Russia to try dead lawyer over fraud allegations

MOSCOW: Russia was due to open a fraud trial against late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in prison in 2009 after accusing state officials of a multimillion-dollar tax scam.

His death of untreated pancreatitis in jail became a symbol of prison abuse in modern Russia and led to a fresh row between Moscow and Washington.

Moscow’s Tverskoi district court was initially scheduled to hear the case in late December but the judge adjourned the hearing after the Magnitsky family’s defence lawyers refused to participate, saying trying a dead man was illegal.

Critics say that with Russia’s decision to prosecute Magnitsky after his death, the case entered the realm of the absurd.

Amnesty International said the trial would set a “dangerous precedent.”

“This posthumous prosecution is farcical, but also deeply sinister,” John Dalhuisen, the rights watchdog’s director for Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement.

But Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is a lawyer by training, defended the trial, saying authorities did not plan to accuse the dead lawyer of crimes.

“According to our criminal law as well as the law of most civilised countries, it is impossible to prosecute a person after his death, it is impossible to find him guilty or not guilty,” Medvedev told CNN.

Ahead of Monday’s hearing Magnitsky’s mother released a letter calling on Moscow’s lawyers to boycott the trial.

Before his arrest, Magnitsky said he had uncovered a US $235mil (RM 714mil) tax scam by state officials against Hermitage Capital Management, an investment firm for which he worked.

After he was detained, he was charged with the very crimes he claimed to have uncovered and was placed in pre-trial detention.