The Washington Post: ‘Raiding’ Underlines Russian Legal Dysfunction

August 13, 2009

3 Lawyers Tar­get­ed After Uncov­er­ing Seizure of Firms

Philip P. Pan

When three of Rus­si­a’s finest lawyers agreed to rep­re­sent the invest­ment fund Her­mitage Cap­i­tal, they thought they were tak­ing on a rou­tine tax case.

Then they uncov­ered evi­dence of a breath­tak­ing crime: Top police and tax author­i­ty offi­cials appeared to have qui­et­ly seized own­er­ship of Her­mitage firms and used them to arrange a $230 mil­lion tax refund.

Now, the lawyers them­selves are in legal trou­ble. One has been jailed. The two oth­ers have fled the coun­try. All three face charges that seem intend­ed to dis­cred­it Her­mitage and divert atten­tion from the enor­mous theft.

Their plight high­lights the haz­ards of prac­tic­ing law in Rus­si­a’s cor­rup­tion-rid­den courts despite near­ly two decades of reforms sup­port­ed by hun­dreds of mil­lions in U.S. and Euro­pean aid. Pros­e­cu­tors and police con­tin­ue to dom­i­nate the judi­cia­ry as they did in the Sovi­et era, but unre­strained by the insti­tu­tions of the old Com­mu­nist sys­tem or the checks of a gen­uine democ­ra­cy, the oppor­tu­ni­ties for abuse have grown.

No crime illus­trates the state of the legal sys­tem bet­ter than what is known as “rei­der­st­vo,” or raid­ing — the takeover of busi­ness­es through court rul­ings and oth­er osten­si­bly legal means with the help of crooked judges or police. The prac­tice is so wide­spread that local media have report­ed what raiders charge: $10,000 to alter a cor­po­rate reg­istry, $50,000 to open a crim­i­nal case, $300,000 for a court order.

Her­mitage, once Rus­si­a’s largest for­eign share­hold­er with more than $4 bil­lion in hold­ings, says it encoun­tered a bold vari­a­tion on rei­der­st­vo: When raiders failed to seize its assets, they loot­ed the Russ­ian trea­sury instead, then went after the lawyers who caught them.

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The Washington Post: Рейдерство подчеркивает дисфункциональность судебной системы в России

August 13, 2009

Перевод статьи ‘Raid­ing’ Under­lines Russ­ian Legal Dys­func­tion , обубликованной в The Wash­ing­ton Post.

Филип П.Пэн

Три российских юриста подверглись гонениям после того, как выявили рейдерский захват нескольких фирм, пишет Wash­ing­ton Post. Высокопоставленные сотрудники милиции и налоговой службы, по-видимому, тайно захватили несколько фирм, принадлежащих инвестиционному фонду Her­mitage Cap­i­tal, и через эти фирмы устроили возмещение ранее внесенных в казну налогов, составившее 230 млн долларов, пишет корреспондент Филип П.Пэн. По его мнению, факты рейдерства подчеркивают дисфункциональность российской судебной системы.

Российские власти предъявили всем трем юристам обвинения, которые, по мнению издания, призваны дискредитировать Her­mitage и отвлечь внимание от крупномасштабного хищения, описанного выше. Один из юристов находится под стражей, остальные бежали за границу. “В заявлении, сделанном в июле, МВД хвалится своим успешным расследованием аферы с возмещением налогов. Но деньги не возвращены и ни один чиновник не арестован. Прокуратура предъявила обвинения только некоему гражданину, ранее осужденному за убийство, который по документам числится новым владельцем фирм Her­mitage”, — пишет газета.

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Politically-motivated abuses of the criminal justice system

August 7, 2009

Excerpts from the report, pub­lished by the Com­mit­tee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights on alle­ga­tions of polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed abus­es of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in Coun­cil of Europe mem­ber states with rec­om­men­da­tions on series of steps to strength­en the inde­pen­dence of judges and pros­e­cu­tors across Europe to end polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed inter­fer­ence in indi­vid­ual cases.

Inter alia the Com­mit­tee calls for a series of reforms to reduce the polit­i­cal and hier­ar­chi­cal pres­sures on judges and put an end to the harass­ment of defence lawyers in order to com­bat “legal nihilism” in the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, as a pre­con­di­tion also for suc­cess­ful co-oper­a­tion between Russ­ian and oth­er Euro­pean law enforce­ment authorities.

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Declaration by the lawyer Neil Micklethwaite

August 6, 2009

Dec­la­ra­tion by the lawyer Neil Mick­leth­waite filed in the South­ern Dis­trict Court of New York sup­port­ing a for­eign dis­cov­ery claim on behalf of the plain­tiffs. This is a pub­lic legal fil­ing con­tain­ing alle­ga­tions which have not yet been ruled on in a court of law.

DECLARATION OF NEIL MICKLETHWAITE

http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2009/08/the_hermitage_file_russia_as_a_criminal_state.htm

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