Court sentences Hermitage Capital's Browder to 9 years in prison in absentia, closes case against Magnitsky
MOSCOW. July 11 (Interfax) - Moscow's Tverskoi Court has sentenced Hermitage Capital co-founder and CEO William Browder to 9 years in prison after finding him guilty of tax evasion in absentia.
The court also closed the case against Hermitage Capital auditor Sergei Magnitsky, who died at a detention center in 2009, but, as long as he has also been found guilty of tax evasion, the court denied his rehabilitation.
Judge Igor Alisov who presided the hearing said while handing down the sentence that hearing the case in Browder's absence and the reopening of the case against Magnitsky had been justified and legal.
One of the charges brought against Magnitsky, i.e. complicity in one of the counts, had been dropped earlier.
Alisov ruled that the prison sentence handed down on Browder will be counted from the moment of his actual detention.
Tverskoi Court took up the case against Browder and Magnitsky on December 10, 2012. The two had been indicted for tax evasion amounting to over 522 million rubles through falsifying tax declarations and illegally taking advantage of tax breaks intended for the disabled (Russian Criminal Code Article 199 Part 2).
Browder had to be tried in absentia "as he is showing no willingness to appear at the investigative body, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has refused to maintain international legal cooperation with Russia on this matter."
Magnitsky died at a Moscow pretrial detention facility on November 16, 2009.
The tax case against Magnitsky was stopped but later reopened based on a Constitutional Court judgment to the effect that the closure of the case was unconstitutional and violated the presumption of innocence principle. The Constitutional Court ruled that a case must be reopened at a demand by the defendants' representatives. Attorneys for Magnitsky's mother protested the reopening of the case, arguing that this was done not at their demand.
Moscow's Ostankinsky Court ruled on April 3, 2013 that the reopening of the criminal case against Magnitsky was legal even though he was dead. The court took into account that, in making this decision, the Prosecutor General's Office had been guided by numerous complaints by Magnitsky's mother in her interviews with the press, in which she insisted on her son's legal rehabilitation. The Moscow City Court upheld this decision and turned down a complaint by Magnitsky's family.