denial of right to life); Article 3 (torture); Article 5 (unlawful detention); Article 10 (retaliation against whistle-blowers); and Article 13 (failure to provide an effective remedy) (http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/litigation/magnitsky-v-russia)

The Russian Investigative Committee announced today that they have closed the investigation of the death of Sergei Magntitsky due to “no event of crime” having been identified (http://www.sledcom.ru/actual/287357/).

“The people who killed Sergei Magnitsky may be able to avoid justice in Russia but they won’t be able to outside of Russia,” said a Hermitage Capital spokesperson.

For further information please contact:
Hermitage Capital
Phone:             +44 207 440 1777
Email:              info@lawandorderinrussia.org
Website:           http://lawandorderinrussia.org
Facebook:        http://on.fb.me/hvIuVI
Twitter:            @KatieFisher__
Livejournal:     //hermitagecap.livejournal.com/

Special Report – Reposted from the International Bar Association

Russia is set to make history as the country’s first modern-day posthumous trial gets underway in Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court.

The case, involving deceased defendant Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in pre-trial detention in a Moscow prison cell in 2009, has attracted worldwide media attention and brought the issue of corruption in Russia and problems with the country’s judicial and penitentiary systems all firmly under the international spotlight.

Another quirk of the trial will see the other defendant, Bill Browder, the founder of investment fund Hermitage Capital and Magnitsky’s client at the time of his arrest, examined in absentia, making him one of the few foreigners ever to stand trial in absentia in Russia.

After several months of delayed proceedings, a judge ruled on 4 March that the trial should go ahead despite the tense political backdrop between Russia and the US. Browder, who has been instrumental in leading an international campaign to investigate Magnitsky’s death and bring those guilty to account (Russian lawyer’s death in pre-trial detention – one year on), succeeded in bringing his campaign to the US last year and in December President Barack Obama signed into law the Sergei Magnitsky Law of Accountability Act. Russia reacted strongly to the news by enforcing a ban on Americans from adopting Russian citizens.

In spite of the huge amount of international attention that the case has attracted, a recent study by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) suggests that the Russian public are not as aware of the Magnitsky case as might be expected, notes Alexander Nadmitov, managing partner of Nadmitov Ivanov & Partners. ‘According to the poll, on 15–16 December 2012, 35 per cent of Russians knew nothing about Sergei Magnitsky,’ he says. ‘53 per cent had only heard of his surname and knew nothing else about Sergei Magnitsky, six per cent said that he died in the preliminary detention jail, two per cent said that he was a fighter against corruption who exposed financial fraud, one per cent of respondents had heard about him in the connection with the Magnitsky List, two per cent said that he was a lawyer and an advocate of a foreign company and one per cent said that he was a public politician.’

Although the ordeal may have caused a relatively small stir among the Russian public, undoubtedly the court case will prove an important milestone in the local legal market. The preliminary hearing for the trial was initially postponed on 28 January after Magnitsky’s family and lawyers refused to take part, but on 18 February it was revealed that the state had appointed two lawyers to represent Magnitsky and Browder.

The two lawyers in question, Nikolai Gerasimov for Magnitsky and Kirill Goncharov for Browder, respectively, practise at Law Office No5, which is located in the same district as the trial is taking place. The appointments have been made in spite of an urgent plea in January by Magnitsky’s mother Natalya Magnitskaya, to the chairman of the Moscow Bar Association Henri Reznik to ask its members not to take part in the trial.

However, as Nadmitov explains, under Russian law lawyers can be appointed to a trial at the court’s discretion. ‘While I don’t know the circumstances of a criminal case against Sergei Magnitsky and Bill Browder, nor am I acquainted with the case materials, as regards procedural matters, under Articles 49-51 of Russia’s Criminal Procedure Code, investigators or the court have a right to appoint lawyers for defendants in certain circumstances,’ he says. Moreover, according to the rules of the Moscow Bar Association, any lawyers appointed to the case face disbarment if they refuse to take part in the trial.

