Remembering Sergey Magnitsky: Died from turture

William Browder (Bill Browder) - Opalesque.TV interview Part 1


William Browder (Bill Browder) - Opalesque.TV interview Part 2

OpalesqueTV — February 08, 2010 — Opalesque BACKSTAGE Video - Bill Browder: Sergey Magnitsky case reveals Russia's ugliest face

William (Bill) Browder co-founded Hermitage Capital Management in 1996 together with the eminent banker Edmond Safra. The Hermitage Fund has been extremely successful, gaining 2,697% through December 2007. It was ranked the Worlds Best Performing Emerging Markets Fund over the 1996-2001 five-year period by Nelsons.

In this Opalesque BACKSTAGE video, which includes updated video material provided by Hermitage Capital exclusively to Opalesque, Bill Browder recalls how his life changed radically after November 2005, when he was suddenly refused entry into Russia. At the time the largest foreign investor in the Russian stock market, Browder was declared a threat to national security.

With Browder banned from the country, organized criminals apparently backed by high-ranking officials from the Russian police and security services tried to raid the then $4 billion Hermitage Fund. The fraud began when 25 officers from the Moscow Interior Ministry stormed into Hermitages Moscow office in June 2007 and seized all of the corporate seals and documents necessary to transfer ownership of the Hermitage Funds
Russian companies to the criminal group.

What every Emerging Market investor should know

Hear from Browder how after failing to raid the Hermitage Fund, the criminals still managed to steal US$230 million from the Russian government through fraudulent refunds of taxes refunds that were awarded in a mere two days that Hermitage had paid two years earlier.This culminated a fraud that relied on sham court judgments, unknown shell companies, fake lawyers and convicted criminals masquerading as corporate directors.

When Hermitage Capitals tax lawyer Sergey Magnitsky testified that Russian police, members of the judiciary, tax officials, bankers and the Russian mafia were involved in what was Russias largest tax fraud, he was arrested and held for 11 months in prison without trial. Magnitsky died in prison in November 2009, eight days before he was scheduled to be released if he were not brought to trial.

Is Solzhenitsyn's GULAG still alive?

This Opalesque BACKSTAGE reveals the ugly face of Russia and the painful details of the brutality of the system that can still kill innocent citizens.

Remembering Sergey (Sergei) Magnitsky: cancel visa privileges for 60 Russian officials accused of ties to Mr. Magnitsky's death

By Ira Iosebashvili

Russian prosecutors Tuesday [June 8, 2010] denied that lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose death in prison drew widespread condemnation, had been ill while in jail, although his supporters say he had long complained of a serious gallbladder condition.

The case attracted international attention after Mr. Magnitsky, who was subjected to steadily worsening conditions and denied medical treatment in prison, died in November while awaiting trial.

Although Mr. Magnitsky suffered from gallstones, his medical condition didn't preclude him from being kept in prison, said Oleg Logunov, the head of the Investigative Committee's legal department, in a rare official comment on the case, which has drawn an outcry from human-rights organizations.

Mr. Logunov said that Mr. Magnitsky, who was 37 years old, died of heart failure, brought on by poor conditions at the prison and a lack of qualified medical personnel, rather than any preexisting illness.

"He never complained about his heart," Mr. Logunov said. "This death was completely unexpected. It was a major blow for the prosecution. It was a human tragedy, in and of itself."

But Mr. Magnitsky's supporters, as well as an independent advisory commission on human rights in prison, said the lawyer was subjected to inhumane conditions and denied medical care in order to force him to testify falsely against his former employer, U.S.-born Bill Browder, chief executive officer of the Hermitage Fund.

"Sergei went to prison healthy," said Jamison Firestone, a managing partner at Firestone and Duncan, the law firm that Mr. Magnitsky worked for. "His conditions eventually were made torturous and unhealthy and eventually deadly. When you take a healthy man off the street, put him in a cell in the middle of the Russian winter with no heat, no hot water, and no glass in the window frames, when you do not even let him boil water so that it is uncontaminated, that person tends to get sick."

By June 2008, Mr. Magnitsky had developed pancreatitis and gall stones, conditions he didn't previously have, and had dropped 40 pounds in a matter of weeks, Mr. Firestone said. A scheduled operation was cancelled after the lawyer refused to recant testimony against police officials, and he was sent to Butyrka prison, which doesn't have medical facilities, Mr. Firestone said.

Four months later, Mr. Magnitsky was dead.

Messrs. Magnitsky and Browder, who had his Russian visa revoked in 2005 on national security grounds, were both charged with tax evasion and fraud. They denied those allegations, which came after they publicly accused investigators and other senior officials of stealing $234 million in taxes paid by Hermitage Fund to the Russian government.

The authorities have repeatedly denied those accusations. Mr. Logunov said the government had every right to jail the lawyer, who was also charged with scheming to avoid paying taxes.

"There is a crime there, and the crime is pretty obvious," Mr. Logunov said. "Magnitsky worked out a scheme in order to avoid paying taxes. This scheme was found in his computer. We have all the documents."

In April, human-rights advocates accused the authorities of dragging their feet in the investigation into Mr. Magnitsky's death. The probe had been ordered by President Dmitry Medvedev.

Although several top prison officials have been removed, advocates say that at least one has been reassigned to another job, and prosecutors have so far only categorized the case as one of possible negligence.

U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin in April asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to cancel visa privileges for 60 Russian officials accused of ties to Mr. Magnitsky's death.

(from WSJ, June 8, 2010)

Reflection Series: Hermitage CEO Browder at Stanford

Bill Browder, MBA '89, founder and CEO, talks about Hermitage Capital Management's investments in Russia and the fall out from the widespread corruption that still pervades Russia's economy.



(Stanford Business, Recorded on October 22, 2009)