Browder's New Case

In Russia, a new criminal case has been opened against the founder of the Hermitage Capital fund, William Browder, for creating a criminal community; he had a motive to kill Sergei Magnitsky, the Prosecutor General's Office says

Browder will be placed on an international wanted list and his property will be seized.

Russian investigators believe that the transnational criminal organization, headed by the British financier, has been operating since 1999 and was created “with the aim of committing serious economic crimes both in Russia and in other countries,” said Nikolai Atmonyev, a representative of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, Interfax reports.

Investigators are also studying the version of the violent death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. At a briefing at the Prosecutor General's Office, State Justice Advisor 3rd class Mikhail Aleksandrov said that "Browder had a motive to physically eliminate Magnitsky in order to conceal the crimes he had committed." Magnitsky's death could have been caused by poisoning with a sabotage chemical substance, TASS reports.

"Data was obtained indicating that the deaths (of Magnitsky and other Browder partners) were violent. In particular, the version of poisoning with the use of sabotage chemicals containing an aluminum compound, which provoked the development of acute liver failure in them, was being considered, thus, the picture of their natural death was staged," Aleksandrov said.

Traces of poisoning with this substance were also found in Oktay Gasanov, Valery Kurochkin and Sergei Korobeynikov.

"Initially, the deaths of Gasanov, Kurochkin and Magnitsky were considered natural, due to illnesses they had, and Korobaynikov's death was considered an accident. However, later, data was obtained indicating the violent nature of the deaths of these individuals," Aleksandrov clarified .

Magnitsky, who was arrested on charges of tax evasion, died in a Moscow pretrial detention center on November 16, 2009. His arrest was linked to his exposure of corruption schemes involving officials and employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The Prosecutor General's Office does not rule out Browder's involvement in the death of businessman Alexander Perepilichny in Great Britain in 2012. If Perepilichny's death was violent, the most likely conclusion is that he was killed "with the aim of eliminating a participant in yet another provocation organized by Browder," Atmonyev said.

Hermitage representatives claimed that Perepilichny was killed by Russian special services because he was allegedly an informant in the case of theft from the Russian budget, which Magnitsky exposed. The Prosecutor General's Office sent orders to the Investigative Committee of Russia to decide on the initiation of a criminal case on suspicion of Browder organizing the murder of Perepilichny, Vedomosti reports.

Perepilichny died on November 10, 2012, near his home in Surrey. Police initially said there was nothing suspicious about the circumstances of his death. In May 2015, before the inquest began at Surrey Coroner's Court, an expert said traces of a rare plant-based poison were found in the deceased's body; it is extracted from the plant Gelsemium elegans, a genus of Gelsemiums that grows only in Asia. In March 2017, a version was put forward that the businessman could have been poisoned by sorrel soup, the newspaper recalls.

"On the eve of the decision on the new head of Interpol, for which a Russian is vying, the Prosecutor General's Office held a huge press conference about me and how they will pursue me anywhere. I definitely touched them with the Magnitsky Act," Browder commented on the Prosecutor General's Office statements on Twitter.

On December 29, 2017, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow sentenced William Browder in absentia to nine years in prison for deliberate bankruptcy. The court also ordered Browder and his fund partner Ivan Cherkasov to pay more than 4 billion rubles to the victims — three branches of the Federal Tax Service for Moscow. In 2013, the court sentenced Browder in absentia to nine years in a general regime penal colony for tax evasion. Sergei Magnitsky was also found guilty in the same case.
Browder initiated the adoption of the Magnitsky Acts in the United States and Canada, laws that ban entry to Russians involved in human rights violations in Russia and other countries.