Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky may have been poisoned and his former employer, UK financier Bill Browder, was possibly behind the murder, prosecutors have found. Now, Moscow will place Browder on the international wanted list.
The version about Magnitsky's poisoning in the interests of a US-born investor is also confirmed by journalist Oleg Lurie, who was kept in jail with him, Russian prosecutors revealed on Monday. Back in 2009, Lurie claimed citing Magnitsky that lawyers working for his employer, Browder, tried to make him sign false documents on theft from Russian budget.
Browder, a US-born British financier, made a fortune in Russia during the country’s chaotic transition to market economy. His Hermitage Capital Management foundation was a leading foreign investing entity in late 1990s and early 2000s.
In 2007, the foundation was targeted with a probe into possible large-scale embezzling of Russian taxpayer money. Magnitsky, who worked for Browder and had knowledge of his firms’ finances, was arrested and held in pre-trial detention until his death in November 2009. The British businessman insisted that the entire case was fabricated and Magnitsky had been assassinated for exposing a criminal scheme involving several Russian tax officials.
The investor then reinvented himself as an anti-Putin crusader, using the death of Magnitsky to lobby various countries to impose sanctions on Russian officials he accused of orchestrating his employee’s death. The US Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012 and simultaneously with imposing new sanctions it lifted the Cold War era Jackson–Vanik amendment, a trade restriction meant to punish Soviet Union for keeping its Jews from immigrating to Israel. Moscow took the gesture as evidence that Washington simply used the Magnitsky case as a pretext to be hostile towards Russia.
Source : RT - Daily news
Magnitsky ‘highly likely’ killed on Bill Browder’s orders, poisoned by toxic chemicals – Moscow
Magnitsky ‘highly likely’ killed on Bill Browder’s orders, poisoned by toxic chemicals – Moscow
