Russia Abuses Interpol Channels with an ‘All Points Bulletin’ For William Browder in Retaliation for Magnitsky Act

May 20, 2013

On 7 May 2013, the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry issued a for­mal request to Inter­pol to issue an ‘All Points Bul­letin’ to locate William Brow­der, CEO of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and leader of the jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky campaign. 

“The Russ­ian author­i­ties seek to involve Inter­pol in an abu­sive, and polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed attack on Mr Brow­der. Any­one offer­ing the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry sup­port, or in any way pro­cess­ing their request in rela­tion to Mr Brow­der, will become part and par­cel of Mr Putin’s polit­i­cal vendet­ta against Mr Brow­der and attempts to cov­er up the mur­der of Sergei Mag­nit­sky,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

The Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry has sent the request to “locate” Mr Brow­der to the Inter­pol Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at in Lyon, France, as well as to 190 Inter­pol nation­al branch­es around the world. Inter­pol now has to decide whether to process the Russ­ian request or reject it on the basis that it is a vio­la­tion of Arti­cle 3 of Inter­pol’s con­sti­tu­tion, which pro­hibits it from pro­cess­ing polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed requests. 

Interpol’s Com­mis­sion for the Con­trol of Files will con­sid­er Russia’s request, as well as the polit­i­cal moti­va­tion for this request at their next meet­ing, which will take place on 23 and 24 May 2013 in Lyon.

“The attempt by Russ­ian author­i­ties to extend the abuse in the Mag­nit­sky case beyond Rus­si­a’s nation­al bor­ders now entan­gles Inter­pol in a case of Russ­ian crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy involv­ing high-lev­el cor­rup­tion. This will become a key test whether Interpol’s sys­tems are robust enough to fend off such obvi­ous mis­use,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

In send­ing its “All Points Bul­letin” to all Inter­pol branch­es around the world, the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry has pro­vid­ed fal­si­fied infor­ma­tion claim­ing “dam­age to the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion” from “theft” of Gazprom stock fif­teen years ago. At the time Her­mitage pur­chased all Gazprom shares on the open mar­ket, and the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion has nev­er issued any claims in the last fif­teen years. Own­er­ship of Gazprom shares was ful­ly dis­closed to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment and to Gazprom itself, and both found no vio­la­tions. To jus­ti­fy its alle­ga­tions, the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry cit­ed a 1997 Russ­ian Pres­i­den­tial Decree, which imposed cer­tain restric­tions on direct own­er­ship of Gazprom stock by for­eign com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, Her­mitage-advised com­pa­nies always com­plied with the terms of the Russ­ian pres­i­den­tial decree which was con­firmed by numer­ous audits. The decree itself was abol­ished more than sev­en years ago, in 2005, and was admin­is­tra­tive in nature. The decree specif­i­cal­ly exclud­ed any crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty, nev­er­the­less, it did not stop the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry from launch­ing a crim­i­nal case against Mr Browder.

“The false, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and retroac­tive appli­ca­tion of law in this case by Russ­ian author­i­ties is a hall­mark of a polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed abuse of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The alle­ga­tions of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry are a clear smoke­screen to con­ceal the polit­i­cal attack ordered by Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Putin on Mr Brow­der in retal­i­a­tion for Mr Browder’s advo­ca­cy for the Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions on Russ­ian offi­cials,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

The alle­ga­tions against Mr Brow­der were raised by Rus­sia short­ly after the pas­sage in the Unit­ed States of the Sergei Mag­nit­sky Rule of Law Account­abil­i­ty Act in Decem­ber 2012. Six days after Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma signed into law the Mag­nit­sky Act, which impos­es trav­el and finan­cial sanc­tions on Russ­ian offi­cials impli­cat­ed in Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s tor­ture and death in Russ­ian police cus­tody and the $230 mil­lion cor­rup­tion scan­dal that Mag­nit­sky had exposed, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Putin pub­licly attacked Mr Brow­der in a tele­vised press con­fer­ence. Short­ly there­after, the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry held anoth­er press con­fer­ence, claim­ing that Mr Brow­der “inter­fered” in Gazprom poli­cies fif­teen years ago when Her­mitage-advised Russ­ian com­pa­nies were minor­i­ty share­hold­ers in Gazprom and fought high­ly pub­lic bat­tles against graft and embez­zle­ment at Gazprom. The Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry now claims that these actions caused harm to “Russ­ian nation­al eco­nom­ic security.”

Russ­ian Nation­al Cen­tral Bureau of Inter­pol in Moscow:
Phone: (495) 667 65 42, 667 61 29
Web­site: http://mvd.ru/mvd/structure/unit/interpol

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