Sergei Magnitsky was a 37-year-old lawyer, tax and audit specialist who worked for Firestone Duncan, a Moscow-based law and audit firm. He had a wife and two children.
Immigrant from Ukraine
Sergey was born in Odessa in 1972 and at the age of 9 years old with his family moved to the south of Russia. As a child, he loved to read. During the summer vacation, when the rest of the family and friends splashed into the sea, Sergey was sitting under a tree with a book. His zeal quickly gained recognition, and at the age of 15 he won the Republican Physics and Mathematics Olympiad. When he was 18 years old, he moved to Moscow and entered the prestigious Plekhanov University.
Sergey never made people feel uncomfortable, but his professional experience and knowledge were unsurpassed. Magnitsky was philosophical, and his observations and views were soulful, interesting, and complex. Sergei had a unique way of looking at things, and conversations with him were always instructive and memorable.
He raised a generation of auditors and tax consultants who still consider him his greatest mentor and see him as a role model both on a professional and personal level.
Truth seeker
Sergey believed in the law.
He knew how to distinguish between good and evil and was ready to defend his convictions. When Sergey discovered that the top officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs had appropriated the investment fund of his client, Hermitage Fund, and then stole 5.4 billion rubles from the state budget. ($ 230 million), he had no doubt in the correctness of his actions and immediately decided to testify.
Why did Sergei endanger himself while defending the foundation and testify against dangerous people? He did so because it was right, he believed in the rule of law and was disgusted by government officials who use their power to the detriment of the people they are required to serve.
Arrest
Sergey testified against employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Thus began the Magnitsky affair. The arrest was not long in coming. A little over a month later, the same officers arrested him and threw him into jail. There they kept Sergei in unbearable and ultimately deadly conditions in an attempt to force him to abandon his own words and slander himself and his client.
As the investigator constantly suggested to him, Magnitsky’s case will be given a completely different course if he ceases to draw attention to the theft of $ 230 million from the Russian budget. Sergey’s position was simple. These officials are real criminals, they should sit in his place, and not conduct the Magnitsky case. The prison did not scare the lawyer. He was not going to help officials hide his crime. If necessary, he was ready to spend his whole life in pre-trial detention, but to bring real criminals to the clear.
The Magnitsky affair: death
On November 16, 2009, after spending a year in inhuman conditions of detention in which his health was completely destroyed, after several months of constant pain and suffering, when he was refused treatment, Sergei died. In his last days he was in such terrible pain that he was placed in the so-called A "medical" detention center, where there were neither doctors nor equipment.
On Monday morning, November 16, he became so ill that the doctor decided to transfer him to where he could get emergency medical care. But investigators delayed his transfer until 5 pm. Ultimately, Magnitsky was transferred to another prison, where he was again denied treatment.At about 8 o’clock in the evening, instead of providing medical assistance and saving his life, the Interior Ministry officers locked him in solitary confinement, handcuffed him and beat him with rubber truncheons. Sergei died an hour and eighteen minutes later. All this time, a team of doctors was outside the door, but she was not allowed to enter.
Hand washes
None of Sergei’s friends, relatives or colleagues could ever have imagined that he would die in pre-trial detention. Everyone was stunned by his death and the impunity of Interior Ministry officials.
But something happened that probably surprised his killers. The case of Sergei Magnitsky and his passing away from life caused a stir around the world. The indignation of people knew no bounds.
The fact of theft on an especially large scale, which was reported by Sergei Magnitsky, was confirmed by Russian officials, but they refused to investigate the activities of officials who appeared in his testimony. On the contrary, the leadership deliberately brought the matter to the point of absurdity when they appointed the perpetrators to investigate their own crimes.
Sergey was an extraordinary man, one of those who needed Russia most of all today, and he was killed by those whom the country had to get rid of for a long time.
How did he die?
The defendants decided in their own way to complete the Magnitsky case. The death of Sergei, according to official figures, occurred due to acute heart failure and toxic shock caused by pancreatitis.
An investigation by the Presidential Council on Human Rights revealed that he was severely beaten. This was confirmed by his family.
According to Browder, the owner of the Hermitage Fund, his tax lawyer was tortured and beaten in prison.
Magnitsky case: untouchable caste
An official investigation by the Russian authorities was launched in November 2009 by then-President Dmitry Medvedev, and several officials, including the deputy head of the Russian Federal Prison Administration (FSIN), were fired. Officials initially stated that death was caused by cramped conditions and the inability to provide adequate medical care.
In June 2010, the Russian Interior Ministry launched an investigation into the improper imprisonment of Magnitsky, but not a single suspect was named.
In 2011, a prison doctor was charged with manslaughter, but the charges were subsequently dropped. Another doctor was charged with medical negligence, but was later acquitted. No other suspects were called.
In a report in July 2011, the Human Rights Council pointed to a conflict of interest in the case, as some of those whom the murdered man accused of widespread corruption led the Magnitsky case.
The investigation was terminated on March 19, 2013. The Investigative Committee stated that Magnitsky was lawfully arrested and detained, and that he was not subjected to torture.
How did it start?
Before the scandal erupted, Bill Browder and his HCM investment fund were some of the largest private investment companies investing in Russia.
