Magnitsky is a man that the Americans named an act after, the Magnitsky Act. Is he an anti-fraud hero or was he part of a tax fraud clan?
If you watch this documentary on someone making a film on the Magnitsky case, you may think the last:
Mr. Magnitsky has not been invented, for there has been a case in the European Court of Human Rights, with a judgment on 27 August 2019. In that case his name is spelled as ‘Magnitskiy’. According to the information note it was a case on pre-trial detention:
Death in pre-trial detention following delays in providing emergency medical care and failure to conduct adequate and timely investigation: violation
Facts – The first applicant, a tax and accountancy expert with a Moscow-based law firm, had carried out investigations on behalf of a client in relation to alleged tax fraud. He had subsequently been arrested on suspicion of having assisted in tax evasion. While in custody the first applicant was diagnosed with pancreatitis and he died in pre-trial detention on 16 November 2009. He was convicted posthumously. Prior to his death, the first applicant had complained to the Court, in particular about the conditions of detention and the justification and length of his pre-trial detention. The first applicant’s wife and his mother (who were the second and third applicants, respectively) lodged further complaints following his death.
Looking for further information I got completely confused. Magnitsky seems to be in the middle of a propaganda war between the US and Russia.
Der Spiegel’s article of 17 December 2019 is interesting:
Browder describes Magnitsky as a crucial whistleblower. But that is a construct that was concocted after the fact.
It looks as if Mr. Browder has made a fool of the US government. Still Transparency International keeps believing in Magnitsky.
More information:
- Transparency International, on 26 June 2020: “On Wednesday, we celebrated the World Whistleblowing Day. (…) Sergey Magnitsky are just the best-known of the many people who have risked everything to do the right thing and challenge the status quo against all odds.“
- Bill Browder points finger at Bernie Sanders on Magnitsky Act vote, but the real story is his own corruption, RT.com.
- Browder und das Magnitski-Narrativ: Ende einer Desinformationskampagne?, Heise 24 November 2019.
- SPIEGEL Responds to Browder Criticisms of Magnitsky Story, 17 December 2019.
- Andrei Nekrasov, the maker of the documentary, on 23 October 2019 wrote on the ECHR-judgment: Court dismisses central claims in Bill Browder’s Magnitsky story.
- On the film: Controversial film on Sergei Magnitsky’s death set for US screening, The Guardian 24 July 2017.
- On the film: Russian agitprop lands in Washington, Washington Post, 19 Juni 2016.
Wikipedia:
- Wikipedia on the Magnitsky Act (US) of 2012 and international Magnitsky legislation.
Judgment ECHR:
- European Court of Human Rights, Magnitskiy and Others v. Russia – 32631/09 and 53799/12, judgment of 27 August 2019.
Tussen de Amerikanen en de Russen woedt een flinke propaganda oorlog, reden om dit soort artikelen te wantrouwen:
‘A chain of stupidity’: the Skripal case and the decline of Russia’s spy agencies https://t.co/DCuKJsclak
— Ellen Timmer (@Ellen_Timmer) June 27, 2020
Read the Magnitsky related articles on this blog.
Addition 9 July 2020 | Magnitsky in the UK
In the UK they still believe the Magnitsky story, read The Guardian, Who was Sergei Magnitsky and how did UK sanctions come about?, 6 July 2020.
The Guardian on the same date wrote UK on collision course with Saudis over new human rights sanctions, on sanctions against human rights violations. According to the article these sanctions include 25 Russian nationals involved in the death of Magnitsky. The article did not mention if rule of law was applied by the UK when deciding which people should be added to the sanctions list.
Addition 25 May 2021 | Komisar on Magnitsky
Member of European Parliament, Sven Giegold still believes in the Magnitsky fairy tale, read the article by Lucy Komisar of 22 January 2019, Letter to European Parliament Green Sven Giegold on a resolution to protect a tax cheat. Komisar writes that like Giegold she was one of the founders of Tax Justice Network and that she has sent him information about Browder, the man behind the Magnitsky propaganda.
Ellen Timmer - juridische artikelen en berichten 
The Magnitsky Act Behind the Scenes is a must see documentary. Magnitsky, a courageous lawyer/whistleblower or an accountant cooking the books for a convicted fraudster? Decide for yourself.
This https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-case-of-sergei-magnitsky-anti-corruption-champion-or-corrupt-anti-hero-a-1297796-amp.html story in Der Spiegel completely tears apart the official narrative. Bill Browder was not happy and turned to the German media watchdog, the Presserat. His complaint was comprehensively rejected https://www.rt.com/news/488395-german-media-watchdog-browder-spiegel/ The verdict in German can be found here https://twitter.com/BenjaminBidder/status/1259845682657181701
Always vocal in the media, always mentioning the tiniest details, under oath Browder is not able to remember a thing and Magnitsky turns out to have no legal qualifications whatsoever, although he called him his lawyer hundreds of times. If you lie about small things… The pdf can be found here https://c1.100r.org/media/2017/10/Browder-Deposition-April-15-2015.pdf, the videos here https://youtu.be/pu9DMxfTGhY Liar liar pants on fire.
Bill Browder, various US funded (e.g. National Endowment for Democracy, check out the tentacles of this monster here https://swprs.org/organizations-funded-by-the-ned/) propaganda organizations like OCCRP and Bellingcat and bought and paid for journalists like Luke Harding from The Guardian work hand in glove, pushing the anti-Russian narrative. There is so much money to be made – hundreds of billions the coming decades – pushing Russia out of the European energy market and selling arms around the world to countries who need “protection”. Gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse… Mob tactics. OCCRP claims a 56.000% ROI for their donors on its website.
For anyone interested how the media work, I encourage you to read about the Integrity Initiative, a NATO funded propaganda project that lists Bellingcat as a partner organization in its handbook. And what is Bill Browder and his had of “research” Vadim Kleiner doing in the list of Inner Core members of the Integrity Initiative? Internal documents were leaked by Anonymous. More here http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative, here https://swprs.org/die-integrity-initiative/ and here https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/12/the-strange-mind-of-christopher-nigel-donnelly.html
Various well-known journalists turned out to be paid by the Integrity Initiative to write their pro-NATO propaganda pieces. They were paid per word. The bills can be found online. The Integrity Initiative was organized in clusters per country. Check out your country’s cluster. See anyone familiar?
The best illustration how international organizations like the OPCW and the media were corrupted is this case https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ Staged chemical attacks in Syria by Al Qaeda linked terrorists with media cover by the “investigative journalists” from Bellingcat to falsely blame Assad as a pretext for military attacks by the US, France and the UK. Yes, Bellingcat is funded by the Dutch government too. If Bellingcat is involved, you can be sure it won’t pass the smell test in most cases.
Will anyone ever go to jail for this mess?
It would be a travesty to name human rights legislation after Magnitsky.
Thx for your comments and for all the sources you mention. Your comments show that it is necessary that the so-called ‘independent’ activities of OCCRP, Bellingcat and people that call themselves journalists and that pretend to save the world from financial crime, are thoroughly investigated. Pity for them: that investigation can not be done by journalists…
When OCCRP c.s. turn out to be propaganda-instruments of governments and private political pressure groups, it is necessary that the citizens harmed by their propaganda are informed and that measures are taken. It will be difficult; if this is the case there are strong powers behind them.