Jailed Inventor Fears Magnitsky’s Fate
The Moscow Times reports that former colleagues and friends of Sergei Magnitsky have stepped up their campaign against law enforcement officials whom they implicate in the death of the Hermitage Capital lawyer in a Moscow detention center last year.
On June 23 they released a website on the case that features material about dubious property amassed by the family of Artyom Kuznetsov, one of the Interior Ministry officials accused of plotting against Hermitage Capital and law firm Firestone Duncan, where Magnitsky worked.
The website, Russian-untouchables.com, does not identify its authors, saying instead that it was "produced by the friends of Sergei Magnitsky and many others from around the world" who have been moved by his death. But it includes two professionally produced videos, in English and Russian, in which Hermitage Capital founder Bill Browder and Firestone Duncan managing partner Jamison Firestone present their case.
Browder retells the story of how his firm, Hermitage Capital Management, came under attack from corrupt law enforcement officers. In the other video, Firestone presents evidence that the police lieutenant colonel and his family flaunted millions of dollars, which he claims are proceeds from the attack against Hermitage.
In a separate article The Moscow Times notes that Yury Fink, a businessman charged with fraud, released from custody, and then arrested again after he posted an online video appeal to President Dmitry Medvedev went on trial in Moscow's Tverskoi District Court on June 23. Fink says his case echoes Magnitsky's, who like him was jailed in the Butyrskaya pre-trial detention center after accusing Interior Ministry officials of corruption, and he fears that his fate will be the same. Magnitsky died in November after suffering ill health for months without adequate medical care.