Translated material
And an empty cage in front
An empty cage for Magnitsky and Browner. Photo by Yuri Timofeev/Grani.ru
On Monday, in the Tver District Court of Moscow, hearing on the merits of the case against the head of Hermitage Capital William Brauder and the late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on charges of tax evasion began. As the Grani.ru correspondent reports, there are more presses than in the process of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. At the request of the appointed lawyers who did not have time to get acquainted with the case, the hearings were postponed to March 22.
The process takes place in absentia, since Brauder himself refused to come to Russia, and his lawyers and Magnitsky decided to ignore the process. Judge Igor Alisov, who conducts the process, provided both of the accused with state lawyers.
On Sunday, the program of Channel One "Sunday time" against Brauder made new charges. The program claimed that the head of Hermitage Capital forged documents that he had hired disabled people so as not to pay taxes in Kalmykia. The authors of the program claimed that Browner created 10 companies in Kalmykia, for which disabled people were issued. In fact, they allegedly were only listed in firms and received several hundred rubles a month for using their names.
On January 28, on the day of the first preliminary hearings, Amnesty International demanded that the Russian authorities stop the persecution of Magnitsky and his relatives and, on the contrary, bring to the criminal liability of those who persecuted the deceased. The posthumous process of the Magnitsky Amnesty International called "truly Kafkian." Human rights activists also noted that Magnitsky’s relatives never insisted on renewing the case in order to rehabilitate the deceased, since, due to the presumption of innocence, he is already considered innocent.
On February 18, Natalya Magnitskaya, the mother of the deceased lawyer, transferred a statement to the court to the state lawyer, which the court granted her son.
Meanwhile, a new criminal case was brought against Magnitsky and his colleagues - about fraud with Gazprom shares. On March 7, the charge in this case was brought in absentia to Bruder.
On February 27, one of Magnitsky’s relatives visited the interrogation in the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In what case he was interrogated, was not reported. Later it turned out that investigator Rasul Salalabekov tried to receive a non -disclosure subscription from him. Hermitage Capital regarded these actions as an attempt to hide the pressure on relatives and colleagues of Magnitsky.