Meanwhile, Jana Kobzova, a policy fellow and wider Europe programme coordinator at the European Council on Foreign Relations, sees the Magnitsky trial as just the latest indication that rule of law is severely lacking in Russia. ‘The posthumous trial is sadly only the more visible example of the current reality of Russia which is that there’s no rule of law and the law is twisted, tweaked and mended as needed and required by the ruling elite,’ she says. ‘Strangely, the more absurd the trial is, the more they’ll press ahead with it.’

While Kobzova is hesitant to draw parallels with the Magnitsky trial and Stalin’s show trials, the general purpose behind the trial is all too similar, she says. ‘It’s of course not comparable at all, but as Ivan Krastev argues when one looks back in history, the show trials in the 1930s in Russia took place not to fool people into believing that the defendants admit their mistakes and wrongs, but to show to everyone that the state has capacity to break down each individual and force them into admitting things they never did, despite everyone knowing that what they confessed doing they’ve never actually done.’

Last December 2012, in the only court case related to Magnitsky that has taken place to date,  a Russian court cleared prison doctor Dmitry Kratov of negligence while Magnitksy was in his care. As for the verdict for Magnitsky’s own trial, it doesn’t bode well when you consider that the conviction rate for criminal trials in Russia is over 99 per cent.

Press Release
Hermitage Capital

11 March 2013  – The widow of Sergei Magntisky has appealed to the conscience of all those participating in the trial against her dead husband, to cease their actions and end this unprecedented spectacle.

“Because of the posthumous trial against my dead husband, Sergei Magnitsky, by the Tverskoi Court in Moscow, I state that I view this process as defiling his memory,” said Natalia Zharikova in today’s statement to court.

“I believe that this proceeding is unlawful and contrary to any universally recognized legal norms and morals ,” said Natalia Zharikova.

“I think that if any of its participants have a conscience – and this is key not only in human morality, but also in the Russian criminal law – they have a duty to refuse to participate in this blasphemy,” said the widow of Sergei Magnitsky.

Russian authorities have put Sergei Magnitsky on trial more than three years after his death and also have posthumously accused Mr Magnitsky of perpetrating the $230 million theft that he had uncovered and exposed. Last December, the Russian court also acquitted the only official brought to trial for the denial of medical care to him in custody concluding that the official acted in full accordance with his duties.

In custody, Mr Magnitsky wrote dozens of complaints about his mistreatment. He stated that the case against him was in retribution for his role in helping his client, the Hermitage Fund, to defend itself from the criminal conspiracy which stole three of the Hermitage’s Russian companies and $230 million in taxes they had paid in taxes to the Russian government.

In his last complaint to the court filed three days before his death, on 13 November 2009, Sergei Magnitsky stated his determination to bring to justice those responsible for the falsification of the criminal case against him.

 

For further information please contact:
Hermitage Capital
Phone:             +44 207 440 1777
Email:              info@lawandorderinrussia.org
Website:           http://lawandorderinrussia.org
Facebook:        http://on.fb.me/hvIuVI
Twitter:            @KatieFisher__
Livejournal:     //hermitagecap.livejournal.com/

Hivos and FRIDE are pleased to share with you the first publication of the project ‘Transitions and Geopolitics in the Arab World: links and implications for international actors’. This project aims to assess current trends in the Middle East and North of Africa  and their linkages with domestic reform dynamics, in order to explore  how these developments are likely to impact on the work and standing of  international actors.

For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood focused on the need to uphold and defend Muslim identity in order to maintain organisational unity, spending less time on developing alternative policies to those of the regime. While successful in the short term, in the medium and long terms this strategy could lead to the marginalisation of the Brotherhood and its replacement by other more sophisticated forms of religiously-motivated political and social activism. Ibrahim El Houdaibi argues that its coming to power creates new challenges for the organisation that will define the group’s future path: the relation between religion and state; the shift  from identity politics to policy questions; the ‘political relevance’ versus ‘religious authenticity’ dilemma; and the balance of power  between the organisation and its members.

This is the link of the paper:
www.hivos.net/Hivos-Knowledge-Programme/Themes/Civil-Society-in-West-Asia/Publications/Working-Papers/From-Prison-to-Palace-the-Muslim-Brotherhood-s-challenges-and-responses-in-post-revolution-Egypt