Russian court finds dead lawyer guilty of tax fraud
Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky might be dead – but that hasn’t stopped a Moscow court from finding him guilty of tax evasion in the country’s first posthumous trial.
The court also sentenced Magnitsky’s former client William Browder to nine years in jail on charges of evading $17m in taxes, after trying him in absentia. Both cases will serve to undermine the reputation of the Russian judiciary and president Vladimir Putin.
Sergei Magnitsky, who worked as an investment fund lawyer and accountant, was charged with tax evasion in 2008, and locked up in Moscow’s notorious Butyrka prison.
He had accused officials of complicity in a $230m tax fraud, and had reported it to the authorities before he was arrested.
He died less than a year later, after claiming he had been mistreated and deliberately denied medical care in order to force a confession. Even the Kremlin’s own human rights commission expressed concerns, concluding that the charges against him had been fabricated.
But although the case was closed after Magnitsky’s death, it was re-opened after William Browder launched his international campaign to seek justice and explose corruption.
They just made this stuff up. I don’t know why. I was never an enemy of Putin. William Browder
Mr Browder, a US born British citizen, who currently lives in London, had been the biggest portfolio investor in Russia, as head of Hermitage Capital Management. However he was forced to shut down all operations, before the Russian authorities siezed its assets.
As he was taking his fight against those he claimed were involved in Magnitsky’s death all the way to the US Congress, Mr Browder was accused of illegally purchasing shares in Gazprom when foreigners were not allowed to do so,
That fight ended in last year’s Magnitsky Act, a law banning those officials from travelling to the US, or from holding any bank accounts there. In response, Russia passed a law preventing Americans from adoping Russian orphans.
Browder has denied all the charges against him, describing the trial as politically motivated. He has told Forbes magazine “They just made this stuff up. I don’t know why. I was never an enemy of Putin. I never met the man.”
Show trial
In a statement, Hermitage Capital said: “This show trial confirms that Vladmir Putin is ready to sacrifice his international credibility to protect corrupt officials who murdered an innocent lawyer and stole £230m from the Russian state”.
Magnitsky’s relatives are furious over the conviction, and said the case was illegal. A family lawyer told the Russian news agency Rapsi: “I know that he committed no crimes.”
Mr Browder is unlikely to be extradited to Russia – Interpol has declined to put him on its international search list, after concluding that the trial was political.