The Washington Post: Corruption Taints Courts In Russia

June 24, 2009

By Philip P. Pan

A spe­cial Euro­pean inves­ti­ga­tor issued a sting­ing report Tues­day that alleges wide­spread polit­i­cal abuse of the Russ­ian courts and urges coun­tries not to extra­dite peo­ple to Rus­sia if they might be denied a fair trial.

The con­clu­sions by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a for­mer Ger­man jus­tice min­is­ter, are likely to fur­ther strain Russia’s rela­tions with the Coun­cil of Europe, which com­mis­sioned the probe and is locked in a stand­off with Moscow over the future of the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights.

Rus­sia joined the coun­cil in the 1990s, but it has recently attacked the court’s impar­tial­ity and is the lone coun­cil mem­ber block­ing a plan to stream­line its oper­a­tions. The court, based in Stras­bourg, France, acts as an appeals panel of last resort for res­i­dents of 47 mem­ber countries.

The num­ber of cases filed in the court against Rus­sia each year has climbed sharply, from 8 per­cent of all cases in 2000 to nearly 30 per­cent last year, and the Krem­lin has bris­tled at recent rul­ings that high­light tor­ture and judi­cial cor­rup­tion in Russia.

Asked to exam­ine “polit­i­cally moti­vated abuses” of court sys­tems across Europe, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger stud­ied Britain, France and Ger­many but focused on Russia.

She said she found pros­e­cu­tors with “almost unchecked” power to put peo­ple behind bars and sub­servient judges “sub­ject to an increas­ing level of pres­sure aimed at ensur­ing con­vic­tions in almost all cases.”

The prac­tice of “tele­phone justice” — an offi­cial call­ing and telling a judge how to rule — has evolved for the worse, she wrote: Russ­ian judges are now so wor­ried about mak­ing a mis­take and being dis­ci­plined or dis­missed that they pick up the phone them­selves to ask for instructions.

Defense lawyers, she said, are “fre­quently sub­jected to searches and seizures and other forms of pressure.”

The report acknowl­edged some progress in the legal sys­tem, includ­ing pay raises for judges to reduce the temp­ta­tion for corruption.

But it said a plan to give extra credit to con­victs for time spent in noto­ri­ously crowded pre­trial deten­tion facil­i­ties has been derailed, appar­ently because it might have resulted in the release of jailed for­mer oil tycoon and Krem­lin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger cited the start of a sec­ond trial against Khodor­kovsky in March as one of two “emblem­atic cases” that cast doubt on Pres­i­dent Dmitry Medvedev’s pro­fessed com­mit­ment to fight­ing what he calls “legal nihilism.”

The sec­ond case high­lighted in the report is that of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal, which angered offi­cials by wag­ing share­holder cam­paigns against cor­rup­tion in influ­en­tial firms such as Gazprom, the state gas monopoly.

In 2007, police allegedly seized seals and doc­u­ments from Hermitage’s offices that were then used to trans­fer own­er­ship of the firm to a shell com­pany. In an elab­o­rate ruse involv­ing forged con­tracts and lawyers claim­ing to rep­re­sent Her­mitage, other shell com­pa­nies sued the new owner and obtained judg­ments total­ing about $1 bil­lion, Her­mitage chief exec­u­tive Bill Brow­der said.

Her­mitage had already moved its assets over­seas and suf­fered no losses. But it says the offi­cials used the judg­ments to obtain a tax refund of $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian trea­sury that then dis­ap­peared into off­shore accounts.

Brow­der said the author­i­ties are now retal­i­at­ing against him and his col­leagues for expos­ing the fraud. Three of the firm’s lawyers are fac­ing crim­i­nal probes, and one has been impris­oned since November.

 

Orig­i­nally pub­lished in the Wash­ing­ton Post.

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