Russia Responds to European Magnitsky Sanctions by Suspending All Probes into Implicated Officials

April 3, 2014

In an appar­ent response to the adop­tion by the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment of the Mag­nit­sky Sanc­tions List of 32 Rus­sians, this morn­ing the Russ­ian author­i­ties announced that they have “sus­pend­ed” all inves­ti­ga­tions of Russ­ian offi­cials impli­cat­ed in Mag­nit­sky tes­ti­monies and the com­plaints filed by his colleagues.
“The pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion has been sus­pend­ed due to the non-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of per­sons sub­ject to charges,” accord­ing to an unnamed source of Inter­fax news agency.
Valery Borschev, for­mer head of the Moscow Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion which con­duct­ed an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into Sergei Magnitsky’s death, said: “This news is sur­pris­ing. I asked per­son­al­ly Mr Bas­trykin [Head of the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee] at the ses­sion of the Human Rights Coun­cil why they were look­ing at low-lev­el per­sons. He told me: “This is only the begin­ning, don’t wor­ry, we will go further.”
Borschev fur­ther said, “There are seri­ous doc­u­ments in the case and to say that there is no one to indict is sim­ply absurd.”
Com­ment­ing on this devel­op­ment, William Brow­der, CEO of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal and leader of the Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice Cam­paign, said: “Noth­ing the Russ­ian author­i­ties do in the Mag­nit­sky case sur­pris­es me any­more. After pros­e­cut­ing a dead man last year in the first ever posthu­mous tri­al in Russ­ian his­to­ry, the absur­di­ty and ille­git­i­ma­cy of the Russ­ian government’s actions know no bounds.” 

Comments

• Link