Russian Government Employs Anti-Terrorist Unit to Search for Hermitage CEO in Retaliation for the US Magnitsky Act

April 22, 2013

The Anti-Ter­ror­ist Depart­ment (Depart­ment “T”) of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry has been assigned to search for British cit­i­zen William Brow­der, who has been run­ning a glob­al cam­paign for jus­tice after the killing of his lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky in police custody.

The infor­ma­tion about the involve­ment of the Russ­ian Anti-Ter­ror­ist Depart­ment comes from court records in the lat­est ini­tia­tive of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry to seek an arrest war­rant in absen­tia for William Brow­der. This is the sec­ond known request of an in absen­tia arrest war­rant of a West­ern­er in con­tem­po­rary Russ­ian history. 

Court records indi­cate that Lt Colonel A.K. Gubanov of the Depart­ment “T” of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry vis­it­ed the sec­ond sec­re­tary of the British embassy in Moscow in March 2013 “search­ing” for Mr Brow­der, who lives in Lon­don. This action cir­cum­vent­ed diplo­mat­ic pro­to­col and legal pro­ce­dures for police search­es and mutu­al legal assis­tance requests. Pre­vi­ous Russ­ian requests for mutu­al legal assis­tance in rela­tion to Mr Brow­der with the British Home Office were rejected. 

Lt Colonel A.K. Gubanov and anoth­er vis­it­ing Russ­ian police offi­cer, Major P.I. Tam­bovt­sev, asked the British diplo­mat to sign a Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry pro­to­col, which the British diplo­mat declined to do.

“The mis­use of the anti ter­ror­ist police in pur­su­ing a polit­cal vendet­ta in rela­tion to the Mag­nit­sky Act shows how des­per­ate the Russ­ian author­i­ties have become to try to pro­tect their bank accounts and trav­el priv­i­leges. By the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment divert­ing their most impor­tant anti ter­ror­ist per­son­nel at this sen­si­tive time for pri­vate cor­rupt pur­pos­es is a clear sign of a com­plete break­down in the law enforce­ment sys­tem in Rus­sia,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

The lat­est police actions against Mr Brow­der are for­mal­ly coor­di­nat­ed by G.R. Sun­gurov, head of the 4^th sec­tion of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Ministry’s Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment in charge of fight­ing orga­nized crime and cor­rup­tion. The actions are car­ried out under a new spu­ri­ous crim­i­nal case direct­ed against Mr Brow­der alleg­ing “theft” of Gazprom shares and “inter­fer­ence” in its poli­cies dat­ing back to the late 1990’s. The case has no legal foun­da­tion, as the Gazprom shares that the police alleged were “stolen” were in fact pur­chased in open mar­ket trans­ac­tions. The trans­ac­tions have been report­ed to Russ­ian reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties and audit­ed by the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Tax Ser­vice who found no vio­la­tions. Notably, the reg­u­la­tions on for­eign own­er­ship of Gazprom shares nev­er envis­aged any crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty and this would be the first case in Russ­ian his­to­ry where a for­eign investor was retroac­tive­ly and arbi­trar­i­ly tar­get­ed for con­duct­ing legal trans­ac­tions in Gazprom shares. 

The alleged “inter­fer­ence” by Mr Brow­der in Gazprom’s poli­cies in the ear­ly 2000’s referred to by the Inte­ri­or Min­istry were in fact: writ­ing requests for com­pa­ny infor­ma­tion; cam­paign­ing for a seat on the board of direc­tors; and call­ing to stop theft and cor­rup­tion in rela­tion to bil­lions of dol­lars of Gazprom’s assets and cash flow.

The lat­est acts against Mr Brow­der have been sanc­tioned by Gen­er­al Major Sergei Boro­dulin of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry. He is the same offi­cial who had sanc­tioned the open­ing of a posthu­mous crim­i­nal case in August 2011 against Sergei Mag­nit­sky, a year and a half after Mr Mag­nit­sky was killed in police custody. 

Whilst per­se­cut­ing Mr Brow­der in this crim­i­nal case, offi­cer Sun­gurov was pro­mot­ed from Major to Lt Colonel.

Ear­li­er, the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry also threat­ened to use “spe­cial forces” to obtain doc­u­ments from HSBC in Moscow in their pur­suit of Mr Browder.

The request to HSBC sanc­tioned by offi­cer Sun­gurov said: “Oth­er­wise, the doc­u­ments which have the force of evi­dence under the crim­i­nal case and with HSBC Bank can be seized by force dur­ing a seizure or search, includ­ing with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of employ­ees of spe­cial units.”

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