Magnitsky’s Colleague Challenges Russia’s New Restriction on Emigration

March 6, 2012

Today, at 14:00, Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow will hear a lawsuit filed by Ivan Cherkasov, a colleague of the late Sergei Magnitsky and a partner of Hermitage Capital, residing in the UK. The lawsuit is filed against the Russian Interior Ministry challenging them on restricting his right to emigrate and their refusal to renew his Russian passport.

Last September, Mr Cherkasov applied to the Russian embassy in London for a new passport on the ground of expiration of his previous passport. In December, the Russian embassy rejected his application on orders from the Russian Interior Ministry, and refused to provide any details. Last week, the Russian embassy issued a notice stating that Mr Cherkasov’s passport application was refused based on paragraph 3 of Article 15 of the Russian Federal Law “On the Procedure of Exit From and Entry To the Russian Federation.”

This relevant provision was introduced on April 7, 2010 and says:

“The right of citizens of the Russian Federation to leave the Russian Federation may be temporarily restricted in cases where the citizen is suspected or involved as a defendant, and for as long as the decision is made on the case or the court verdict comes into force.”

The lawsuit filed by Mr Cherkasov says that the refusal by the Russian Interior Ministry to renew his Russian passport effectively means that Russian law enforcement agencies now have the power to restore “exit visas,” which existed until 1993 and formed the basis for Jackson-Vanik amendment in the US, which remains in force today.

“Two years ago, the Russian migration law was quietly changed to give powers to the Interior Ministry to arbitrarily deny any person the right to leave the country,” said Ivan Cherkasov.

“To justify its refusal to renew my passport, the Interior Ministry cites its authority to restrict me from leaving the country, despite the fact that I had left Russia six years ago and live abroad. By refusing to issue me a passport of a citizen of Russia, the Russian Interior Ministry in fact denies me Russian citizenship and denies me the right to emigrate.”

“With the new law in place, anyone who is being persecuted by the authorities no longer has the freedom to emigrate. The constitutional right of citizens of Russia to freedom of movement is left at the mercy of corrupt law enforcement officers,” said Ivan Cherkasov.

Restriction on emigration is a tool that has been widely practiced by totalitarian regimes in the past. Exit visa were employed in Italy under Mussolini from 1922 until 1943 and in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.

Ivan Cherkasov moved to Britain in early 2006. A year later, in May 2007, the Russian secret police (the FSB) and the Russian Interior Ministry opened a fabricated criminal case against him to gain access to documents and files of the Hermitage Fund’s investment holding companies in Moscow. These documents were then used by the officials to expropriate Hermitage Fund’s companies and then steal $230 million of taxes that Hermitage had paid in the previous year. The tax rebate fraud was uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, who gave sworn testimony against the officials involved. One month after his testimony, Sergei Magnitsky was arrested by the same officials he had testified against, kept for a year in detention without trial and murdered on 16 November 2009. Last year, the same Russian officials opened the first-in-history posthumous prosecution of Mr Magnitsky. They also continue to pursue Ivan Cherkasov. The case against Mr Cherkasov has remained open for nearly five years, on the pretext of investigating the alleged non-payment of taxes by Kameya, a Russian company he served as general director of, in spite of absence of any tax claims against this company.

Comments

• Link