Magnitsky Trial: Dead Lawyer Guilty Of Tax Fraud

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 11 Juli 2013 | 16.15

A Moscow court has found the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion three years after his death.

The investment fund lawyer, who died while in prison in 2009, was convicted in Russia's first ever posthumous trial - branded a "show trial" by his supporters.

The Tverskoy District Court also found Magnitsky's former boss, the London-based investor William Browder, guilty of tax evasion. He was tried in absentia after declining to return to Russia.

Browder's sentence will be announced later but the case against Magnitsky ends with his verdict.

Magnitsky was jailed in 2008 soon after accusing Russian law enforcement officers of corruption. The lawyer was held on charges of tax evasion after accusing officials of conspiring to claim $230m (£150m) in tax rebates through Browder's Hermitage Capital investment company.

A close up of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky's portrait on the grave Magnitsky died on his 358th day in custody in a Moscow detention centre

A year later, the 37-year-old died in jail of pancreatitis, after what supporters claim was a systematic torture campaign. A report by Russia's presidential human rights council found in July 2011 that he had been repeatedly beaten and deliberately denied medical treatment.

His death sparked widespread condemnation and a US law named for Magnitsky calls for sanctions on Russians identified as human rights violators.

Browder, a US born British citizen, has dismissed the trial as a politically motivated effort to discredit him and Magnitsky and punish him for lobbying for US legislation intended to target Russians he blames for the lawyer's death.

Magnitsky, a 37-year-old father, kept a diary in which he documented the conditions he was being held in and his deteriorating health.

Entries recorded in the months before he died describe excruciating pain from his untreated pancreatitis, raw sewage flooding prison cells and the sound of rats running through the prison at night.

Friends and relatives take part in the funeral ceremony of Sergei Magnitsky Friends and relatives attend Magnitsky's funeral ceremony

Shortly before his death, Magnitsky wrote: "I'm being subjected to punishment only for trying to defend the interests of my client and my country."

Campaigners say the fraud was committed by state officials who subsequently had him framed and arrested for the crime.

The Kremlin's own human rights council has said there was evidence suggesting Magnitsky was beaten to death, but President Vladimir Putin has dismissed allegations of torture or foul play and told the nation last year that he died of heart failure.

Russian authorities closed the case against Magnitsky after his death but reopened it in 2011, in a move former colleagues say was illegal because they did not have the consent of his relatives.

"This show trial confirms that Vladimir Putin is ready to sacrifice his international credibility to protect corrupt officials who murdered an innocent lawyer and stole $230m from the Russian state," Hermitage Capital said in a statement.

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