Russian Investigator Responsible for the Death of Sergei Magnitsky Seeks Warrant to Search London Homes

August 31, 2010

Major Oleg Silchenko, an inves­ti­ga­tor in the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry who became wide­ly known for his role in the false arrest, tor­ture and death of 37 year-old Russ­ian lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky, is con­tin­u­ing his attempts to attack Her­mitage Cap­i­tal exec­u­tives and lawyers in retal­i­a­tion for the crim­i­nal com­plaints filed by Mag­nit­sky and Her­mitage Cap­i­tal regard­ing the involve­ment of Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers in the largest tax fraud in Russ­ian history. 

Russ­ian court doc­u­ments emerged last week show­ing that Major Silchenko, who is fac­ing three crim­i­nal com­plaints for fraud in office, fal­si­fi­ca­tion of evi­dence and mur­der, filed a request on 18 May 2010 with the Moscow Tver­skoi Court to apply for mutu­al legal assis­tance with the UK Home Office in order to con­duct search­es of the Lon­don home of a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal exec­u­tive. In his oth­er requests, he also sought approval to use Inter­pol to gath­er infor­ma­tion on a num­ber of lawyers work­ing for Her­mitage. Major Silchenko fur­ther applied for Russ­ian court per­mis­sion to con­duct seizures of doc­u­ments in the offices of HSBC Moscow where Her­mitage Fund sub­sidiaries kept accounts. 

The cur­rent actions by Major Silchenko direct­ly con­tra­dict Coun­cil of Europe Res­o­lu­tion 1685 passed on 30 Sep­tem­ber 2009, call­ing on Rus­sia to imme­di­ate­ly cease its abuse of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in its case against Her­mitage Cap­i­tal exec­u­tives and lawyers. The Coun­cil of Europe, of which Rus­sia is a per­ma­nent mem­ber, for­mal­ly stat­ed that the pro­ceed­ings tar­get­ing Her­mitage Cap­i­tal exec­u­tives rep­re­sent an “emblem­at­ic case” of the polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed abuse of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and called on all mem­ber states to deny any Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion requests for mutu­al legal assis­tance tar­get­ing Her­mitage Cap­i­tal exec­u­tives and lawyers.
http://assembly.coe.int/Mainf.asp?link=/Documents/AdoptedText/ta09/ERES1685.htm

All his peti­tions were grant­ed by Tver­skoi Dis­trict Court of Moscow Judge Alexan­dra Kovalevskaya on 20 May 2010. How­ev­er, pro­cess­ing of Russ­ian Mutu­al Legal Assis­tance requests in the UK requires approval by the UK Home Office and involves UK courts. In the last 10 years, there have been very few prece­dents of Rus­sia suc­cess­ful­ly obtain­ing UK Mutu­al Legal Assis­tance because of the con­sis­tent abus­es of the Russ­ian crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by the Russ­ian police.

Major Silchenko and Judge Kovalevskaya already have a his­to­ry of work­ing togeth­er in polit­i­cal­ly taint­ed cas­es. Three years ago they were both involved in car­ry­ing out the polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Ms Man­ana Asla­mazyan, the head of a Russ­ian NGO pro­mot­ing inde­pen­dent media. Major Silchenko tar­get­ed Ms Asla­mazyan using sim­i­lar attempts to abuse inter­na­tion­al mutu­al legal assis­tance treaties. Ms Asla­mazyan was forced to remain in exile despite the fact that the case against her was lat­er dis­missed fol­low­ing a rul­ing from the Russ­ian Con­sti­tu­tion­al court.

The lat­est action by Major Silchenko comes amidst death threats and oth­er intim­i­da­tion and attacks on Her­mitage exec­u­tives and lawyers that form part of a full-scale cam­paign of abuse and harass­ment in retal­i­a­tion for Her­mitage Capital’s expo­sure of cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials and their role in the theft of $230 mil­lion of bud­get funds and the mur­der of Sergei Magnitsky.

“The last time there was a search of Hermitage’s offices by the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry, the offi­cers used the mate­ri­als seized to exe­cute the largest tax fraud in Russ­ian his­to­ry, which lead to the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal spokesman. “If Major Silchenko seri­ous­ly thinks he can come to Lon­don and try the same thing here, he will find him­self in a legal mess so large, he will need a very good lawyer for a very long time.” 

