Mag­nit­sky Fam­ily Blasts the Green Party in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment for Host­ing Pre­miere of a False and Offen­sive Film about Sergei Mag­nit­sky by Andrei Nekrasov

 

27 April 2016 – The widow and mother of Sergei Mag­nit­sky have writ­ten to the Green/EFA fac­tion in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment (see their let­ter) protest­ing the pre­miere of a new false, offen­sive and defam­a­tory film by Russ­ian film­maker Andrei Nekrasov about their mur­dered hus­band and son. The pre­miere will take place this after­noon at 5:30 pm at the Euro­pean Parliament.

 

The pre­miere is spon­sored at the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment by the Greens/EFA Group, and hosted by Heidi Hau­tala, Finnish MEP, Vice Pres­i­dent of the Green/EFA Group, who was reported in the Finnish press to be film­maker Andrei Nekrasov’s girl­friend.

 

The Mag­nit­sky fam­ily expressed their indig­na­tion in the let­ter about this new attempt to blacken Sergei Magnitsky’s name. They view this film as pro­mot­ing the inter­ests of those who Sergei Mag­nit­sky exposed and who are afraid of the truth he had uncovered.

 

“This film has been made in the inter­est of those who are scared of the truth uncov­ered by Sergei Mag­nit­sky, – said Sergei Magnitsky’s mother and widow. – “By this let­ter the fam­ily of Sergei Mag­nit­sky state their highly neg­a­tive reac­tion to this film and protest against uncon­scionable attempts to blacken Sergei Magnitsky’s name. We are cat­e­gor­i­cally against pub­lic view­ing of the Andrei Nekrasov’s film, against its dis­tri­b­u­tion in any form.”

 

The let­ter from the Mag­nit­sky fam­ily states that the film con­tains false infor­ma­tion and lies about Sergei Mag­nit­sky. They are cat­e­gor­i­cally against any show­ing or dis­tri­b­u­tion of this film, includ­ing and espe­cially at the Euro­pean Parliament.

 

“We believe that the film by Andrei Nekrasov, based on his inven­tions, and not on doc­u­ments and facts, is degrad­ing to the dig­nity of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, degrad­ing to the deceased, who can­not defend him­self,” says the let­ter from the Mag­nit­sky family.

 

The film by Andrei Nekrasov and pro­ducer Torstein Grude of Piraya Films (Nor­way) is designed to per­pet­u­ate a Russ­ian gov­ern­ment dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign about the Mag­nit­sky case for a West­ern audi­ence. The film claims that Sergei Mag­nit­sky was not beaten in cus­tody, was not a lawyer, did not tes­tify against Russ­ian offi­cials, did not inves­ti­gate the US$230 mil­lion fraud, but instead com­mit­ted it him­self.
These false claims are con­tra­dicted by numer­ous doc­u­ments. In par­tic­u­lar, the claim that he wasn’t beaten is refuted by the pho­tos of his injuries from the state autopsy; his death cer­tifi­cate stat­ing he had a sus­pected cere­br­ial cra­nial injury; cer­tifi­cates from the deten­tion cen­ter where he died record­ing the appli­ca­tion of rub­ber batons; the Russ­ian state foren­sic opin­ion find­ing that Sergei Magnitsky’s injuries were con­sis­tent with blunt force trauma.
Magnitsky’s pro­fes­sion as a lawyer is demon­strated by his role in rep­re­sent­ing his mul­ti­ple clients in court, pro­vid­ing them legal advice, and his own tes­ti­mony iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as a lawyer.

 

The fact that Sergei Magnitsky’s tes­ti­fied against police offi­cers is proven by his tes­ti­mony from 5 June 2008 in which he described the theft of Hermitage’s com­pa­nies and fraud­u­lent claims against them, men­tion­ing police offi­cer Kuznetsov 14 times and police offi­cer Kar­pov 13 times, his 7 Octo­ber 2008 tes­ti­mony in which he con­firmed his 5 June 2008 tes­ti­mony and tes­ti­fied that the same group who stole Hermitage’s com­pa­nies stoleUS$230 mln from the Russ­ian budget.

 

The claim that Sergei Mag­nit­sky stole US$230 mln is refuted by the dis­cov­ery of the illicit pro­ceeds from the fraud on accounts con­nected to the Russ­ian offi­cials and mem­bers of their fam­i­lies; the joint travel of the crim­i­nals and Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials involved in the fraud; the fact that Mag­nit­sky helped Her­mitage report the crime three weeks before the crim­i­nals applied for the fraud­u­lent tax refund, and the fact that the same crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion did sim­i­lar crimes before and after.

 

The false and defam­a­tory alle­ga­tions about Sergei Mag­nit­sky that Nekrasov tries to make have been refuted in the past by inde­pen­dent inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions includ­ing the Coun­cil of Europe, the EU Par­lia­ment, the USState Depart­ment and many oth­ers who have stud­ied the case in detail. Fur­ther­more, the alle­ga­tions in the film are also con­tra­dicted by the Russ­ian government’s own evi­dence, court records, and expert conclusions.

 

In Sergei Magnitsky’s own hand-written state­ment, 4 days before his death, on 12 Novem­ber 2009, he wrote:

 

“By now it has been a year that I am being held hostage in prison in the inter­ests of the per­sons, who are inter­ested to ensure that those actu­ally guilty in the theft of 5.4 bil­lion rubles [US$230 mil­lion] from the bud­get will never be brought to jus­tice. … Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko does not want to iden­tify the other per­sons, who made this fraud pos­si­ble. He wants the lawyers of the Her­mitage Fund, who pur­sued and con­tinue to pur­sue attempts for this case be inves­ti­gated, be forced to emi­grate from their coun­try, in which crim­i­nal cases were fab­ri­cated against them on phony grounds, or like me be detained in custody.

 

My deten­tion in cus­tody has absolutely noth­ing in com­mon with the pur­pose of crim­i­nal jus­tice, which I referred to ear­lier. It has noth­ing in com­mon with the legal pur­pose of restraint listed in Arti­cle 97 of the Russ­ian Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dural Code, but this is a pun­ish­ment to which I have been sub­jected for merely defend­ing the inter­ests of my client and, ulti­mately, the inter­ests of the Gov­ern­ment, because should my client’s inter­ests be real­ized, should the law enforce­ment agen­cies stop obstruct­ing the inter­ests of my client and instead assisted them, then the theft of 5.4 bil­lion rubles from the state would not be pos­si­ble. The actual pur­pose of my crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion and my deten­tion in cus­tody are in con­flict with the law.”

 

The mother of Sergei Mag­nit­sky has pre­vi­ously writ­ten to the pro­ducer of the film, but received no reply.

 

Let­ter from Sergei Mag­nit­sky Fam­ily: http://russian-untouchables.com/docs/Letter%20from%20family%20%20on%20Nekrasov%20movie.pdf

 

For more infor­ma­tion please con­tact:​

 

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

 

+44 207 440 1777

e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

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