Council of Europe Report Denounces Russian Persecution of Hermitage Partner as “Not Bona Fide Pursuit of Criminal Justice”

January 24, 2014

In its new report on the Mag­nit­sky case, the Coun­cil of Europe Rap­por­teur has crit­i­cized the case opened by the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry against Her­mitage Cap­i­tal part­ner, Ivan Cherkasov, say­ing it was not a “bona fide pur­suit of crim­i­nal justice.” 
The crim­i­nal case against Mr Cherkasov was used as a pre­text to search offices of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal and its law firm in Moscow, Fire­stone Dun­can, and to unlaw­ful­ly seize doc­u­ments for the Her­mitage Fund’s com­pa­nies, which were then used to fraud­u­lent­ly re-reg­is­ter those com­pa­nies into the names of pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed crim­i­nals. The crim­i­nals then fraud­u­lent­ly applied for $230 mil­lion of tax­es that Her­mitage Fund’s com­pa­nies had paid in Russia.
Fol­low­ing the Coun­cil of Europe inves­ti­ga­tion, the Rap­por­teur, Swiss MP Andreas Gross, con­clud­ed that the case against Kameya was not a bona fide investigation.
“I con­clude that the crim­i­nal case must have been opened for oth­er rea­sons than the bona fide pur­suit of crim­i­nal jus­tice. One of the real rea­sons might well have been to jus­ti­fy the two “raids” on the offices of Fire­stone Dun­can and Her­mitage, dur­ing which items were tak­en by the inves­ti­ga­tors, which, as it is alleged, were lat­er used in the com­mis­sion of the tax reim­burse­ment fraud denounced by Sergei Mag­nit­sky,” says Coun­cil of Europe Rap­por­teur in his report.
The case alleged tax under­pay­ment by Kameya, of which Cherkasov was gen­er­al direc­tor, in spite of fact that the com­pa­nies had received clean tax audits from the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Tax Ser­vice. Sergei Mag­nit­sky in his tes­ti­mo­ny stressed that the case against Kameya was fab­ri­cat­ed by the Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers in order to com­mit fraud against Hermitage.
The Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers who were in charge of the Kameya case, Kar­pov and Silchenko, have been sanc­tioned for their role in the Mag­nit­sky case by the U.S. government.
All appeals to close the case for the lack of evi­dence of any crime have been reject­ed by the Inte­ri­or Min­istry in spite of defin­i­tive con­clu­sions by the tax bod­ies that all tax­es had been paid in full and correctly.
Recent­ly, Her­mitage lawyers learned that the Inte­ri­or Min­istry appoint­ed an expert to find evi­dence for con­tin­u­ing the case. The expert con­clud­ed that there was no basis, but his con­clu­sions have been kept secret from Her­mitage lawyers for three months. A com­plaint has now been filed by Her­mitage lawyers against the Inte­ri­or Min­istry to com­pel them to close the Kameya case as ground­less and unlawful.
For more infor­ma­tion please contact:

Report “Refus­ing Impuni­ty for the Killers of Sergei Mag­nit­sky”: http://www.assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-DocDetails-EN.asp?fileid=20084&wrqid=0&wrqref=&ref=1&lang=EN.

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