Daily Express: LAWYER DIES IN MOSCOW JAIL DAYS BEFORE RELEASE

November 22, 2009

SERGEI Mag­nit­sky, a Russ­ian lawyer who was cam­paign­ing against fraud and cor­rup­tion, died in a noto­ri­ous Moscow jail last week just days before he was due to be released. He had been kept there with­out tri­al for 12 months.

He had been held in shock­ing squalor. The prison was over­run with rats while cells were some­times swamped with sewage. Mr Mag­nit­sky was repeat­ed­ly denied med­ical treat­ment for pan­cre­ati­tis despite severe pain. His for­mer client, the hedge fund Her­mitage Cap­i­tal ­Man­age­ment, issued a state­ment days before his death detail­ing how he had been chained and put in a cage.

The Russ­ian author­i­ties attrib­uted his death on Novem­ber 16 to a rup­ture to the abdom­i­nal mem­brane before chang­ing their sto­ry lat­er the same day to a heart attack. But friends say ­pic­tures of his body show bruis­es on his hands, which indi­cate that some type of strug­gle ocurred before he died.

The author­i­ties have fuelled sus­pi­cions of foul pay by reject­ing autop­sy requests.

Mr Magnitsky’s wid­ow Natalya is vow­ing to stay in Rus­sia with their two sons as they fight for justice .

The British For­eign Office has for­mal­ly asked the Russ­ian for­eign min­istry to inves­ti­gate his death, diplo­mat­ic sources have told the Sun­day Express.

The for­mal request adds to a grow­ing list of issues between the two coun­tries. This includes the poi­son­ing of Alexan­der Litvi­nenko on British soil, the shut­down of British Coun­cil activ­i­ties out­side Moscow and the new tri­al of Mikhail Khodor­kovsky, for­mer head of oil firm Yukos who has already been jailed in Siberia for tax fraud.

Mr Mag­nit­sky, 37, had been charged with par­tic­i­pat­ing in a 500million rou­ble (£10million) tax eva­sion scheme at two sub­sidiaries of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, the hedge fund man­aged by financier Bill Browder.

In court, Mr Mag­nit­sky claimed to have been the vic­tim of a “per­son­al vendet­ta” for tes­ti­fy­ing against a senior police offi­cer, whom he argued was cen­tral to an alleged £140million tax fraud he had uncov­ered that impli­cat­ed the police, mem­bers of the judi­cia­ry, tax offi­cials, bankers and the Russ­ian mafia.

Mr Magnitsky’s death is the lat­est, twist in the sto­ry of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, set up by Mr Brow­der in 1996 to invest in Russia’s stock mar­ket. Mr Brow­der said yes­ter­day: “This is one of the worst sto­ries that has ever hap­pened. It com­bines death, spec­tac­u­lar injus­tice and tor­ture at the hands of the offi­cials he tes­ti­fied against.”

The US-born financier, who is now a British cit­i­zen, was banned from

Rus­sia in 2005 after attack­ing cor­rup­tion at some of the country’s biggest companies.

After Mr Brow­der spoke out against cor­rup­tion, Her­mitage suf­fered an extor­tion attempt and police raids on its offices, which cul­mi­nat­ed in three Russ­ian sub­sidiaries being expro­pri­at­ed in 2007 using doc­u­ments seized by the Moscow police.

Fraud­sters used the doc­u­ments to apply for a £140million tax refund. The refund, the largest in Russ­ian his­to­ry, was hand­ed over in just two days.

Mr Mag­nit­sky was arrest­ed last Novem­ber after he tes­ti­fied against the police offi­cers who had seized Her­mitage doc­u­ments. Six oth­er lawyers who advised Her­mitage have fled Rus­sia or are in hiding.

Mr Mag­nit­sky was held in pre-tri­al deten­tion in the noto­ri­ous Butyrskaya prison in Moscow. In a 40-page affi­davit sent to Russia’s gen­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, Mr Mag­nit­sky, Hermitage’s tax lawyer, record­ed his mis­treat­ment and the squalid con­di­tions of the prison in which he was kept for 11 months.

