colleague of Sergei Magnitsky about suspicions against Ivan Cherkasov

The Investigative Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs suspects Ivan Cherkasov of tax evasion of more than 2 billion rubles. The businessman was a colleague of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky at the Hermitage Capital fund. Magnitsky's former colleague Jamison Firestone commented on the situation surrounding Cherkasov to Kommersant FM host Alexei Korneev.

— To what do you attribute suspicion regarding Cherkasov? Do you have any details?

- Well, you see, these are fabricated cases that were initiated three years ago on only one basis. They needed a search so they could take all the documents I had in my law office. And they needed these documents. The question we need to ask is why today, three years later, they decided right now to ask for an arrest warrant for Cherkasov. There is only one answer to this: two days ago you probably watched our video on YouTube, where we revealed that the tax officers who returned 5.4 billion rubles and who, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, are innocent, we revealed that they transferred 43 million dollars abroad. After 400 thousand Russians watched this video on YouTube, they decided to arrest Cherkasov. This reaction, of course, has an answer in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

— Tomorrow the next round of Russia-EU expert consultations on human rights will take place in Brussels. It is expected that Mr. Browder will make a report on the circumstances of the death of Sergei Magnitsky. Do you know any details of this speech? What kind of reaction are you expecting?

- You see, it’s difficult to say what kind of reaction I expect, because the entire criminal cases that they have opened are simply absurd. Well, I expect it won't work out. Because they have no grounds against Cherkasov, they don’t even have grounds to challenge the taxes that they were not paid, because everything was paid. So I think we'll have a little circus tomorrow and they won't get anything. (Tomorrow the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow will consider the petition for Cherkasov’s arrest in absentia - Kommersant’s note).

"Tomorrow we will have a small circus"