New Version of Andrei Nekrasov’s Anti-Magnitsky Film Attempts to Absolve Putin’s Friend Roldugin from Laundering the $230 Million Fraud Proceeds

June 14, 2016

PRESS RELEASE

For Imme­di­ate distribution

New Ver­sion of Andrei Nekrasov’s Anti-Mag­nit­sky Film Attempts to Absolve Putin’s Friend Roldug­in from Laun­der­ing the $230 Mil­lion Fraud Proceeds

14 June 2016 – Last night, Russ­ian film­mak­er Andrei Nekrasov showed an updat­ed ver­sion of his anti-Mag­nit­sky film to a pri­vate audi­ence at the New­se­um in Wash­ing­ton, in which he attempts to exon­er­ate Sergei Roldug­in, Putin’s cel­lo-play­ing child­hood friend from the involve­ment in the Mag­nit­sky case, which was revealed in April 2016 through “Pana­ma Papers.”

In his new ver­sion of “The Mag­nit­sky Act – Behind the Scenes,” Nekrasov claims that Sergei Roldug­in could­n’t have been a recip­i­ent of the pro­ceeds of the $230 mil­lion tax rebate fraud that Sergei Mag­nit­sky exposed, claim­ing that the mon­ey paid into Roldug­in’s accounts pre­dat­ed the Mag­nit­sky case.

Nekrasov says in his film: “The trans­ac­tion that was sup­posed to link the fraud and Putin’s friend took place in July and Octo­ber 2007, that is before the fraud at the end of Decem­ber [when the fraud­u­lent tax refund was approved by Russ­ian officials].”

In fact, accord­ing to the Pana­ma Papers and the Organ­ised Crime and Cor­rup­tion Report­ing Project, $2 mil­lion con­nect­ed to the $230 mil­lion fraud was received on account of Del­co Net­works SA on Feb­ru­ary 27^th, 2008, i.e. two month after the US$230 mil­lion theft,

and from there, US$800,000 was wired to Sergei Roldugin’s com­pa­ny, Inter­na­tion­al Media Over­seas SA under a May 2008 con­tract (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2811374-IMO-DELCO-SHARE-PURCHASE.html#document/p1). Inter­na­tion­al Media Over­seas SA was incor­po­rat­ed on Feb­ru­ary 1^st 2008, and held an account with Gazprombank’s branch in Switzer­land (https://www.occrp.org/en/panamapapers/russia-the-cellist-and-the-lawyer/).

“This lat­est claim by Andrei Nekrasov shows clear­ly his bias and the pur­pose of his film — to absolve cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials and indi­vid­u­als who were involved in and ben­e­fit­ed from the $230 mil­lion fraud uncov­ered by Sergei Mag­nit­sky,” said William Brow­der, leader of the glob­al Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice movement.

Andrei Nerkasov’s main ally in the pro­mo­tion of his anti-Mag­nit­sky film is Nataliya Vesel­nit­skaya, the Russ­ian lawyer for Denis Kat­syv whose com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly accused by the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice and the Swiss Attor­ney Gen­er­al of mon­ey laun­der­ing in con­nec­tion to pro­ceeds of the $230 mil­lion fraud uncov­ered by Sergei Mag­nit­sky. Ms Veselnitskaya’s involve­ment in organ­is­ing the film and its abort­ed screen­ing in Brus­sels was revealed by the Krem­lin news agency, TASS, who called her of “one of the Russ­ian organ­is­ers of the film pre­view.”

Oth­er sup­port­ers of Nekrasov’s anti-Mag­nit­sky film are Pavel Kar­pov, the for­mer police offi­cer who had cus­tody of the doc­u­ments used in the US$230 mil­lion fraud, and Andrei Pavlov, the con­sigliere of the Kluyev Orga­nized Crime Group who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the col­lu­sive court pro­ceed­ings used in the fraud. Both men flew to Brus­sels to the abort­ed Euro­pean pre­miere of the film.

Pavlov and Kar­pov in Brussels

In his film, Nekrasov has dis­missed the evi­dence, find­ings and con­clu­sions from mul­ti­ple inde­pen­dent bod­ies and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists show­ing that Mag­nit­sky was arrest­ed after he had tes­ti­fied against cor­rupt Russ­ian police offi­cers and killed in custody.

A cat­a­logue of Andrei Nekrasov’s delib­er­ate lies is exposed in a 50-page Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion by the Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice Cam­paign based on the offi­cial doc­u­ments, Sergei Magnitsky’s tes­ti­mo­ny, and inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions. The pre­sen­ta­tion can be down­loaded here: http://russian-untouchables.com/docs/Nekrasov%20Lies%20Presentaion%20June%20(ENG)%20NEW%20JUNE%202016%20v%202.pdf

Nekrasov’s lies in the film have also been exposed by Russ­ian human rights activists who stat­ed that he intends to attack the Mag­nit­sky list in the inter­est of cor­rupt offi­cials affect­ed by sanctions.

State­ment of Lyud­mi­la Alex­eee­va, head of the Moscow Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion: http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/72940.html

State­ment of Valery Borschev, head of the Moscow Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion, that con­duct­ed the foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tion of Mag­nit­sky’s death in detention.

Sergei Mag­nit­sky was Hermitage’s lawyer who uncov­ered the US$230 mil­lion fraud and tes­ti­fied about the com­plic­i­ty of Russ­ian offi­cials in it. He was false­ly arrest­ed, detained for 358 days with­out tri­al, tor­tured and killed in Russ­ian police cus­tody at the age of 37. The events of this case are described in the New-York Times best-sell­er “Red Notice” by William Brow­der and in a series of cam­paign videos on Youtube chan­nel “Russ­ian Untouchables”.

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact:

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky
+44 207 440 1777
e‑mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org
www.lawandorderinrussia.org
www.billbrowder.com
@Billbrowder

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