Prosecutor Chaika’s Role in Magnitsky Case Explains His Unhinged Attack on Bill Browder in Response to Corruption Expose Produced by Navalny

December 18, 2015

Pros­e­cu­tor Chaika’s Role in Mag­nit­sky Case Explains His Unhinged Attack on Bill Brow­der in Response to Cor­rup­tion Expose Pro­duced by Navalny

Yuri Chai­ka

18 Decem­ber 2015 – Russ­ian Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Yuri Chai­ka played a sig­nif­i­cant  role in the ill-treat­ment and death in cus­tody of Sergei Mag­nit­sky and the sub­se­quent cov­er up in his case. Chaika’s recent emo­tion­al attack on Bill Brow­der, the head of Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice Cam­paign, can be explained by his com­plic­i­ty in the Mag­nit­sky case and the pres­sure it has put on him internationally.

“It is no coin­ci­dence that in response to alle­ga­tions of brazen abuse by his sons and senior pros­e­cu­tors made in Alex­ei Naval­ny’s video ear­li­er this month, Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka decid­ed to unleash his frus­tra­tion on Mag­nit­sky jus­tice cam­paign­ers. This is because of Chaika’s per­son­al role in the Mag­nit­sky case and its sub­se­quent cov­er up,” said Bill Brow­der, head of the Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice Cam­paign, and author of ‘Red Notice’.

The chronol­o­gy of Chaika’s role in the Mag­nit­sky case is sum­ma­rized below:

1) On Decem­ber 3^rd 2007, the Her­mitage Fund wrote a crim­i­nal com­plaint to Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­kabased on Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s inves­ti­ga­tion about the theft of Her­mitage Fund’s com­pa­nies and the cre­ation of $1 bil­lion of fake lia­bil­i­ties which were exe­cut­ed with doc­u­ments seized by the police. This was three weeks before $230 mil­lion were stolen from the Russ­ian bud­get. Chai­ka assigned the crime report to his deputy Vic­tor Grin, who took no action. Had Chai­ka and Grin act­ed, they would have pre­vent­ed the theft of $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian people.

2) On July 23^rd 2008, the Her­mitage Fund filed a sec­ond crim­i­nal com­plaintto Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka pre­pared based on Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s inves­ti­ga­tion describ­ing the dis­cov­ery that the theft of the Her­mitage Fund’s com­pa­nies was per­pe­trat­ed in order to steal $230 mil­lion of tax­es paid by Her­mitage Fund’s com­pa­nies to the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment. Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka became per­son­al­ly involved in over­see­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, with his senior aid pros­e­cu­tor Bumazhkin respond­ing on 18 August 2008 that the inves­ti­ga­tion was under the con­trol of the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office and had exon­er­at­ed the low-lev­el per­pe­tra­tors for the lack of crime in their actions. Chaika’s office lat­er also exon­er­at­ed all tax offi­cials who approved the largest tax refund in Russ­ian his­to­ry in one day say­ing they were ‘tricked and deceived.’

3) On Novem­ber 24^th 2008, Her­mitage’s lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky was arrest­ed by the same police offi­cials who were impli­cat­ed in his tes­ti­mo­ny and the crime report Her­mitage sub­mit­ted to Chai­ka that sum­mer. He was sub­se­quent­ly tor­tured in prison to get him to retract his testimony.

4) On June 8^th 2009, the Inter­na­tion­al Bar Asso­ci­a­tion wrote to Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka seek­ing his inter­ven­tion in the case of unlaw­ful arrest of Sergei Mag­nit­sky. A sim­i­lar let­ter of inter­ven­tion was addressed to Chai­ka on 24 July 2009 by the Eng­lish Law Soci­ety. In Sep­tem­ber 2009, Chaika’s office respond­ed that there were “no vio­la­tions in Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s case and no rea­sons to intervene.”

5) On August 17^th 2009, Sergei Mag­nit­sky filed a com­plaint against Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­kaand held him per­son­al­ly respon­si­ble for the vio­la­tion of his human rights in deten­tion by Chaika’s sub­or­di­nates (pros­e­cu­tors Burov and Peche­gin) who by law were man­dat­ed to intervene.

6) On Sep­tem­ber 11^th 2009, Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s lawyers wrote to Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka about the pres­sure being applied to Sergei Mag­nit­sky to force him to give false tes­ti­mo­ny and the with­hold­ing of med­ical care. Chaika’s office replied in Octo­ber 2009 stat­ing that ‘no phys­i­cal or psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure was exert­ed on defen­dant  S.L.Magnitsky…There are no grounds to take mea­sures of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al response.”

7) On Novem­ber 16^th 2009, after suf­fer­ing from months of tor­ture and neglect, Sergei Mag­nit­sky died after a beat­ing with rub­ber batons by guards.

8) In July 2010, Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka com­ment­ed on Mag­nit­sky case not find­ing any respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s office, only of prison per­son­nel.

9) In May 2011, Chaika’s senior sub­or­di­nate issued con­clu­sions exon­er­at­ing Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers from respon­si­bil­i­ty for the false arrest and tor­ture in deten­tion of Sergei Magnitsky.

10) On 31 May 2011, Pres­i­dent Medvedev ordered Chai­kato exer­cise per­son­al con­trol over the Mag­nit­sky death inves­ti­ga­tion and the inves­ti­ga­tion into the $230 mil­lion fraud.

11) On 1 June 2011, Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka announced that he would bring creme de la creme of pros­e­cu­tors to over­see the Mag­nit­sky case. The offi­cial Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office state­ment said: “Due to the pub­lic res­o­nance on instruc­tion from the Pres­i­dent of Rus­sia, the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office has cre­at­ed a group of pros­e­cu­tors com­pris­ing employ­ees of dif­fer­ent spe­cialised depart­ments in order to strength­en and ensure qual­i­fied over­sight over the process and results of the inves­ti­ga­tion of crim­i­nal cas­es by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of Rus­sia and the Inves­tiga­tive Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry of Russia.”

12) On Jan­u­ary 23^d 2012, Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka per­son­al­ly blocked the pro­pos­al from the Pres­i­den­t’s Human Rights Coun­cil to com­bine the inves­ti­ga­tions of Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s death and the $230 mil­lion fraud he had uncov­ered, hav­ing con­cealed in his report to the Pres­i­dent that the con­clu­sions drawn by his senior sub­or­di­nates had exon­er­at­ed Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials in the Mag­nit­sky case.

13) In March 2013, the inves­ti­ga­tion into Mag­nit­sky’s death was closed, find­ing no crime occurred, the con­clu­sion that was approved by Chaika’s sub­or­di­nate pros­e­cu­tor Bochkaryev.

14) In 2013, Chaika’s Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office advanced the posthu­mous tri­al over Sergei Mag­nit­sky, the first in Russ­ian legal his­to­ry, with posthu­mous indict­ment of Sergei Mag­nisky sanc­tioned by Chaika’s deputy Vic­tor Grin.

“Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka was one of the key Russ­ian offi­cials respon­si­ble for the human rights vio­la­tions of Sergei Mag­nit­sky when he was still alive and the cov­er-up of offi­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty of Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s mur­der after he died. It’s clear that he wants to silence the peo­ple who are call­ing him out,” said  Bill Browder.

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

www.billbrowder.com

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