Major Silchenko is one of the 60 Russ­ian offi­cials on U.S. Sen­a­tor Ben­jamin Cardin’s list of Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials who played a role in the theft of $230 mil­lion of tax­es that Her­mitage paid and in the tor­ture and death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky in cus­tody after he exposed the offi­cials involved in the scheme. Sen­a­tor Cardin sent the list to US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton and is seek­ing to per­ma­nent­ly ban those indi­vid­u­als and their fam­i­ly mem­bers and depen­dents from obtain­ing US visas under Pres­i­den­tial Procla­ma­tion 7750 (“To Sus­pend Entry as Immi­grants or Non Immi­grants of Per­sons Engaged in or Ben­e­fit­ing From Cor­rup­tion” (12 Jan­u­ary 2004)).
http://csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContentRecords.ViewDetail&ContentRecord_id=896&ContentType=P&CFID=39456590&CFTOKEN=79230579

In ear­ly May 2010, Major Silchenko also attempt­ed, using fal­si­fied evi­dence, to open a crim­i­nal case against Alexan­der Antipov, a Russ­ian lawyer work­ing for Her­mitage in Moscow. His unlaw­ful acts were doc­u­ment­ed in a com­plaint from the Moscow Bar Asso­ci­a­tion and the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry respond­ed in a pub­lic state­ment say­ing that Major Silchenko had been act­ing in a “pri­vate” capac­i­ty, reject­ed his actions and for­mal­ly apol­o­gized to Mr Antipov.

Major Silchenko has been allowed by his supe­ri­ors to stay in the job and car­ry on the per­se­cu­tion of Her­mitage exec­u­tives and their lawyers despite the fact that he faces three crim­i­nal com­plaints against him for his ille­gal actions and abuse of office. 

The first crim­i­nal com­plaint was filed by Lud­mi­la Alex­ee­va, Head of the Moscow Helsin­ki Group, the lead­ing Russ­ian human rights orga­ni­za­tion, with the Russ­ian State Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee on 26 March 2010. She request­ed the open­ing of a crim­i­nal case against Oleg Silchenko and oth­er Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials for the false arrest, sys­tem­at­ic tor­ture and mur­der in cus­tody of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, which was car­ried out in order to con­ceal the role of Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials in the theft of $230 mil­lion of bud­get funds (http://russian-untouchables.com/docs/Alekseyeva-Complaint-Eng29Mar2010.pdf).

The sec­ond crim­i­nal com­plaint was filed by Her­mitage Cap­i­tal with the Russ­ian State Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee on 8 June 2010. It calls for the pros­e­cu­tion of Major Silchenko for the fal­si­fi­ca­tion of evi­dence against the Her­mitage Fund lawyer Alexan­der Antipov.

The third crim­i­nal com­plaint was filed by the Moscow City Bar Asso­ci­a­tion with the Russ­ian Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor on 30 June 2010. It requests the pros­e­cu­tion of Major Silchenko for abuse of office and the obstruc­tion of the law­ful activ­i­ties of Her­mitage Fund lawyers. In the com­plaint, Hen­ry Reznik, Pres­i­dent of the Moscow City Bar Asso­ci­a­tion, stat­ed that Major Oleg Silchenko “used dirty and ille­gal meth­ods to obstruct the lawyers’ work” in an attempt to intim­i­date Her­mitage lawyers (http://www.advokatymoscow.ru/legal_regulation/apm_dokuments/zashita_advokatov_doc/hayretdinov/to_chayka.php). The com­plaint fur­ther stat­ed that Major Silchenko’s actions con­sti­tut­ed crimes under the Russ­ian Crim­i­nal Code, includ­ing “fraud in office” and “fal­si­fi­ca­tion of evidence.”

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please contact: 

+ 44 20 7440 1777
info@lawandorderinrussia.org

Mate­ri­als about the false arrest and tor­ture of Sergei Magnitsky:
http://russian-untouchables.com

For more on the per­se­cu­tion of Her­mitage exec­u­tives and lawyers see 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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