Russian court convicts dead lawyer Magnitsky
Case led to ban on adoptions of Russian children by U.S. families
MOSCOW — A judge on Thursday found Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian whistle-blower who died in custody in 2009, guilty of tax evasion, bringing an end to an unusual posthumous trial that drew international condemnation and eroded U. S.-Russian relations.
The ruling against Magnitsky, a lawyer who disclosed an alleged multimillion-dollar scam, was largely symbolic. Judge Igor Alisov of Moscow’s Tverskoy district declared the case closed, and there was no judgment against Magnitsky’s estate.
However, Magnitsky’s former boss, William Browder, CEO and cofounder of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, was also found guilty of tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison camp. He had been tried in absentia as part of the same case and said he will stop traveling to Russia or allied countries where he might face arrest.
In a telephone interview from New York, Browder called the court ruling “one of the most shameful moments for Russia since the days of Josef Stalin.”
Some human rights activists, including those close to the Kremlin, called the ruling against Magnitsky and the trial itself absurd.
“It is not the most appropriate of judicial decisions taken in Russia in recent times, putting it mildly,” said Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the Presidential Council on Civic Society and Human Rights, a Kremlin advisory body. “Besides, the dead can’t be tried by any human court; it is up to history to try them.”
Fedotov, speaking in an interview, added that the ruling will damage the image of Russia abroad.
The Magnitsky case already has contributed to a chill in relations between Russia and the United States. In December 2012, Congress passed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Act, which imposed visa restrictions and financial sanctions against a group of Russian officials, policemen and tax inspectors involved in the prosecution and death of the lawyer.
The Kremlin immediately responded by imposing visa restrictions on various U. S. officials and by compelling parliament to adopt a highly controversial bill banning adoptions of Russian children by U.S. families. The law halted more than 300 adoption cases that were nearing completion, drawing anguished criticism from American and Russian adoption officials and families.