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

19 May 2016 – On 18 May 2016, the U.S. House For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee passed the Global Mag­nit­sky bill, which cre­ates con­se­quences for cor­rupt offi­cials and human rights abusers around the world in the form of visa bans and asset freezes.

 

Dur­ing the mark-up of the bill, Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabacher, from Orange County, Cal­i­for­nia, pro­posed an amend­ment to exclude Magnitsky’s name from the title of the bill. To jus­tify his amend­ment, Con­gress­man Rohrabacher referred to a “confus­ing sit­u­a­tion” and “seri­ous ques­tions” that “Mag­nit­sky was being held [in Russ­ian deten­tion] because the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment knew that there was $230 mil­lion of tax lia­bil­ity that they did not have the funds, that Mr Brow­der, that was his tax lia­bil­ity.”

 

Con­gress­man Rohrabacher’s remarks imply that Her­mitage did not pay the US$230 mil­lion in taxes to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, and the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about recov­er­ing these funds from the start. These claims are wrong, and are con­tra­dicted by the facts and pub­licly avail­able doc­u­ments, including:

 

(i) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that the US$230 mil­lion in taxes had been paid by the Her­mitage Fund’s Russ­ian com­pa­nies to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment in 2006,

ii) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that those US$230 mil­lion were stolen a year later through a mas­sive fraud per­pe­trated by a Russ­ian crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion com­pris­ing Russ­ian offi­cials, who stole Her­mitage com­pa­nies and then approved in one day the wire trans­fers of US$230 mil­lion away from the Russ­ian trea­sury to accounts opened by known Russ­ian crim­i­nals to a bank owned by a con­victed Russ­ian criminal;

(iii) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that Russ­ian author­i­ties ignored Hermitage’s orig­i­nal reports and com­plaints about the US$230 mil­lion fraud,

(iv) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that the Russ­ian author­i­ties did not look for the stolen money, and instead organ­ised retal­ia­tory crim­i­nal cases against Hermitage’s Russ­ian lawyers includ­ing Sergei Magnitsky.

The facts of the US$230 mil­lion fraud abet­ted by Russ­ian offi­cials are described in con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous com­plaintsfiled by Her­mitage, as well as in tes­ti­monies given by Sergey Mag­nit­sky nam­ing the per­pe­tra­tors, bank state­ments pro­vided by whistle­blower Alexan­der Perepilich­nyy show­ing the acqui­si­tion of multi-million dol­lar prop­er­ties and cash going to accounts of and for the ben­e­fit of Russ­ian offi­cials involved with the US$230 mil­lion fraud, mil­lions of dol­lars in assets and lav­ish lifestyles of Russ­ian offi­cials impli­cated in Magnitsky’s tes­ti­mony for their role in the US$230 mil­lion fraud, and, most recently, the Panama Papers’ leak show­ing some of the stolenUS$230 mil­lion reach­ing the cor­po­rate account of Sergei Roldugin, a close friend of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.
Con­gress­man Rohrabacher’s remarks are also con­tra­dicted by find­ings of inde­pen­dent author­i­ta­tive bod­ies, includ­ing the Coun­cil of Europe, who con­ducted a year-long inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of the Mag­nit­sky case, and sum­ma­rized its con­clu­sions in a detailed report adopted in Jan­u­ary 2014, called “Refus­ing Impunity for the Killers of Sergei Mag­nit­sky.” The report­found the exis­tence in Rus­sia of a “mas­sive cover-up involv­ing senior offi­cials of the com­pe­tent min­istries, the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee and even cer­tain courts” and urged that “the cover-up must be reversed and the true cul­prits must be held to account.”

 

In sup­port of his remarks against Brow­der, Con­gress­man Rohrabacher brought up two arti­cles which pre­sented attacks on Brow­der by the legal defense team of Denis Kat­syv, the son of a Russ­ian offi­cial, who is unsuc­cess­fully try­ing to appeal a US court order and unfreeze US$14 mil­lion of his assets seized under the USGovernment’s money laun­der­ing and civil for­fei­ture action in rela­tion to the Mag­nit­sky case. The U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice has described Katsyv’s alle­ga­tions in rela­tion to William Brow­der as “false,”“wild”, and “untrue,” and his con­duct — as “egre­gious” and “inexcusable.”

 

Con­gress­man Rohrabacher also crit­i­cized Brow­der for threat­en­ing legal action against NBC. The story he is refer­ring to was an attempt by NBC’s reporter Ken Dilan­ian to repeat alle­ga­tions from Katsyv’s team that Sergei Mag­nit­sky wasn’t beaten in cus­tody and was never a whistle-blower. Both claims were in con­tra­dic­tion to pub­licly avail­able evi­dence from the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment. Promi­nent Russ­ian human rights defend­ers, Lud­mila Alex­eeva and Valery Borschev, who per­son­ally inves­ti­gated the Mag­nit­sky case, spoke out against Ken Dilanian’s attempt to mis­rep­re­sent key facts about the Magnitsky’s case in pub­lic state­ments and in an open let­ter to NBCUni­ver­sal CEO Steve Burke. Ken Dilan­ian had pre­vi­ously allowed his sources to influ­ence or write his con­tent.

 

After Rohrabacher’s inter­ven­tion, the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee sub­se­quently voted to reject his amend­ment and passed the Global Mag­nit­sky bill, which will now be up for a vote on the House floor. The date of the vote is not known yet.

 

The Global Mag­nit­sky bill is named after Sergei Mag­nit­sky, Hermitage’s lawyer who in 2007 – 2008 uncov­ered a mas­sive fraud per­pe­trated by Russ­ian offi­cials and organ­ised crim­i­nals to steal US$230 mil­lion that the three com­pa­nies of the Her­mitage Fund had paid to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment in profit tax a year before, in 2006.  Sergei Mag­nit­sky tes­ti­fied about the fraud, named offi­cials involved, was then arrested by impli­cated offi­cials, kept in cus­tody with­out trial for 358 days in tor­tur­ous con­di­tions, denied fam­ily vis­its and med­ical care, and was killed on 16 Novem­ber 2009 at the age of 37, leav­ing a mother, a wife and two children.

 

In 2010, Sergei Mag­nit­sky was posthu­mously awarded by Trans­parency Inter­na­tional, a global anti-corruption organ­i­sa­tion, with ‘Integrity Award’ in recog­ni­tion of his stance against Russ­ian cor­rup­tion and offi­cial abuse.

 

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact:

 

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

http://www.billbrowder.com/

https://twitter.com/Billbrowder