Sergei Magnitsky
| Sergei Magnitsky | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky April 8, 1972 Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine) |
| Died | November 16, 2009 (aged 37) Matrosskaya Tishina, Moscow, Russia |
| Occupation | lawyer, auditor |
Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky (Russian: Серге́й Леони́дович Магни́тский; 8 April 1972 – 16 November 2009) was a Russian lawyer and auditor whose arrest and subsequent death in custody generated international media attention and triggered both official and unofficial inquiries into allegations of fraud, theft and human rights violations.
Magnitsky had alleged there had been a large-scale theft from the Russian state sanctioned and carried out by Russian officials. He was arrested and eventually died in prison seven days before the expiration of the one-year term during which he could be legally held without trial. In total, Magnitsky served 358 days in Moscow's Butyrka prison. He developed gall stones, pancreatitis and a blocked gall bladder and received inadequate medical care. A human rights council set up by the Kremlin found that he was physically assaulted shortly before his death. His case has become an international cause célèbre and led to the adoption of the Magnitsky bill by the US government at the end of 2012 by which those Russian officials believed to be involved in the auditor’s death were barred from entering the United States or using its banking system. In response, Russia blocked hundreds of foreign adoptions.
In early January 2013, the Financial Times editorialised that "the Magnitsky case is egregious, well documented and encapsulates the darker side of Putinism" and endorsed the idea of imposing similar sanctions against the implicated Russian officials by the EU countries.
In 2012, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a Sarajevo-based network of investigative centers, successfully traced some of the missing funds to a company owned by Denis Katsyv, the son of Petr Katsyv, the wealthy and powerful former minister of transportation in the Moscow region. The money had gone into a real estate firm that was buying luxury Wall Street apartments. The US Department of Justice filed a seizure order to recover the apartments in Sept. 2013.
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