Deliberate Lies of Nekrasov’s Anti-Magnitsky Film Exposed in a New 50-page Presentation by Magnitsky Justice Campaign

June 13, 2016

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Delib­er­ate Lies of Nekrasov’s Anti-Mag­nit­sky Film Exposed in a New 50-page Pre­sen­ta­tion by Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice Campaign

13 June 2016 – Today, in advance of a pri­vate screen­ing at New­se­um in Wash­ing­ton of an anti-Mag­nit­sky film direct­ed by Russ­ian film­mak­er Andrei Nekrasov, the Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice Cam­paign has released a 50-page pre­sen­ta­tion expos­ing the film’s delib­er­ate mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions. The pre­sen­ta­tion con­tains links to 25 doc­u­ments expos­ing the lies of the film.

The pre­sen­ta­tion can be down­loaded here: http://russian-untouchables.com/docs/Nekrasov%20Lies%20Presentaion%20June%20(ENG)%20NEW%20JUNE%202016%20v%202.pdf

“Andrei Nekrasov’s movie is a com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion. He pro­motes the Russ­ian gov­ern­men­t’s false ver­sion of events. He claims Sergei Mag­nit­sky died of nat­ur­al caus­es and did not tes­ti­fy against Russ­ian police offi­cers. Both claims are con­tra­dict­ed by offi­cial doc­u­ments which show evi­dence of Magnitsky’s beat­ing in police cus­tody in the last hours of his life, and the text of the tes­ti­mo­ny by Mag­nit­sky before his arrest, in which he names the cor­rupt Russ­ian police offi­cers 27 times,” said William Brow­der, leader of the glob­al Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice movement.

Nekrasov’s film tries to present the sto­ry­line that the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was the vic­tim in the whole affair instead of the mur­dered Sergei Magnitsky.

“This film is a shame­less attempt to export the Russ­ian gov­ern­men­t’s pro­pa­gan­da to the West. In Rus­sia, cor­rupt offi­cials and crim­i­nals exposed by Sergei Mag­nit­sky enjoy impuni­ty and now they are try­ing to use a pur­port­ed­ly inde­pen­dent film­mak­er to avoid account­abil­i­ty in the West,” said William Browder.

To pre­pare his film, Andrei Nekrasov worked with some of the Russ­ian per­pe­tra­tors and ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the US$230 mil­lion fraud exposed by Sergei Mag­nit­sky. The same per­sons are involved in the film’s pro­mo­tion in Europe and in the USA. In par­tic­u­lar, the film is pro­mot­ed by agents of Denis Kat­syv, the son of the Russ­ian offi­cial, whose assets have been frozen by the US and Swiss courts because of alleged involve­ment in mon­ey laun­der­ing of pro­ceeds of the fraud uncov­ered by Sergei Magnitsky.

“The pur­pose of Andrei Nekrasov’s film is to absolve cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials and indi­vid­u­als who were involved in and ben­e­fit­ed from the US$230 mil­lion fraud uncov­ered by Sergei Mag­nit­sky. Some of them have been part of the film’s prepa­ra­tion and pro­mo­tion,” said William Browder.

In his film, Andrei Nekrasov false­ly claims that Mag­nit­sky did not uncov­er the US$230 mil­lion cor­rupt scheme and instead was its per­pe­tra­tor. This claim is con­tra­dict­ed by law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tions in 11 coun­tries who have traced pro­ceeds of the US$230 mil­lion crime to assets of Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials and their rel­a­tives, includ­ing real estate in the US, Dubai and Swiss bank accounts. In par­tic­u­lar, funds were received on a Swiss account of Vladlen Stepanov, hus­band of Russ­ian tax offi­cial Olga Stepano­va who approved a por­tion of the fraud­u­lent US$230 mil­lion tax refund, and paid for prop­er­ties for two of Stepanova’s deputies in the Russ­ian Tax Office No 28 which approved the fraud­u­lent tax refund.

The Pana­ma Papers have also con­nect­ed pro­ceeds of the US$230 mil­lion fraud uncov­ered by Sergei Mag­nit­sky, to a close friend of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, Sergei Roldug­in, who received funds on his cor­po­rate Swiss account.

Russ­ian human rights activists who con­duct­ed an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into the Magnitsky’s case under the Russ­ian President’s Human Rights Coun­cil, includ­ing Moscow Helsin­ki Group chair Lud­mi­la Alex­ee­va, and head of the Moscow Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion Valery Borschev, have denounced the anti-Mag­nit­sky film in pub­lic state­ments pub­lished in May 2016:
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/72940.html; http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/72931.html .

The Coun­cil of Europe has exposed the fal­si­ty of Nekrasov’s claim that the Coun­cil of Europe’s inves­ti­ga­tion relied only on doc­u­ments from William Brow­der, stat­ing the Coun­cil of Europe exam­ined all doc­u­ments, includ­ing those received direct­ly from the Russ­ian government.

“In fact, in the report adopt­ed in Jan­u­ary 2014 by the Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly of the Coun­cil of Europe, the work­ing meth­ods and sources of infor­ma­tion for the rap­por­teur can be found. These include two vis­its to Moscow, meet­ing with senior rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Russ­ian author­i­ties, with lead­ing human rights defend­ers and offi­cial doc­u­ments that have been trans­mit­ted direct­ly from Russ­ian author­i­ties,” said First Deputy Chair­man of the Legal and Human Rights Com­mit­tee of the Coun­cil of Europe Bernd Fab­ri­tius on 24 May 2016: http://www.berndfabritius.de/pressemitteilung/bernd-fabritius-antwortet-auf-die-desinformationskampagne-gegen-den-bericht-der-parlamentarischen-versammlung-zum-fall-sergej-magnitzki/.

Sergei Mag­nit­sky, Hermitage’s lawyer who uncov­ered the US$230 mil­lion fraud and tes­ti­fied about the com­plic­i­ty of Russ­ian offi­cials in it, 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
twitter.com/Billbrowder

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