Below is the text of a letter from the law firm Firestone Duncan to clients and staff regarding the death of Sergei Magnitsky (I apologize for the conflicting spellings of his name).
November 18, 2009Dear clients, partners and friends,
On the night of November 17, 2009 we lost our colleague and friend Sergey Magnitskey. Sergey was 37.
Sergey died in police custody where he had been held almost a year without trial or bail. He was held by a group of police officers who he had testified against; a group of officers who we believe committed a crime against a client and the Russian State.
Sergey died because he would not cooperate with criminals. He was repeatedly told that if he gave false testimony against his client he would be released and he refused. As time went on his captors put him in ever worsening conditions as a means of pressuring him to cooperate. His health deteriorated and after being diagnosed by prison doctors as needing medication and an operation, the police then increased the pressure on Sergey by denying him medical treatment.
We knew that Sergey was ill and that he was suffering. We did not know how bad his condition was but we did our best to bring his illegal detention and his deteriorating condition to the attention of the Russian authorities and we had a lot of help on the way. Despite our efforts and the efforts of many friends, the Russian authorities did not act and Sergey died of a condition that could have been cured with a simple operation and medication.
Many of you knew Sergey professionally, some of you had the opportunity to know him on a more personal level.
Sergey was a remarkable man. Honest, decent, kind, and incredibly knowledgeable. He had faith in Russian law and in Russia. He had a quite strength of character and in the end he maintained his integrity under impossible conditions.
There is a cry of shock and outrage in the press, both in Russia and abroad, and we shall add our voices to it. Like Sergey we believe that rule of law is worth fighting for and we shall do our best to see that his death has some meaning.
On a more personal level, we have lost a great friend; someone we all admired and the kind of person that Russia needs more of. We will miss him greatly. Sergey is survived by his mother, his wife and his two children. Their financial needs will be taken care of. It is the least we can do for our friend.
Respectfully,
Firestone Duncan
Sir,
Is the entire international blogospere absolutely certain that Sergey Magnitskey was not guilty of helping Hermitage Capital evade paying taxes? Do they have access to the documents held now by the Office of the Prosecutor General of The Russian Federation? If not, surely any assumption of his innocence is misled. The Russian State do possess such documents, and they do believe he was guilty of involvement in a scheme to avoid paying taxes. Whether or not those documents are themselves false is another question. Furthermore, if he was indeed guilty of participation in the tax evasion scheme, along with the CEO of Hermitage Capital, William Browder, his death is a good thing for Hermitage. The Russian State will now not be able to prove his guilt. And they will find it more difficult to prove the guilt of William Browder himself. If on the other hand, he was innocent, I agree that his death is indeed a tragedy and that The Russian State, and those Interior Ministry officials in particular, did indeed kill him to silence him permanently. At the moment, however, it may be misleading, a knee-jerk reaction, for the entire blogosphere to accept as gospel truth that Sergey Magnitskey was innocent.
John Barnes
I would like to respond to John Barns’ comment.
My name is Jamison Firestone. I manage Firestone Duncan, the law firm where Mr. Magnitskiy worked and I am the author of the letter Mr. Barns commented about.
Obviously in my position as a co-worker and friend of Mr. Magnitskiy, I am not an impartial party. That being said, I have more knowledge of this case than almost anyone, and Mr. Barns’ comment deserves an answer.
There is no shadow of a doubt that Mr. Magnitskiy was both innocent and that the people who arrested him, and later killed him, knew this. The only reason they arrested him was to cover up a crime that they had committed.
Firestone Duncan was retained to provide legal advice to the Hermitage Companies and HSBC along with many other companies. In our capacity as an advisor to the Hermitage Companies, Mr. Magnitskiy provided tax ADVICE. He was not an owner, director, or employee of any Hermitage company.
The Hermitage Companies paid over $500 million in Russian tax.
In June of 2007, 20 officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) raided our law firm’s offices with an invalid search warrant issued under a case that made no legal or factual sense. When we protested the invalidity of the warrant, they beat one of our lawyers so badly that he required three weeks hospitalization. Following this they began their search of our offices.
