Khodorkovsky & Lebedev Communications Center

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has fired General Anatoly Mikhalkin, a Russian interior ministry official who played a central role in the case against Hermitage Capital Management.

According to a Kremlin official, Mikhalkin, the head of the tax crime division of the Moscow office of the ministry, was "indirectly linked" to a probe ordered last month by Medvedev into the death of a lawyer in the case, Sergei Magnitsky.

Medvedev recently signed a decree firing 20 prison officials, including the head of the Moscow branch of the federal prison service and the head of Butyrskaya prison, after it was found that conditions in the prison contributed to the death of Magnitsky on November 16.