Cypriot Police Assist Russian Interior Ministry in the Raid in the New Posthumous Case against Sergei Magnitsky

December 1, 2015

Cypri­ot Police Assist Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry in the Raid in the New Posthu­mous Case against Sergei Magnitsky

1 Decem­ber 2015 – Last week, two senior Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials, Sergei Petryashov (https://35.mvd.ru/news/item/2577609/) and Artem Ranchenkov (http://artprotest.org/cgi-bin/news.pl?&id=5739), along with Cyprus police offi­cers raid­ed the offices of the Her­mitage Fund’s cor­po­rate law firm in Cyprus.

They inter­ro­gat­ed employ­ees and left a 41-point request for cor­po­rate documents.

The raid in Nicosia was con­duct­ed under the legal assis­tance request to Cyprus from Rus­sia, where the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry is advanc­ing new posthu­mous crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Sergei Mag­nit­sky and in absen­tia against William Brow­der, leader of ‘Jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky’ cam­paign, pro­ceed­ings which have been denounced as improp­er and polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed by the Coun­cil of Europe, Euro­pean Union, OSCE, and INTERPOL.

“It is remark­able that the law enforce­ment author­i­ties in Cyprus, a coun­try that is a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Union, would agree to become direct­ly involved in assist­ing the Russ­ian offi­cials in a case that has been uni­ver­sal­ly con­demned around the world,” said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky campaign.

The Cyprus raid was autho­rised by the Cyprus Min­istry of Jus­tice, and Cyprus police offi­cers Lieu­tenant Chr. Christodoulou and Christi­na Papaavraam. These same Cypri­ot police offi­cers are also in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing Hermitage’s com­plaints about the role of Cyprus in the $230 mil­lion fraud scheme and laun­der­ing of pro­ceeds through Cyprus, in which Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry had been impli­cat­ed. The pro­ceed­ings in Cyprus became nec­es­sary after Russ­ian gov­ern­ment pro­tect­ed the per­pe­tra­tors, and exon­er­at­ed all its offi­cials from responsibility.

 “Instead of pros­e­cut­ing those respon­si­ble for the mas­sive Russ­ian fraud, which also vic­timised Cypri­ot com­pa­nies of the Her­mitage Fund, and for the laun­der­ing of the mil­lions in fraud pro­ceeds through Cyprus, Cypri­ot gov­ern­ment bod­ies have now joined cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials in the cov­er up of the fraud,” said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky campaign.

“The same Cyprus offi­cials who are inves­ti­gat­ing the crim­i­nal com­plaints from Her­mitage about the fraud and the com­plic­i­ty of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry, are now help­ing Russ­ian offi­cials to attack the vic­tim of the crime out­side of Rus­sia,” said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky campaign.

In addi­tion to their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Cyprus raid, Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials Petryashov and Ranchenkov have blocked efforts of Sergei Magnitsky’s moth­er to chal­lenge the posthu­mous pro­ceed­ings and iden­ti­fy those who ben­e­fit­ed from her son’s death.

Under the new Russ­ian pro­ceed­ings, inves­ti­ga­tors Petryashov and Ranchenkov are accus­ing Sergei Mag­nit­sky and William Brow­der of orga­niz­ing the $230 mil­lion fraud that the two had in fact uncov­ered and report­ed, and have refused all appli­ca­tions from Sergei Magnitsky’s moth­er who is seek­ing jus­tice for her mur­dered son.

In par­tic­u­lar, they refused her requests to review charges, update her on the progress of the inves­ti­ga­tion, and dis­close evi­dence on which her son is posthu­mous­ly named a per­pe­tra­tor of the $230 mil­lion fraud he had uncov­ered, find­ing that she has “no rights to access the doc­u­ments or take their copies.”

Russ­ian inves­ti­ga­tor Artem Ranchenkov was pre­vi­ous­ly an inves­ti­ga­tor in the Pussy Riot case.

Since 2007, when Her­mitage dis­cov­ered the fraud against its three Russ­ian and two Cypri­ot com­pa­nies, it has filed crim­i­nal com­plaints seek­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of the role of Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials in the fraud. The crim­i­nal com­plaints were filed in Rus­sia on 3 Decem­ber 2007, and in Cyprus on 5 June 2008. The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment respond­ed by exon­er­at­ing all its offi­cials, and mount­ing an attack on Hermitage’s Russ­ian lawyers. One of them – Sergei Mag­nit­sky — was false­ly arrest­ed, tor­tured for 358 days in deten­tion, and ulti­mate­ly killed in Russ­ian police cus­tody in Novem­ber 2009.

