Ger­man TV Sta­tion ZDF Con­firmed It Will Not Show Nekrasov’s Anti-Magnitsky Pro­pa­ganda Film

16 May 2016 – ZDF, a Ger­man public-service tele­vi­sion broad­caster, has con­firmed that they will not show Andrei Nerkrasov’s anti-Magnitsky pro­pa­ganda film. Pre­vi­ously, Sergei Magnitsky’s widow and mother expressed their cat­e­gor­i­cal objec­tion to dis­tri­b­u­tion in any form of the Nekrasov’s film about Sergei Mag­nit­sky because of its false and slan­der­ous content.

ZDF has now for­mally con­firmed its com­mit­ment to not broad­cast Nekrasov’s film. This fol­lows a sim­i­lar com­mit­ment by the French TV net­work ARTE.

“This film is full of lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion about the Mag­nit­sky case,” said William Brow­der, leader of the global Jus­tice cam­paign for Sergei Mag­nit­sky and author of the New York Times best-seller “Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s No 1 Enemy.”

“It is my duty to Sergei’s mem­ory and to his fam­ily to pre­serve the truth and pro­tect his legacy,” con­tin­ued Browder.

Nekrasov’s film con­tains false state­ments about Sergei Mag­nit­sky, which are refuted by inde­pen­dent inter­na­tional bod­ies, includ­ing the Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly of the Coun­cil of Europe, com­pris­ing del­e­gates from 47 states, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, the US Depart­ment, and the US Con­gress, among others.

Russ­ian human rights activists, includ­ing vet­eran dis­si­dent and head of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lud­mila Alex­eeva and Valery Borschev, head of the Moscow human rights com­mis­sion, who inves­ti­gated Magnitsky’s death, spoke out against the attempts by Andrei Nekrasov to spread the lies in this case for the ben­e­fit of those who have been exposed by Magnitsky’s tes­ti­mony of involve­ment in the fraud and broader cor­rup­tion aris­ing out of Panama Papers, and are being affected by Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions (State­ment by Lud­mila Alex­eeva:http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/72940.html; State­ment by Valery Borschev:http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/72931.html).

Nekrasov’s anti-Magnitsky film was sched­uled for broad­cast on ARTE, a Franco-German cul­tural TV net­work, on 3 May 2016. ARTE has can­celled the sched­uled broad­cast of Nekrasov’s anti-Magnitsky film, and ZDF has now con­firmed that it will not show this film.

The deci­sion not to broad­cast Nekrasov’s film by ZDF and ARTE fol­low the ear­lier deci­sion not to air the Nekrasov’s film at the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment for sim­i­lar rea­sons. The screen­ing of Nekrasov’s film was orig­i­nally sched­uled there as a pri­vate ini­tia­tive of Heidi Hau­tala, Andrei Nekrasov’s girl­friend and a mem­ber of the Euro­pean par­lia­ment from Finland.

ZDF is based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an inde­pen­dent non-profit insti­tu­tion, which was founded by all fed­eral states of Germany.

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact:

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org 

www.lawandorderinrussia.org