// In The Press
The Global Graft Report: What Happened To Sergei?
January 5, 2010
Hermitage Capital Management was the biggest foreign investor in Russia. Then in 2005, it all went wrong. CEO William Browder was banned from the country on what he says was a pretext. Two years later, 50 police officers from the Moscow Interior Ministry raided Hermitage’s offices and those of its lawyers. The police took corporate documents and seals. Those same instruments were allegedly used in 2008 to fraudulently obtain $230 million that the Hermitage Fund companies had paid in taxes two years earlier.
Also in 2008, one of Hermitage’s lawyers who didn’t leave Russia or go into hiding, Sergei Magnitsky, above, was thrown into jail. He died in custody in November 2009 at age 37. His jailers first said he ruptured his abdominal membrane; then they said it was a heart attack. Officials have refused his family’s requests for an independent autopsy.
Foreign Policy Magazine: They Killed My Lawyer. A story of Putin’s Russia.
December 25, 2009
Sergei Magnitsky was our attorney, and friend, who died under excruciating circumstances in a Moscow pre-trial detention center on Nov. 16, 2009. His story is one of extraordinary bravery and heroism, and ultimately tragedy. It is also a story about how Stalinism and the gulags are alive and well in Russia today.
Ultimately Sergei died for a principle — he died because believed in the rule of law in Russia. When he stumbled upon an enormous fraud against his clients and the Russian government, he thought he was simply doing the right thing by reporting it. He never imagined that he would die for his efforts.
The precise circumstances of his death are still unclear. We do know Sergei died suddenly at the age of 37, after an 11-month detention. At first, the detention center where he died said the cause of his death was a rupture to his abdominal membrane, but on the same day the prison officials changed their story, saying he had died of a heart attack. They refused his family’s request to conduct an independent autopsy. His diaries are reported to be missing.
Ведомости: Памяти Сергея Магнитского: Совесть, честь и правосудие
December 25, 2009
Наш товарищ юрист Сергей Магнитский трагически погиб в московском следственном изоляторе 16 ноября 2009 г. История Сергея Магнитского — это история выдающегося мужества, патриотизма и героизма, которая должна служить примером для всех нас. Сергею было всего 37 лет. Он умер мучительной смертью, подвергнутый бесчеловечному обращению и пыткам. Что-то подобное, наверное, могло произойти в Средние века, но представить себе, что это произошло сегодня, просто невозможно.
Сергей работал в американской юридической фирме Firestone Duncan в Москве и предоставлял юридические услуги многочисленным клиентам, одним из которых был фонд Hermitage. Сергей не занимался политикой, не был олигархом или правозащитником. Он был компетентным профессионалом, которому можно было позвонить в конце рабочего дня с любым юридическим вопросом и он, откладывая свои личные планы на вечер, оставался в офисе до полуночи, чтобы подготовить ответ. Его смело можно отнести к лучшим представителям новой, современной России: умный, честный, порядочный человек, работающий на благо своей семьи.
NPR: Lawyer’s Death In Russian Prison Sparks Haunted Anger
December 19, 2009
Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for a London-based fund that was once the biggest in Russia, wrote to his mother of wasting away from an agonizing illness without proper medical care in a crowded Moscow prison. He was awaiting trial for tax-evasion charges. But Magnitsky eventually died in prison, just 11 days after his last letter reached his mother. Magnitsky’s story has hit a nerve in Russia, where memories linger of the millions who died of cold, starvation and neglect in the harsh Soviet gulag. Host Scott Simon talks about the Magnitsky case with NPR’s Anne Garrels.
Time: The Danger of Doing Business in Russia
December 19, 2009
On Oct. 13, Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, imprisoned on tax evasion charges, told Russian Interior Ministry investigators that he was being denied medical care and subjected to “inhumane and humiliating conditions” in Moscow’s notorious Butyrka jail. The treatment, he said, resulted from his refusal to give false testimony against himself and others. A month later, Magnitsky, 37, was dead. The Interior Ministry, which had charged the lawyer with conspiring to help William Browder, head of the London-based investment firm Hermitage Capital, allegedly evade more than $3 million in taxes, said it had not been aware that he had been ill. In prison notes released by his attorneys, however, Magnitsky repeatedly complained about being refused treatment for pancreatitis, a condition his friends and colleagues say led to his death.
For more information please visit