Written declaration No. 490 | Doc. 12744 | 09 February 2012
The Sergei Magnitsky case
Sergei Magnitsky was the legal representative of the Hermitage Fund in Russia. He discovered the largest tax fraud in Russian history perpetrated by members of the Russian government. After testifying against them, he was arrested, tortured and killed in police custody.
In July 2011, the Council of the President of the Russian Federation for the promotion of civil society and human rights conducted an independent investigation and found that Sergei Magnitsky had been falsely arrested and prosecuted by officers with a conflict of interest, been beaten by eight guards with rubber batons prior to his death, and that state bodies failed and resisted to investigate the corruption he had uncovered. The Council named specific perpetrators in the Government. Requests by Mr Magnitsky's family for an independent medical evaluation have been refused.
The Russian Interior Ministry and the General Prosecutor’s Office have since rejected the findings of the Human Rights Council as inadmissible, exonerated the officers involved, reopened the case against Mr Magnitsky nearly two years after his death and the same officers who persecuted Sergei Magnitsky called his mother and his widow for interrogation.
We call on Russia to immediately prosecute the people named in the Human Rights Council's report, cease the intimidation of Magnitsky's family and allow an independent evaluation in his case