Giv­en the impuni­ty in Rus­sia, Her­mitage start­ed the “Jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky” move­ment, to iden­ti­fy those respon­si­ble and ben­e­fit­ing from his death, seek­ing inter­na­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tions by law enforce­ment author­i­ties around the world, and the impo­si­tion of per­son­alised sanc­tions on them.

As a result of the glob­al cam­paign­ing, in Decem­ber 2012, the US Con­gress passed a law, Sergei Mag­nit­sky Rule of Law Account­abil­i­ty Act, which impos­es visa and finan­cial sanc­tions on those involved in the cov­er up of Sergei Magnitsky’s ill-treat­ment and death, and the crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy he had uncovered.

In 2013, the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice filed a civ­il for­fei­ture and mon­ey laun­der­ing com­plaint in rela­tion to mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar prop­er­ties in New York bought by com­pa­nies owned by the son of ex Min­is­ter of Trans­porta­tion of the Moscow Region, with alleged­ly comin­gled pro­ceeds of the $230 mil­lion fraud uncov­ered by Sergei Magnitsky.

In 2011, the Swiss Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor opened a mon­ey laun­der­ing inves­ti­ga­tion in response to an appli­ca­tion from Her­mitage, who was rec­og­nized as plain­tiff, and froze mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar assets belong­ing to rel­a­tives of Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials, some of whom pur­chased high-end real estate in Dubai using funds from Swiss accounts sus­pect­ed to be con­nect­ed to the $230 mil­lion fraud.

Russ­ian author­i­ties have retal­i­at­ed by seek­ing assis­tance from for­eign coun­tries and from INTERPOL, the inter­na­tion­al police organ­i­sa­tion, to seek the arrest of the lead­ers of the Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice cam­paign abroad, includ­ing William Browder.

The Coun­cil of Europe has issued two defin­i­tive reports on the Her­mitage and Mag­nit­sky case, find­ing that the Russ­ian pro­ceed­ings against them were polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and abu­sive, and as such legal assis­tance to Rus­sia must be refused by mem­ber states.

The UK author­i­ties, who have received Russ­ian legal assis­tance requests, have refused them as con­trary to UK’s pub­lic pol­i­cy. INTERPOL has also refused the Russ­ian requests in rela­tion to William Brow­der, find­ing them to be pre­dom­i­nant­ly polit­i­cal and con­trary to INTERPOL’s Constitution.

“In con­trast to oth­er coun­tries and inter­na­tion­al bod­ies, Cyprus seems to be wil­ful­ly ignor­ing the inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion of this case and work­ing direct­ly with the Russ­ian per­pe­tra­tors to go after their vic­tims abroad,” said a Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice campaigner.

Under Arti­cle 12 of the Mutu­al Legal Assis­tance Treaty between Rus­sia and Cyprus, Cyprus can refuse the pro­vi­sion of legal assis­tance to Rus­sia where it con­tra­dicts fun­da­men­tal pub­lic pol­i­cy principles.

“Cyprus is a mem­ber of Coun­cil of Europe, and a sig­na­to­ry to the Euro­pean Con­ven­tion on Mutu­al Assis­tance in Crim­i­nal Mat­ters which con­tains safe­guards for refus­ing legal assis­tance in polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed cas­es, and it should be urged to do so now”, said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky campaign.

This is the sec­ond time this month that the Cypri­ot author­i­ties have coop­er­at­ed with the Russ­ian author­i­ties on polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed cas­es. Ear­li­er this month, Natalia Kono­val­o­va, a for­mer asso­ciate of a Yukos Oil sub­sidiary, was extra­dit­ed from Cyprus to Rus­sia to face polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed con­vic­tion in con­nec­tion with Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s case dat­ing from some ten years ago.

Assis­tance by nation­al judi­cial author­i­ties in polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es breach­es a set of inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions, includ­ing the UN Human Rights Con­ven­tion and the Euro­pean Human Rights Convention.

For more infor­ma­tion please contact: 

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e‑mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

Twit­ter: @KatieFisher__

www.facebook.com/russianuntouchables

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