Magnitsky’s Colleague Challenges Russia’s New Restriction on Emigration

March 6, 2012

Today, at 14:00, Khamovnich­esky Dis­trict Court of Moscow will hear a law­suit filed by Ivan Cherkasov, a col­league of the late Sergei Mag­nit­sky and a part­ner of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal, resid­ing in the UK. The law­suit is filed against the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry chal­leng­ing them on restrict­ing his right to emi­grate and their refusal to renew his Russ­ian passport. 

Last Sep­tem­ber, Mr Cherkasov applied to the Russ­ian embassy in Lon­don for a new pass­port on the ground of expi­ra­tion of his pre­vi­ous pass­port. In Decem­ber, the Russ­ian embassy reject­ed his appli­ca­tion on orders from the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry, and refused to pro­vide any details. Last week, the Russ­ian embassy issued a notice stat­ing that Mr Cherkasov’s pass­port appli­ca­tion was refused based on para­graph 3 of Arti­cle 15 of the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Law “On the Pro­ce­dure of Exit From and Entry To the Russ­ian Federation.”

This rel­e­vant pro­vi­sion was intro­duced on April 7, 2010 and says:

“The right of cit­i­zens of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion to leave the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion may be tem­porar­i­ly restrict­ed in cas­es where the cit­i­zen is sus­pect­ed or involved as a defen­dant, and for as long as the deci­sion is made on the case or the court ver­dict comes into force.”

The law­suit filed by Mr Cherkasov says that the refusal by the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry to renew his Russ­ian pass­port effec­tive­ly means that Russ­ian law enforce­ment agen­cies now have the pow­er to restore “exit visas,” which exist­ed until 1993 and formed the basis for Jack­son-Vanik amend­ment in the US, which remains in force today.

“Two years ago, the Russ­ian migra­tion law was qui­et­ly changed to give pow­ers to the Inte­ri­or Min­istry to arbi­trar­i­ly deny any per­son the right to leave the coun­try,” said Ivan Cherkasov.

“To jus­ti­fy its refusal to renew my pass­port, the Inte­ri­or Min­istry cites its author­i­ty to restrict me from leav­ing the coun­try, despite the fact that I had left Rus­sia six years ago and live abroad. By refus­ing to issue me a pass­port of a cit­i­zen of Rus­sia, the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry in fact denies me Russ­ian cit­i­zen­ship and denies me the right to emigrate.” 

“With the new law in place, any­one who is being per­se­cut­ed by the author­i­ties no longer has the free­dom to emi­grate. The con­sti­tu­tion­al right of cit­i­zens of Rus­sia to free­dom of move­ment is left at the mer­cy of cor­rupt law enforce­ment offi­cers,” said Ivan Cherkasov.

Restric­tion on emi­gra­tion is a tool that has been wide­ly prac­ticed by total­i­tar­i­an regimes in the past. Exit visa were employed in Italy under Mus­soli­ni from 1922 until 1943 and in Nazi Ger­many from 1933 to 1945. 

Ivan Cherkasov moved to Britain in ear­ly 2006. A year lat­er, in May 2007, the Russ­ian secret police (the FSB) and the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry opened a fab­ri­cat­ed crim­i­nal case against him to gain access to doc­u­ments and files of the Her­mitage Fund’s invest­ment hold­ing com­pa­nies in Moscow. These doc­u­ments were then used by the offi­cials to expro­pri­ate Her­mitage Fund’s com­pa­nies and then steal $230 mil­lion of tax­es that Her­mitage had paid in the pre­vi­ous year. The tax rebate fraud was uncov­ered by Sergei Mag­nit­sky, who gave sworn tes­ti­mo­ny against the offi­cials involved. One month after his tes­ti­mo­ny, Sergei Mag­nit­sky was arrest­ed by the same offi­cials he had tes­ti­fied against, kept for a year in deten­tion with­out tri­al and mur­dered on 16 Novem­ber 2009. Last year, the same Russ­ian offi­cials opened the first-in-his­to­ry posthu­mous pros­e­cu­tion of Mr Mag­nit­sky. They also con­tin­ue to pur­sue Ivan Cherkasov. The case against Mr Cherkasov has remained open for near­ly five years, on the pre­text of inves­ti­gat­ing the alleged non-pay­ment of tax­es by Kameya, a Russ­ian com­pa­ny he served as gen­er­al direc­tor of, in spite of absence of any tax claims against this company.

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