Bastrykin Leads Cover Up of Police involvement in Theft of US$230 Million of Budget Funds, and Death of Sergei Magnitsky

September 7, 2010

Today, friends of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, a 37-year old Russ­ian lawyer who died in cus­tody last year after tes­ti­fy­ing against police cor­rup­tion in a US$230 mil­lion tax rebate fraud, accused Alexan­der Bas­trykin, Chair­man of the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, of lead­ing a cov­er-up of Magnitsky’s mur­der and the offi­cial cor­rup­tion he exposed.

Today, in an inter­view with gov­ern­ment-con­trolled news­pa­per, Rossiyskaya Gaze­ta, Bas­trykin stat­ed that, “There is no rea­son to believe that his death is relat­ed to the activ­i­ty of offi­cials who con­duct­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion against him… [Mag­nit­sky] nev­er com­plained that he was sub­ject­ed to any pres­sure or under oth­er ille­gal meth­ods of investigation”.

In a direct rebut­tal, Mag­nit­sky sup­port­ers labelled Bastrykin’s state­ments, “proof of a high lev­el, state spon­sored cover-up”.

“It is now a plain fact that the cov­er-up Sergei’s mur­der reached the high­est lev­els of the Russ­ian inves­tiga­tive author­i­ties,” said Jami­son Fire­stone, Man­ag­ing Part­ner of the Fire­stone Dun­can law firm. “It is absolute­ly absurd and inap­pro­pri­ate that any con­clu­sions have been reached about Sergei’s arrest or death before inves­ti­gat­ing all the com­plaints that were filed about Inte­ri­or Min­istry par­tic­i­pa­tion in the theft Sergei report­ed. This can only be the result of cor­rup­tion or stupidity.”

Bill Brow­der, CEO of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment said, “The con­tin­ued fail­ure by Mr Bas­trykin to read and acknowl­edge Sergei Magnitsky’s com­plaints and oth­er doc­u­men­tary evi­dence more than nine months after Sergei’s shock­ing death, makes Bas­trykin unfit to con­tin­ue in his job.” He con­tin­ued, “The offi­cials con­duct­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into Sergei’s death are ignor­ing so much evi­dence about police involve­ment that they must be either blind or deaf.”

Sergei Mag­nit­sky and his lawyers filed numer­ous com­plaints about his unlaw­ful arrest and pros­e­cu­tion by the same offi­cers he accused of steal­ing the US$230 mil­lion of Russ­ian tax-pay­ers mon­ey. He specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure exert­ed upon him, as well as the denial of med­ical care in deten­tion, in his com­plaints to the Russ­ian Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka, Deputy Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Alex­ei Anichin and the Russ­ian courts.

In the 6 March 2009 com­plaint addressed to the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office and the 23 march 2009 com­plaint to the Moscow City Court, Sergei Mag­nit­sky and his lawyers chal­lenged his unlaw­ful trans­fer by Inves­ti­ga­tor Oleg Silchenko to a tem­po­rary hold­ing cen­tre which was kept secret from his fam­i­ly and lawyers. “Such deci­sions by the inves­ti­ga­tor evi­dence exclu­sive­ly the inten­tion to exert psy­cho­log­i­cal and moral pres­sure,” they said in the complaint.

In the 11 Sep­tem­ber 2009 com­plaint addressed to Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka and Deputy Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Alex­ei Anichin, Sergei Mag­nit­sky and his lawyers wrote:

“Mag­nit­sky and his defence many times stat­ed that it is impos­si­ble to jus­ti­fy the accu­sa­tion made against him, because he did not com­mit any offences, and the doc­u­ments gath­ered by the inves­ti­ga­tion, demon­strates his inno­cence…. Under­stand­ing the inva­lid­i­ty of their alle­ga­tions, the inves­ti­ga­tors effec­tive­ly have organ­ised exer­tion on Mag­nit­sky S.L. of phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure, the aim of which is to sup­press his will with sub­se­quent coer­cion to false­ly tes­ti­fy against him­self and oth­er people.”

On 13 Octo­ber 2009, one month before his death, Sergei Mag­nit­sky wrote a com­plaint to the Inte­ri­or Min­istry and the court in which he stated:

“This pros­e­cu­tion is a repres­sive mea­sure to pun­ish me for assist­ing my client in con­nec­tion with the inves­ti­gat­ed theft of the com­pa­nies owned by my client [Her­mitage Fund]…In my view, Kuznetsov and oth­er law-enforce­ment offi­cers, who act­ed under the arrange­ment with Kuznetsov, could be involved in the theft of “Rilend”,“Mahaon”, and “Par­fe­nion” [Her­mitage Fund com­pa­nies] and in the sub­se­quent theft of 5,4 bil­lion rou­bles [$230 mil­lion] from the state bud­get as described above. They were extreme­ly inter­est­ed in sup­pres­sion of my activ­i­ties I per­formed to assist my client in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the cir­cum­stances con­nect­ed with the crimes against them, and that was the rea­son for the ille­gal crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion that was ini­ti­at­ed against me by inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko.” 

Sergei Mag­nit­sky was denied med­ical care and kept in tor­tur­ous con­di­tions which lead to his death, aged 37, on 16 Novem­ber 2009. He filed over 450 com­plaints about his mis­treat­ment dur­ing his 358 days in detention.

Last week it was announced that Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Medvedev ordered Bastrykin’s office to check the sta­tus of the inves­ti­ga­tion into Magnitsky’s death. This was done in response to a let­ter from the inter­na­tion­al legal alliance, TAGLaw, which warned Pres­i­dent Medvedev that the fail­ure to pros­e­cute offi­cials impli­cat­ed by Mag­nit­sky, makes Rus­sia unsafe for invest­ment and for the lives of peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing in Russia.

The police offi­cers who were direct­ly impli­cat­ed by Mag­nit­sky in the theft of US$230 mil­lion have recent­ly been pro­mot­ed. The YouTube films “Russ­ian Untouch­ables” depict­ing their lux­u­ri­ous lifestyles have been watched by over 250,000 Rus­sians. http://russian-untouchables.com/eng/videos/

Ear­li­er this sum­mer, the US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton demand­ed that “jus­tice be deliv­ered” in Magnitsky’s case. The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment Pres­i­dent Jer­sy Buzek raised Sergei Magnitsky’s case with Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Medvedev and the Head of Russia’s Par­lia­ment Boris Gry­zlov. He empha­sised that the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into Magnitsky’s death. The 60 Russ­ian offi­cials impli­cat­ed in the tor­ture and death of Mag­nit­sky and the US$230 mil­lion tax rebate fraud have been put on a visa sanc­tions list request by US Sen­a­tor Cardin and have been black­list­ed by World­Check, the glob­al bank­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing database.

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