U.S. Congress urged to support visa sanctions and assets seizures targeting Russian officials involved in corruption and the death of Magnitsky

May 6, 2010

U.S. Con­gres­sion­al Human Rights Com­mis­sion Is Called to Sup­port Visa Sanc­tions and Asset Seizures against the Cor­rupt Russ­ian Offi­cials Involved in the Killing of Anti-Cor­rup­tion Lawyer

6 May 2010 – Today the U.S. Con­gres­sion­al Tom Lan­tos Human Rights Com­mis­sion has been urged to sup­port U.S. visa sanc­tions and assets seizures tar­get­ing Russ­ian offi­cials involved in cor­rup­tion and the per­se­cu­tion of a 37 year-old anti-cor­rup­tion lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The Com­mis­sion, which held a hear­ing on the state of judi­cial and law enforce­ment sys­tems in Rus­sia, heard tes­ti­mo­ny from Mr. William Brow­der, CEO of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment. He spoke about how Sergei Mag­nit­sky, who rep­re­sent­ed the Her­mitage Fund, tes­ti­fied about the involve­ment of Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers in the theft of $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian state. Brow­der described how imme­di­ate­ly there­after, Mag­nit­sky was arrest­ed on false charges by the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers he had impli­cat­ed, kept hostage for 12 months and tor­tured to death. Despite the cru­el and inhu­man treat­ment he endured – described as “mod­ern-day Gulag” – and the “legal cyn­i­cism” of Russ­ian judges and inves­ti­ga­tors in his case who ignored or dis­missed his 450 com­plaints, Sergei Mag­nit­sky believed to the last day in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of jus­tice in Rus­sia. Mr. Brow­der testified:

“[Sergei Mag­nit­sky] was killed for hav­ing the courage to tes­ti­fy against cor­rupt police and gov­ern­ment offi­cials who had stolen $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. Despite endur­ing ago­niz­ing pain in the final four months of his life as his keep­ers tor­tured him and delib­er­ate­ly with­held life-sav­ing med­ical care, Sergei refused to with­draw his tes­ti­mo­ny and com­pro­mise his integri­ty. When­ev­er chal­lenged, he would repeat to his cap­tors his firm deter­mi­na­tion to bring them to jus­tice in an open tri­al. He paid the ulti­mate price for his beliefs.”

In his tes­ti­mo­ny, Mr. Brow­der relied on notes, some of them released for the first time, which were hand writ­ten by Sergei Mag­nit­sky in pre-tri­al deten­tion. These notes, Mr. Brow­der said, “read like a mod­ern-day Gulag Archipelago.”

Mr. Brow­der quot­ed a chill­ing pas­sage from a let­ter writ­ten by Sergei Mag­nit­sky on 8 August 2009, three months pri­or to his death, describ­ing his expe­ri­ence of “going through a meat grinder”:

“Jus­tice, under such con­di­tions [depri­va­tion of sleep, food, and drink over a long peri­od of time] turns into the process of grind­ing human meat for pris­ons and camps. A process, against which a man is not able to defend him­self effec­tive­ly. A process through which a man los­es aware­ness of what is hap­pen­ing to him and can only think of when this all will be fin­ished and when he can escape the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al tor­ture and make it to the labor camp.” [Excerpt from Sergei Magnitsky’s let­ter, 8 August 2009]

In a hand-writ­ten note pre­pared for a 12 Novem­ber 2009 court hear­ing which pro­longed his deten­tion with­out tri­al,  Sergei Mag­nit­sky  called him­self a “hostage” of those who stole $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian bud­get and who cov­ered up that crime:

“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 from the state bud­get will nev­er be found. The same Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko and his sub­or­di­nates [chief inves­ti­ga­tor in the crim­i­nal case against Sergei Mag­nit­sky] inves­ti­gat­ed the case of the mon­ey stolen from the bud­get. A man who signed the forged doc­u­ments [to steal the mon­ey] was con­vict­ed for 5 years in prison. That same man, a sawmill work­er, was con­vict­ed, while the oth­er per­pe­tra­tors have not been iden­ti­fied by the inves­ti­ga­tors. Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko does not want to iden­ti­fy the oth­er 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 notes to court, 12 Novem­ber 2009]

