US Government Escalates Criticism of Russia’s Handling of Magnitsky Case

May 28, 2012

As the US Con­gress con­sid­ers pass­ing the Sergei Mag­nit­sky Rule of Law Account­abil­i­ty Act, the U.S. State Depart­ment has come out with strong lan­guage crit­i­ciz­ing the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment in their han­dling of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky in state cus­tody in 2009. In the annu­al Report on Human Rights Prac­tices for 2011 (http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper), the U.S. State Depart­ment describes in detail the con­tin­ued impuni­ty of Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials who were involved in the false arrest, tor­ture and death of Sergei Magnitsky. 

The report stat­ed: “There were a num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments dur­ing the year in the case of Sergey Mag­nit­skiy, a lawyer who died of med­ical neglect and abuse while in pre­tri­al deten­tion in 2009. In May the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office con­clud­ed its probe into the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs offi­cers who arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed Mag­nit­skiy. It found no evi­dence of wrong­do­ing. In June the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office approved the find­ings of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs offi­cers accused by Mag­nit­skiy of tax fraud and the theft of 5 bil­lion rubles (approx­i­mate­ly $150 mil­lion). In their report the offi­cers claimed that Mag­nit­skiy him­self car­ried out the theft that he report­ed to authorities.”

The report also high­lights the fact that nobody has been pros­e­cut­ed in Rus­sia in spite of for­mer Pres­i­dent Medvede­v’s per­son­al inter­ven­tion into the case after his Human Rights Coun­cil named names and the crimes of var­i­ous Russ­ian officials.

“Fol­low­ing the release of the council’s find­ings, Pres­i­dent Medvedev acknowl­edged that a “crime had been com­mit­ted.” How­ev­er, on August 2, police refused a request by the coun­cil to rein­ves­ti­gate Magnitskiy’s death,” says the U.S State Department’s report.

Final­ly, the U.S. State Depart­ment high­light­ed that Sergei Mag­nit­sky was abused in cus­tody in response to his tes­ti­fy­ing against Russ­ian offi­cials who were involved in large-scale Russ­ian corruption. 

“Cor­rup­tion was wide­spread through­out the exec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive, and judi­cial branch­es at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment… When whistle­blow­ers com­plained about offi­cial cor­rup­tion, some­times the same gov­ern­ment offi­cial who was the sub­ject of the com­plaint was asked to inves­ti­gate, which often led to retal­i­a­tion against the whistle­blow­er, gen­er­al­ly in the form of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. A promi­nent exam­ple is that of Sergey Mag­nit­skiy, who was pros­e­cut­ed by the same Inter­nal Affairs Min­istry offi­cers he impli­cat­ed in the theft of five bil­lion rubles… through a fraud­u­lent tax rebate scheme,” said the US State Department.

The State Depart­men­t’s report was fol­lowed by a robust state­ment by the US Ambas­sador to Rus­sia, Michael McFaul at a speech giv­en at the High­er School of Eco­nom­ics in Moscow on May 25, 2012. In his speech McFaul stat­ed for the first time that he was an actu­al author of the US Gov­ern­men­t’s cur­rent visa ban on Russ­ian offi­cials who were involved in the tor­ture and death of Mr. Mag­nit­sky. He also stat­ed that he was respon­si­ble for ban­ning oth­er Russ­ian human rights abusers. 

In a sep­a­rate devel­op­ment, last Fri­day the Bureau of the Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly of the Coun­cil of Europe (PACE) announced that they could not come to a deci­sion on approv­ing an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky. The deci­sion will be post­poned until late June at the next meet­ing of the Bureau in Strasbourg. 

On 30 April 2012, a spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tion was called for by a motion enti­tled “Refus­ing Impuni­ty for the Killers of Sergei Mag­nit­sky” signed by 69 mem­bers of Par­lia­ment from 29 coun­tries of the Coun­cil of Europe http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/Doc/XrefViewPDF.asp?FileID=18232&Language=EN. Russ­ian Duma rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Leonid Slut­sky, said that the Russ­ian del­e­ga­tion had fought hard to block the inves­ti­ga­tion, and that their fight was sup­port­ed by PACE’s Spe­cial Rap­por­teurs on Rus­sia, Mr Andreas Gross (MP from Switzer­land and Chair­per­son of Polit­i­cal Group: Com­mit­tee on Rules of Pro­ce­dure, Immu­ni­ties and Insti­tu­tion­al Affairs) and Mr Györ­gy Frun­da, MP from Roma­nia and Third Vice-Chair­per­son of the Com­mit­tee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.

“After a hard dis­cus­sion, we were able to con­vince the [PACE] Bureau that there was no need to pre­pare a sep­a­rate report on the inves­ti­ga­tion of the death in jail of lawyer Mr Mag­nit­sky. Of course, the posi­tion of Co-Rap­por­teurs Andreas Gross and Györ­gy Frun­da was in full sup­port of the posi­tion not to do a sep­a­rate report on this [Mag­nit­sky] mat­ter,” said Leonid Slut­sky, Russ­ian MP and Deputy Head of the Russ­ian del­e­ga­tion to PACE, accord­ing to Ros­balt news agency’s report on Fri­day, 25 May 2012.

The Mag­nit­sky motion signed by the Coun­cil of Europe’s par­lia­men­tar­i­ans sides with the U.S. State Department’s con­clu­sion of the fail­ure of Russ­ian author­i­ties to pros­e­cute Magnitsky’s killers and calls for its own investigation:

“Accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors, fol­low­ing the events in ques­tion, the offi­cials con­cerned acquired lux­u­ry prop­er­ties and oth­er assets whose val­ue far exceeds what they could afford on their salaries as pub­lic ser­vants. The com­pe­tent author­i­ties have nev­er­the­less failed to prop­er­ly inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute those respon­si­ble for Mr Magnitsky’s death. Instead, they have con­tin­ued to accuse Mr Mag­nit­sky, even seek­ing to pros­e­cute him posthu­mous­ly… For the sake of its own cred­i­bil­i­ty and that of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, the Assem­bly should now engage in co-oper­a­tion with Rus­sia, through the prepa­ra­tion of a ded­i­cat­ed report, in order to ful­ly elu­ci­date this land­mark case.”

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