Russian Interior Ministry Attacks Another Hermitage Lawyer After the Torture and Murder of Sergei Magnitsky

June 3, 2010

Alexan­der Antipov, the Russ­ian lawyer who has been advis­ing Her­mitage Cap­i­tal since the ille­gal arrest and deten­tion of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, has him­self now come under attack from the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry. Fol­low­ing Antipov’s fil­ing of over 20 com­plaints and peti­tions about the unlaw­ful actions tak­en by inves­ti­ga­tors and judges against Sergei Mag­nit­sky and his client, Her­mitage Cap­i­tal exec­u­tives, the Inte­ri­or Min­istry is now threat­en­ing to pros­e­cute lawyer Antipov based on a peti­tion filed with the Moscow City Bar Asso­ci­a­tion in an attempt to dis­bar him. Mr Antipov is the eighth lawyer for Her­mitage Cap­i­tal who has come under attack from the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry. Last year, the Coun­cil of Europe con­demned these attacks on the lawyers and exec­u­tives of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal as “polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed abuse[s] of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.” The attack on Antipov is being orga­nized by Inves­ti­ga­tor Oleg Silchenko of the Inte­ri­or Ministry’s Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, the very same inves­ti­ga­tor who helped to orches­trate the ille­gal arrest, deten­tion, tor­ture and mur­der of anti-cor­rup­tion lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky last year after Mag­nit­sky had exposed Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers’ embez­zle­ment of $230 mil­lion of funds from the Russ­ian treasury. 

“It wasn’t enough for the Inte­ri­or Min­istry to dri­ve six of our lawyers out of the coun­try. It wasn’t enough that they tor­tured and killed Sergei Mag­nit­sky in cus­tody. Now they are going after the eighth lawyer. Cor­rupt law enforce­ment offi­cials should not be able to ruin the lives of inno­cent peo­ple with carte blanche. Every­thing must be done to pro­tect the per­son­al safe­ty of Alexan­der Antipov and to stop the Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers who are now endan­ger­ing him,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal spokesperson. 

To orga­nize the attack on Antipov, Silchenko and the Inte­ri­or Min­istry has been fal­si­fy­ing evi­dence. Last Sep­tem­ber, Antipov vis­it­ed his clients in Lon­don to dis­cuss the case, and upon his return to Moscow he sub­mit­ted one of his client’s state­ments to Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko at the Inte­ri­or Min­istry. Silchenko then accept­ed this state­ment and added it to the case file. Now, in an attempt to intim­i­date and harass Antipov, eight months lat­er, Silchenko is claim­ing that Antipov did not trav­el to Lon­don last Sep­tem­ber, did not meet his client and there­fore false­ly sub­mit­ted his state­ment. In the face of con­crete evi­dence of Antipov’s trav­el to Lon­don (name­ly, his air­line tick­et, his visa and the stamps in his pass­port), Silchenko is now advanc­ing this false claim before the Moscow City Bar Asso­ci­a­tion to pros­e­cute the lawyer for the sole pur­pose of elim­i­nat­ing anoth­er Her­mitage defense lawyer. 

Alexan­der Antipov was retained by Her­mitage Cap­i­tal exec­u­tives in the sum­mer of 2009. In the course of rep­re­sent­ing his clients, Antipov has sought to remove judges who showed bias and has chal­lenged the ille­gal actions tak­en by Inte­ri­or Min­istry inves­ti­ga­tors, includ­ing unrea­son­able exten­sions of pre-tri­al inves­ti­ga­tions, ille­gal issuance of decrees, unlaw­ful merg­ers of cas­es, and the denial of lawyer’s access to doc­u­ments which is manda­to­ry under Russ­ian law. In par­tic­u­lar, Antipov filed has com­plaints with Russ­ian courts at all lev­els, the Russ­ian Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s office and the Inte­ri­or Min­istry itself regard­ing Inves­ti­ga­tor Oleg Silchenko. In these com­plaints, Antipov has set forth Silchenko’s active role in orga­niz­ing repres­sive cas­es against inno­cent peo­ple and in the tor­ture and death in deten­tion of 37-year old lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky. Antipov has also high­light­ed the con­tin­u­ing cov­er-up of the involve­ment of senior Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers, ArtemKuznetsov and Pavel Kar­pov, in the theft of $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian trea­sury through the pay­ment of fraud­u­lent tax refunds. 

Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko was per­son­al­ly respon­si­ble for the repres­sion and tor­ture of Sergei Mag­nit­sky in cus­tody. He denied Magnitsky’s peti­tions for urgent med­ical care and vio­lat­ed Magnitsky’s fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms, includ­ing his right to life. He denied Mag­nit­sky and his lawyers access to manda­to­ry case doc­u­ments. He denied Magnitsky’s lawyers any infor­ma­tion about Magnitsky’s health sev­er­al hours before his death. Ear­li­er, Silchenko was involved in anoth­er polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed case against a leader of Russ­ian inde­pen­dent media, Man­ana Aslamazyan. 

The moti­va­tion of Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko in repress­ing the Her­mitage Cap­i­tal lawyers was sum­ma­rized by Sergei Mag­nit­sky in his hand-writ­ten state­ment pre­pared four days pri­or to his trag­ic death: “I have been detained in prison for a year as a hostage in the inter­ests of the per­sons, whose inten­tion it is to ensure that the crim­i­nals actu­al­ly guilty in the theft of 5.4 bil­lion rubles [$230 mil­lion] from the state bud­get will nev­er be found… Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko does not want to iden­ti­fy the oth­er [oth­er than a sawmill employ­ee] per­sons, who made this fraud pos­si­ble. He instead wants the lawyers of the Her­mitage Fund, who pur­sued and con­tin­ue to pur­sue attempts for this case to be inves­ti­gat­ed, be forced to emi­grate from their coun­try in which crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against them, or like me be detained in prison. My impris­on­ment has noth­ing in com­mon with the legal pur­pos­es of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.., but this is a pun­ish­ment for my mere­ly defend­ing the inter­ests of my client, and final­ly the inter­ests of the State” [Excerpt from Sergei Magnitsky’s hand-writ­ten notes to court, 12 Novem­ber 2009]. 

Alexan­der Antipov is a 57-year old Russ­ian lawyer who has been a mem­ber of the Moscow Bar Asso­ci­a­tion since 1990. 

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please contact: 

+ 44 20 7440 1777
info@lawandorderinrussia.org
info@hermitagefund.com

More on the Per­se­cu­tion of Her­mitage Lawyers see in the Coun­cil of Europe’s Report on Polit­i­cal­ly Moti­vat­ed Abuse of the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice System: 

http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/doc09/edoc11993.pdf
p 4, 26 – 28, 32 – 36 

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