Mr. Brow­der described how Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials exert­ed phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure on Sergei Mag­nit­sky in order to force him to with­draw his tes­ti­monies regard­ing abuse of office by offi­cials, and how Mag­nit­sky sto­ical­ly refused to surrender:

“As a lawyer and some­one who believed in jus­tice, there was no way he would be pres­sured into mak­ing false state­ments about him­self or his client. Instead, he wrote new com­plaints in which he described the pres­sure he was sub­ject­ed to and how police offi­cers know­ing his inno­cence were pro­duc­ing false evi­dence. He explained how the tax charges against him were fab­ri­cat­ed to cov­er up police involve­ment in the largest known fraud against the Russ­ian bud­get.”

On 13 Octo­ber 2009, one month before his death, Sergei repeat­ed his tes­ti­mo­ny about the role of his per­se­cu­tors in crimes against the Russ­ian state and the theft of $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian peo­ple. The last com­plaint Sergei was able to file with the Russ­ian courts was made on 11 Novem­ber 2009 – five days before his death. It described the egre­gious tam­per­ing by Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials of the mate­ri­als in his case file and the fal­si­fi­ca­tion of evi­dence against him by Inves­ti­ga­tor Oleg Silchenko.

Mr. Brow­der gave a detailed account of the tor­ment of Sergei Mag­nit­sky at the hands of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers and how due to his courage after 11 months in deten­tion with­out tri­al he had become “an incon­ve­nient hostage”:

“The cor­rupt offi­cers tried to break him, but they found him stronger than they could have ever imag­ined… Ulti­mate­ly, he [Sergei Mag­nit­sky] reached the one-year dead­line for pre-tri­al deten­tion under Russ­ian law, and the inves­ti­ga­tors had to put him on tri­al or release him. They were plan­ning a big show tri­al for him where they were hop­ing for his false con­fes­sions to be the pri­ma­ry evi­dence of the tri­al. Instead they had no evi­dence of his wrong­do­ing, and more wor­ry­ing for them, he was con­tin­u­ing to make very spe­cif­ic, pub­lic and incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments about police involve­ment in the theft of $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. He had become a very incon­ve­nient hostage.”

Mr. Brow­der high­light­ed the mock­ery of jus­tice Sergei Mag­nit­sky encoun­tered while in deten­tion, “the absolute lack of any legal rem­e­dy against the Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers per­se­cut­ing him,” a sys­tem he called “legal cynicism”:

“What hap­pened to Sergei reflects the pre­vail­ing atti­tude among judges and law enforce­ment offi­cers in Rus­sia today, which can best be described as “legal cyn­i­cism.” Inves­ti­ga­tors and pros­e­cu­tors act in a legal vac­u­um sub­ject to no judi­cial checks. The judges cre­ate an appear­ance of impar­tial over­sight and medi­a­tion but in fact exer­cise no restraint on the pow­er of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry… An inno­cent per­son false­ly accused by cor­rupt police offi­cials is allowed to file com­plaints only to have them reject­ed. All peti­tions from the police are accept­ed how­ev­er ludi­crous or unsub­stan­ti­at­ed they are. The pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, a cen­tral tenet of judi­cial sys­tems every­where, is dis­card­ed from the out­set.”

Mr. Brow­der said in conclusion:

“Sergei’s sto­ry is one of extra­or­di­nary brav­ery and hero­ism that should be an exam­ple to us all. He died still believ­ing, despite the cru­el expe­ri­ence of the last year of his young life, that the rule of law could exist in mod­ern Rus­sia. Rus­sia needs more, not few­er, patri­ots like him.”