The MVD officers took all the original company documents for the Hermitage Companies and their seals.
In Russia, ownership of a company can only be changed if you are in possession of the original documents and seals. While these documents were in police custody, ownership of the companies changed to an unemployed former sawmill foreman with no higher education from Saratov, and who also happened to be a convicted killer (recently released). This criminal became the new owner and director of the stolen Hermitage Companies. This fraudulent director then asked for a tax refund from the taxes previously paid by the Hermitage Companies, totaling $230 million dollars.
It must be the case, that the MVD officers who searched my office and confiscated the Hermitage Companies’ documents and seals then used the documents taken from my office to change the ownership of the Hermitage Companies. To be clearer, the only reason the police raided our offices was to aid a crime. The documents and seals were needed to steal the money from the Russian budget, so the police opened a false investigation, conducted a search under the pretext of that investigation, and took those documents and handed them to the criminals so that they could commit their crime.
That refund of 5.3 billion rubles ($230 million), the largest tax refund in Russian history, was approved the next working day without a preliminary audit and without raising any questions. That is simply not possible without massive corruption.
In October of 2008 Mr. Magnitskiy gave testimony to the police about the above crime. He named the MVD officers involved. Those same officers arrested him within one month of his testimony and detained him for over eleven months without bail. When they finally did indict him the charges made no sense.
There can be no justification for allowing officers who are implicated in a crime to initiate a case and arrest, the star witness against them. Any such case is instantly suspect and tainted to the point where it cannot be allowed to continue.
There can be no legal grounds for charging and arresting a lawyer as a co-conspirator for something that his client is accused of. There is also no logical reason to do this, unless, of course, the main goal of the proceeding is to take that lawyer out of action. To shut him up.
Furthermore, please remember that Hermitage Capital paid over $500 million in Russian taxes. More that Aeroflot, GAZ, and Gazprom Bank. It was one of the country’s largest taxpayers and it is clear that it never had any intent to engage in tax evasion. The charge that was used to justify the detention of Magnitskey is actually quite ridiculous on its face. Mr. Magnitskiy was after 10 months charged with helping Hermitage avoid paying a sum that is less than 1% of the tax Hermitage paid in one year.
You make a comment about the Russian state believing that Mr. Magnitskey was involved in a scheme to avoid paying taxes. Please understand that at this time the actions of Russian law enforcement agencies often cannot be equated with the Russian State.
Speaking as a lawyer who has been practicing in Russia since 1993, I can tell you that in today’s Russia the greatest threats that most Russians face are from the law enforcement bodies. Ask around if you don’t believe me.
In the 1990s, criminals who wanted to steal sent people with guns. Today they find corrupt officers in the law enforcement agencies, and for a fee they will create a case. The case does not have to make sense, and they will imprison anyone who opposes them, so that they can steal the assets.
Everything mentioned above are documentable facts. There is no “he says” “they say” here. Mr. Magnitskiy was an employee of our law firm. He worked out of our office and he provided legal and tax advice to many clients including the Hermitage Companies. He was not an employee or director or principal or partner in any client company. There is no legal way he could be charged with aiding a client to do anything, and he knew it, which is why he had no fear of testifying against the MVD.
Sergey Magnitskiy, while working for a client, testified against a group of corrupt MVD officers. Those same officers arrested him on false pretenses, using a case that made no sense, and claimed that he was a flight risk because he had applied for a UK visa. Advocates challenged the case brought by the MVD officers on its merits, the UK Embassy confirmed in writing that Magnitskiy had never applied for a visa, and the US Ambassador met with the General Prosecutor’s Office and called the case a “perversion of justice”, but in the end power and corruption prevailed.
The MVD officers involved in the theft abused their powers to keep Magnitskiy in detention, without a valid reason, for almost a year. They put him in impossible conditions, broke his health, denied him medical care, and eventually he died. It is as simple and tragic as that.