Slanderous Russian Federation Council Report on Magnitsky to the U.S. Congress Was Not Approved by the Russian Parliament

July 13, 2012

One day fol­low­ing a major lob­by­ing cam­paign in Wash­ing­ton DC against the Mag­nit­sky Act by four Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion Coun­cil mem­bers who pre­sent­ed a “par­lia­men­tary inves­ti­ga­tion” posthu­mous­ly defam­ing Sergei Mag­nit­sky as their main evi­dence against the leg­is­la­tion, Mikhail Margelov, Chair­man of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion Coun­cil’s For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, dis­avowed the find­ings of their report say­ing they were not part of the par­lia­men­tary investigation. 

“This was not a par­lia­men­tary inves­ti­ga­tion in the com­mon sense of the word..Members of the Russ­ian del­e­ga­tion sum­ma­rized mate­ri­als on Mag­nit­sky case and sub­mit­ted them to U.S. col­leagues in the form of a short report. The main idea of this sum­ma­ry was to urge the U.S. side to move from polit­i­cal to legal aspects of the case of the lawyer,” said Mikhail Margelov (http://www.rbc.ru/fnews.open/20120712200216.shtml).

On Wednes­day, Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion Coun­cil mem­ber Vitaly Malkin pub­licly com­mu­ni­cat­ed high­ly defam­a­to­ry state­ments about late Sergei Mag­nit­sky. He claimed that Mag­nit­sky was a “drunk”, “out of shape” and that he did­n’t die from his injuries after a severe beat­ing. He referred to his find­ings as the result of an offi­cial “par­lia­men­tary investigation.” 

Speak­ing to RBK news agency, Mr Margelov explained that the Russ­ian law­mak­ers involved were act­ing in their per­son­al capac­i­ty, and the par­lia­men­tary inves­ti­ga­tion was not approved by the Fed­er­a­tion Coun­cil (the upper cham­ber of the Russ­ian Parliament).

“In addi­tion to the shame­ful attempt to posthu­mous­ly defame Sergei Mag­nit­sky, these Russ­ian law­mak­ers even mis­rep­re­sent­ed the nature of their acts in U.S. Con­gress. They feel that there are no con­se­quences to pub­licly mis­rep­re­sent­ing the truth or even their own man­date to present this mis­in­for­ma­tion. It shows a com­plete dis­re­spect for their coun­ter­parts out­side of Rus­sia,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

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