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

April 27, 2016

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For Imme­di­ate Distribution

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 stole US$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 US State 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

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

www.facebook.com/russianuntouchables

Twit­ter: @Billbrowder

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