Mr. Brow­der called upon Rus­sia and the U.S. to uphold the ideals of Sergei Mag­nit­sky and to pro­vide mean­ing­ful pro­tec­tion to lawyers in Russia:

“Hon­est lawyers in Rus­sia stand in the way of cor­rupt judges and police and are rou­tine tar­gets for harass­ment and worse. Sergei is not the only lawyer work­ing for Her­mitage who has suf­fered at the hands of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry… Pres­i­dent Medvedev, a lawyer him­self, should under­stand the cru­cial role lawyers play in build­ing a sus­tain­able rule of law.”

Mr. Brow­der point­ed out that six months since the young lawyer’s death in cus­tody, no offi­cial has been charged for their role in the per­se­cu­tion, tor­ture and death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky. The Russ­ian offi­cials and crim­i­nals who togeth­er stole $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian state still walk free today, and in some cas­es, have even been pro­mot­ed with­in their respec­tive gov­ern­ment ministries.

Mr. Brow­der called upon Con­gress and the State Depart­ment to sup­port the ini­tia­tive by Sen­a­tor Cardin, Chair­man of the U.S. Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion, to ban the issuance of U.S. visas to cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials involved in the $230 mil­lion fraud and the death of Mag­nit­sky. He also urged the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment to freeze the U.S. bank accounts of cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials and to work close­ly with the rel­e­vant for­eign gov­ern­ments to freeze these accounts overseas.

On 26 April 2010, the Chair­man of the U.S. Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion, Sen­a­tor Ben­jamin Cardin called upon the U.S. State Depart­ment to imme­di­ate­ly can­cel and per­ma­nent­ly with­draw the U.S. visas of over 60 Russ­ian offi­cials and oth­ers involved in the $230 mil­lion cor­rup­tion exposed by Sergei Mag­nit­sky, his arrest on trumped-up charges and death in cus­tody. (See link to the Helsin­ki Commission’s web­site: http://csce.gov/). The offi­cials impli­cat­ed in cor­rup­tion and the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky and who appear on Sen­a­tor Cardin’s visa black­list include Russ­ian Deputy Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Alex­ei Anichin, Deputy Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Vic­tor Grin, and judges who sanc­tioned the arrest and deten­tion with­out tri­al of Sergei Mag­nit­sky and the repres­sive crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against oth­er Her­mitage Fund lawyers in Russia.

For fur­ther information:

Her­mitage Capital

+44 207 440 1777

info@hermitagefund.com

info@lawandorderinrussia.org

http://twitter.com/KatieFisherTwit

Link to the Tom Lan­tos Com­mis­sion offi­cial website:

http://tlhrc.house.gov/

Tom Lan­tos Human Rights Com­mis­sion was estab­lished by a Res­o­lu­tion of the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2008 which insti­tu­tion­alised the largest bipar­ti­san con­gres­sion­al human rights work­ing group, which was found­ed by the late Con­gress­man Tom Lan­tos. The mis­sion of the Tom Lan­tos Human Rights Com­mis­sion is to pro­mote, defend and advo­cate inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized human rights norms in a non­par­ti­san man­ner, both with­in and out­side of Con­gress, as enshrined in the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights and oth­er rel­e­vant human rights instruments.

The Com­mis­sion is named in hon­or of the life and lega­cy of the late Con­gress­man Lan­tos who was the only Holo­caust sur­vivor to serve in the U.S. Con­gress (1980 – 2008). As a teenag­er, he was sent to forced labor camps and endured many instances of tor­ture and abuse. Dur­ing his time at the U.S. Con­gress, he led an enor­mous effort to raise aware­ness about the need for the respect for human rights around the world.

Link to the Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion page:

“Cardin Urges Visa Ban for Russ­ian Offi­cials Con­nect­ed to Anti-Cor­rup­tion Lawyer’s Death”:

http://csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContentRecords.ViewDetail&ContentRecord_id=896&ContentRecordType=P&ContentType=P&CFID=32856756&CFTOKEN=44237387

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