Russian Government Makes Secret the Names of the 12 Prosecutors Involved in the Posthumous Case Against Sergei Magnitsky to Protect them From US Sanctions

July 24, 2012

Fol­low­ing the progress of the Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions leg­is­la­tion in the US and oth­er coun­tries, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment has tak­en the unprece­dent­ed step of mak­ing secret the names of all 12 offi­cials from the Russ­ian Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office involved in pros­e­cut­ing Sergei Mag­nit­sky posthumously.
The group of 12 pros­e­cu­tors was cre­at­ed on 1 June 2011 by deci­sion of Rus­si­a’s Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Yury Chai­ka, fol­low­ing his meet­ing with then Pres­i­dent Dmit­ry Medvedev, to “strength­en over­sight” over inves­ti­ga­tions in the Mag­nit­sky case. Yuri Chai­ka announced that the group com­prised “creme de la creme” of the Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office. How­ev­er, when the lawyer for Ms Mag­nit­skaya request­ed access to infor­ma­tion about the group and its actions, he was stonewalled. All his peti­tions were reject­ed on unrea­soned ground.

Now Mrs. Mag­nit­skaya’s lawyer sued the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor in Simonovsky dis­trict court of Moscow seek­ing to dis­close the names of those involved.
In the law­suit, he stated:
“The spe­cial group cre­at­ed inside the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office is over­see­ing cas­es where Ms Mag­nit­skaya has either been recog­nised as a vic­tim or has been assigned an ille­gal sta­tus of “rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a dead defen­dant.” Yet, the pros­e­cu­tor’s office is try­ing to hide the data about those offi­cials whose actions direct­ly affect her rights, and the rights of her dead son.”

In sup­port of the law­suit, he cites the Russ­ian Con­sti­tu­tion and pre­vi­ous rul­ing by the Con­sti­tu­tion­al court which stip­u­lat­ed that Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office must adhere to full dis­clo­sure except where specif­i­cal­ly pro­vid­ed for excep­tion by law on state secrets. The Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court rul­ing said:
“Pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al bod­ies act open­ly, to the extent that it does not con­tra­dict the laws on rights and free­doms of cit­i­zens, and on state and oth­er spe­cial­ly pro­tect­ed secrets… No restric­tions on the rights and free­doms in the sphere of access of infor­ma­tion are allowed, includ­ing… on the right to obtain data, doc­u­ments and mate­ri­als col­lect­ed by state bod­ies direct­ly con­nect­ed to the rights and free­doms of a citizen.”

“The denial to pro­vide Mag­nit­sky’s moth­er with the names of pros­e­cu­tors pur­su­ing her son posthu­mous­ly shows how scared the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment is of the sanc­tions being leg­is­lat­ed in the US and Europe. Under the Mag­nit­sky Act in the US, all 12 of these indi­vid­u­als would stand to lose their visas and have their assets frozen,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

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