Death of Hermitage Lawyer in Russian Prison

November 17, 2009

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Death of Her­mitage Lawyer in Russ­ian Prison

17 Novem­ber 2009  —  Last night Sergey Mag­nit­skiy, a 37-year old legal adviser and father of two, died in Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial deten­tion cen­ter in Moscow.

Since 2007, Sergey Mag­nit­skiy was defend­ing the Her­mitage Fund and HSBC against seri­ous frauds per­pe­trated with the involve­ment of Russ­ian offi­cials. Sergey Mag­nit­skiy gave for­mal tes­ti­monies nam­ing offi­cers of the Inte­rior Min­istry and their role in the seizure of Her­mitage Fund/HSBC com­pa­nies. Shortly after his tes­ti­mony, on 24 Novem­ber 2008, Sergey Mag­nit­skiy was arrested by the team of the same Inte­rior Min­istry offi­cers named in his testimony.

Sergey Mag­nit­skiy was refused bail and kept in deten­tion for a year with­out trial. Yes­ter­day, Sergey’s lawyers came to see him at a planned inves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dure at Butyrka deten­tion cen­ter and were denied access to him. The lawyers were told Sergey could not leave his cell because of his state of health. Inves­ti­ga­tors Oleinik and Silchenko refused to show a med­ical report about Sergey’s health to his lawyers, stat­ing it was an “inter­nal matter”.

Sergey’s mother was the first to find out about the death of her son this morn­ing. She came to Butyrka deten­tion cen­ter to give him some per­sonal items and was told that her son had been trans­ferred to a dif­fer­ent deten­tion facil­ity, the Matrosskaya Tishina cen­ter, the pre­vi­ous day. When she then went to Matrosskaya Tishina, she was told that her son was dead.

Sergey’s lawyers were told that Sergey Mag­nit­skiy died of a rup­ture to the abdom­i­nal mem­brane around 9:00 pm on 16 Novem­ber 2009 and that his body was trans­ferred to the 11^th Morgue in Moscow.

Sergey Mag­nit­skiy was kept in pre-trial deten­tion for a year and denied by Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko the abil­ity to see his mother and his wife and speak to his chil­dren for the entire time of his deten­tion. He was trans­ferred between four deten­tion cen­ters and his deten­tion con­di­tions pro­gres­sively dete­ri­o­rated. Numer­ous com­plaints by Sergey Mag­nit­skiy and his lawyers about the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure exerted on him, the legal breaches dur­ing the pre-trial inves­ti­ga­tion, the obstruc­tion to his defence and the inhu­man and degrad­ing con­di­tions in deten­tion, were left unaddressed.

Addi­tion­ally, Sergey Mag­nit­skiy wrote a 40-page com­plaint to Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor Chaika describ­ing a seri­ous med­ical con­di­tion which devel­oped in deten­tion, the on-going and reg­u­lar denial of med­ical treat­ment which resulted in a seri­ous wors­en­ing of his health, and pleaded for access to med­ical atten­tion. There was no response to his complaint.

“I would like to express my shock and sad­ness at the pass­ing of Sergey Mag­nit­skiy. Sergey was a bril­liant and hon­ourable lawyer known by all whom met him as a dili­gent pro­fes­sional and a com­mit­ted fam­ily man. I know I speak for all the staff of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal when I say that both Sergey and his fam­ily are in our hearts at this time. He and the ideals he stood for will not be for­got­ten,” said CEO of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal William Browder.

Lawyers will con­duct an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into his death.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please contact:

Her­mitage Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment
Phone: +44 (0)20 7440 1777
Email: info@hermitagefund.com

Sergey Mag­nit­sky Com­plaint to Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor

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