In 2005, after he revealed the details of a large-scale corruption scheme involving many high-ranking officials, Browder's visa was canceled and he was expelled from the country as a threat to national security. Despite the ban, he continued to investigate corruption in Russia in close contact with Sergei Magnitsky.
As part of his work with HCM, a tax attorney discovered that some Russian companies registered with new owners, for whom tax and police were charged VAT refund. The Magnitsky case, the essence of which is that the government stole money from the budget of the Russian Federation, showed the entire depth of the corruption of the political system of Russia.
His death prompted human rights defenders and HCM to compose the so-calledMagnitsky’s list, which included about 60 officials, including employees of the Ministry of the Interior, the police and tax authorities, whom the Hermitage Fund employee accused of involvement in the crime.
Top cynicism
In 2013, 4 years after the death of Sergey, by the decision of the court, the Magnitsky case was closed with a guilty plea for tax evasion. Posthumous conviction has become unprecedented in our time, even in a country with a history of show trials.
Changes in Russian law in 2011 made it possible to justify the arrestee after his death. As you can see, in the case of Sergey, it was used for the opposite purpose - to denigrate the victim.
Effects
In December 2012, the United States passed the Magnitsky Rule of Law Act, which imposed restrictions on entry into the United States, frozen assets and prohibited transactions from those involved in the arrest, torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, as well as other people, rude violating human rights.
As of early June 2016, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 39 Russian citizens, including 33 who played a role in the Magnitsky case and six who were accused of gross human rights violations.
An up-to-date list of persons with the date and place of their birth can be found on the US government website sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov under the MAGNIT program.
In June 2014, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Sergei Magnitsky’s Global Law on Responsibility for the Rule of Law. Adopted by the Senate on December 17, 2015. At the next stage, the bill should be voted by the US House of Representatives.
In April 2014, the European Parliament issued a recommendation to the Council of Ministers on imposing restrictions on the entry and freezing of the assets of 32 persons involved in Magnitsky’s case.
On January 28, 2014, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved a resolution and a report entitled “Denial of exemption from the responsibility of the murderers of Sergei Magnitsky,” which states that there is widespread coverage with the participation of senior government officials, the judiciary and the police, and calls on the Russian authorities Federation to stop harassing families, employees of the Hermitage Fund and Magnitsky’s lawyers. The document recommended that Member States follow the US lead in visa sanctions and asset freezes if there is no corresponding reaction from the Russian authorities.
In July 2012, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling on all OSCE participating States to impose visa sanctions and freeze the assets of people responsible for the unlawful detention, torture and murder of Sergei Magnitsky and the facts of corruption uncovered by him.
Political acts around the world
Canada. On October 16, 2013, Canadian MP Irwin Kotler introduced a bill called “Condemnation of an Act of Russian Corruption,” which will impose sanctions on those responsible for the torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, with a ban on entry and stay in Canada.
Italy. In May 2012, the Italian parliament adopted an appeal to the government calling for visa restrictions and the freezing of the assets of those responsible for the Magnitsky case.
Great Britain. In March 2012, the House of Commons unanimously called on the government to impose visa sanctions and freeze the funds of Russian officials who are responsible for the arrest, torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, as well as the subsequent covering up of this crime.
In a October 2012 report, the House of Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons recommended that the names of those denied visas for human rights violations be made public as a tool to uphold UK high standards in this area.
Holland.In July 2011, the Dutch parliament unanimously decided to impose visa sanctions and freeze the assets of those responsible for the Magnitsky case.
Response measures
Just a few days after the United States adopted the Magnitsky Act, Russia took retaliatory measures prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian orphans.
Another point suspended the activities of non-profit organizations receiving cash and other assets from the United States and which participated in political activities in the Russian Federation. Human rights activists in Russia became a target.
In addition, a list of US citizens was created, allegedly related to the violation of the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens abroad. The list, for example, includes Judge Jed Rakoff, who convicted the pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was involved in drug trafficking, and Prit Bhararu, the main prosecutor in the case of the illegal sale of weapons by the largest Russian “merchant of death”, Viktor Bout, etc.
Panama dossier: Liksutov received the money
The Magnitsky case, the essence of which is that everyone who dares to speak out against employees who are robbing the state whose interests they are called upon to protect will be killed, showed how corruption struck the power vertical in Russia. And the fact that 39 criminals are far from being the last on the sanctions list can be seen thanks to new evidence provided by the German newspaper Süddeutschen Zeitung.
The publication connected the Magnitsky case with the deputy mayor of Moscow, Maxim Liksutov. According to a study conducted jointly with the Swiss company Sonntagszeitung, information from the so-called “Panama dossier”, which made public the information about offshore savings of more than a hundred politicians and officials from around the world, in 2012, Zibar Management transferred more than $ 336,000 to the Estonian account Transgroup Invest. At that time, Liksutov owned half of this company.
Zibar Management participated in the theft of 5.4 billion rubles from the state budget of the Russian Federation, which was committed by Russian officials using William Browder, the company Hermitage Capital that they seized.
Thanks to the disclosure of new facts, it becomes apparent that the Magnitsky case, whose story did not end with the death of the truth-seeker, is just the tip of the “corruption tangle” that remains to be unwound. Not under the current regime, of course.
