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Russian Probe of Prison Death Stalls

27 July 2010 21:54 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. More than seven months after the jailhouse death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky prompted Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to order a full investigation, official probes into the case appear stalled, according to members of a Kremlin group monitoring the case, APA reports quoting The Wall Street Journal.
"According to our information, the president’s orders to conduct a full investigation of all the agencies involved haven’t been fully implemented," said Kirill Kabanov, an anticorruption activist who is part of the working group set up by the Kremlin’s human-rights advisory panel to follow the case. The group sent a report to President Medvedev on the issue early this month, but there has been no public reaction.
"They’re dragging their feet because some very important figures are implicated," said Valery Borshchev, head of an oversight panel that, by Russian law, monitors the prison system and investigated Mr. Magnitsky’s death. In December, the panel determined that inhumane treatmentâ€”possibly deliberateâ€”led to Mr. Magnitsky’s death.
A Kremlin spokesman said Monday he had nothing to add beyond a 2009 statement that an investigation had been ordered.
President Medvedev has pledged to fight corruption and abuse of power by law-enforcement authorities since he came to office two years ago. How this case is resolved will send strong signals about the business climate, as much as about human-rights issues in the country.
"This is a test for the Russian authorities," said a spokeswoman for European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, who raised the Magnitsky case with Mr. Medvedev and other top officials during a recent visit to Moscow.
Mr. Magnitsky, an adviser to a major Western investment fund, died at age 37 on Nov. 16 in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison after nearly a year in pre-trial detention. He saidâ€”and it was confirmed by prison recordsâ€”that he had been healthy when he was jailed on charges of tax evasion, but that he was subjected to steadily worsening conditions. He and his supporters allege that he was deliberately denied medical care by investigators and prison officials in an effort to force him to recant testimony he had given alleging major corruption among high-level police and other officials. In addition to statements to prosecutors before his arrest and formal complaints about his treatment, Mr. Magnitsky kept detailed diaries while in prison.
In the wake of Mr. Magnitsky’s death, Mr. Medvedev shook up the ranks of top prison officials and vowed a complete investigation. Though preliminary inquiries are still open, no charges have been filed, and several officials implicated in allegations of corruption by the accused appear to have been promoted. Prosecutors declined to comment on the case.
The slow-moving probes are an effort to "create the impression a real investigation is taking place," said Sergei Nasonov, a prominent lawyer working with the Kremlin advisory panel on the case. "Once public attention to the case fades a bit, they’ll find a way to put it to bed gently."
Some observers see the slowness of the inquiries as a sign of tension between powerful government factions over how to handle the case. In June, for example, the prosecutor-general’s website published an interview with a prosecutor involved in the case who repeated allegations that Mr. Magnitsky never complained about his health in prisonâ€”an assertion contradicted by the numerous legal documents. A day later, the press service said the official wasn’t authorized to comment and removed the interview.
Mr. Magnitsky was a lawyer working for Hermitage Capital Management, one of the largest foreign portfolio investors in Russia until its chief, U.S.-born investor William Browder, was denied a Russian visa in 2005. Until then, Mr. Browder had been one of the most prominent foreign defenders of the Kremlin against critics in the West. Russian officials later charged Mr. Browder, along with Mr. Magnitsky, with tax evasion. Mr. Browder, who now lives in London along with a number of staff members from his fund, denies those charges.
He alleges the investigators looking into his fund after he lost his visa used corporate documents and seals taken during searches to illegally take control of Hermitage-owned companies and fraudulently receive $230 million in tax refunds from the Russian government. Police officials have denied those charges. They say an imprisoned murderer was convicted of masterminding the tax fraud. Efforts to reach the prisoner’s attorney were unsuccessful.
Mr. Browder and other former colleagues of Mr. Magnitsky have conducted an international campaign to keep pressure on Russian leaders, with websites detailing the corruption charges and the alleged wealth of some of the policemen involved in the case. They also lobbied the U.S. Senate to block U.S. visas for several dozen Russian officials they allege are involved.
As the campaign has expanded in recent weeks, the usually taciturn investigators have begun to respond. Alexei Anichin, head of the Interior Ministry unit that has led the case against Messrs. Magnitsky and Browder, complained early this month in a radio interview that "we suffered most from his death," because the case was closed without going to trial.
Afterward, a police officer Mr. Browder accused of corruption filed a slander complaint with the prosecutor-general. Prosecutors haven’t responded. A major Moscow newspaper in recent days published a series of articles reiterating investigators’ tax-evasion charges against Mr. Browder and denounced his allegations against police as a smoke screen.