Dmitri Medvedev’s Glasnost: The Pudding and the Proof
February 15, 2010
“Conduct a swift public investigation into the torture and, in effect, judicial murder of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and prosecute those who ordered them. An outside counsel to Hermitage Capital Management, formerly the largest foreign investment firm in Russia, Magnitsky dared to investigate the illegal takeover of Hermitage and the bilking of the Russian state out of $230 million in a fraudulent “tax refund.” Charged, like virtually all the opponents of the regime, with “tax evasion,” he died in pretrial detention in horrible pain from pancreatitis and gallbladder disease, which the prison authorities refused to allow to be treated, in an apparent effort by the prosecution to coerce Magnitsky to commit perjury and admit guilt.25 Thus far, Medvedev has fired only prison officials. Yet, just like a “tax refund” scam on so giant a scale, the orders to torture could have come only from officials high up in the tax police, perhaps even from within the Kremlin hierarchy.”
For more information please visit