At times, he was held in a 8.2 square metre cell with three oth­er inmates. “Rats run freely along the sew­er system…and at night you can hear them squeak­ing,” he wrote.

On one occa­sion, “sewage start­ed to rise from the drain under the sink” until the “floor was cov­ered with sewage sev­er­al cen­time­tres thick”.

At anoth­er point he was denied a show­er for two weeks and “for the 10 months I have been under arrest, the inves­ti­ga­tor has not let me meet with my wife, moth­er or any oth­er relative”.

He also wrote: “Since June my health deteriorated.”

He was diag­nosed in July with “gall blad­der stones, pan­cre­ati­tis and cal­cu­lous chole­cys­ti­tis. Pri­or to con­fine­ment I didn’t have these ill­ness­es or at least there were no symptoms”.

Orig­i­nal­ly, he was giv­en med­ical care but after being moved to the noto­ri­ous Butyrskaya prison, he was denied his drugs for more than a month. He record­ed: “On August 24, the pain became so acute I was not even able to lie down. My cell­mate start­ed to knock on the door demand­ing for me to be tak­en to a doctor.”

Jami­son Fire­stone, man­ag­ing part­ner at Fire­stone Dun­can the Moscow law firm where Mr Mag­nit­sky worked, said: “They took a healthy guy, impris­oned him with­out cause, put him in such hor­rif­ic con­di­tions that he got a severe ill­ness. Then they denied him med­ical care.”

Iri­na Duduk­i­na, spokesman for the pros­e­cu­tors’ inves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee, said ear­li­er this week: “He was a key wit­ness and his evi­dence was very impor­tant. The trag­ic news about his death came as a com­plete sur­prise. He had com­plained about the con­di­tions of his deten­tion but nev­er his health.”

His death came a week before he was due to be released. Under Russ­ian law, defen­dants can­not be held longer than a year with­out tri­al, a dead­line that would have expired this Tuesday.

Mr Magnitsky’s wid­ow Natalya, 37, and her sons, aged 16 and eight, “will stay in Rus­sia” as chal­lenges are made aimed at estab­lish­ing the lawyer was mur­dered and pun­ish­ing those responsible.

“She has no plans to flee Moscow,” said a source close to the fam­i­ly. “Like Sergei before he was arrest­ed, he said he had no rea­sons to run because he was not guilty and no one would intim­i­date him. He believed jus­tice was on his side because he hadn’t done any­thing wrong.”

Lawyer Dmit­ry Kharitonov said: “Our aim is to first to answer the ques­tion why Sergei died, and sec­ond to pun­ish those who are guilty. I hope it will hap­pen, but can’t pre­dict how long it might take. We want to start a crim­i­nal case and pre­vent his med­ical doc­u­ments from van­ish­ing, because at the moment there is a great risk that some­one will destroy them.”

He is con­sid­er­ing ask­ing Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Dmit­ry Medvedev to inter­vene in the case and prove his com­mit­ment to sweep away cor­rup­tion in Rus­sia. Kharitonov will also seek to take the case to the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights.

“Doc­tors have a duty to treat peo­ple who are sick,” said a rel­a­tive as Mr Mag­nit­sky was buried in Moscow on Fri­day. “And they sim­ply did not treat him. In this way, they killed him but I don’t know if they did it intentionally.”

The author­i­ties refused to let an inde­pen­dent med­ical expert attend a prison autop­sy then refused a sep­a­rate autop­sy . Offi­cials at the morgue warned Mr Magnitsky’s moth­er that refrig­er­a­tor was fail­ing but refused her request to trans­fer him to a dif­fer­ent morgue.

The Mag­nit­sky case is now in the For­eign Office’s bulging Rus­sia in-tray. Offi­cials there could be for­giv­en for think­ing the Cold War had start­ed up again.

Orig­i­nal pub­lished in Dai­ly Express.

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