Swiss prosecutors, after ten years of checking information about money laundering from Russia, according to the statement of Hermitage Capital Management, did not find any reasons to bring charges against anyone in Switzerland and closed the case
Sergei Magnitsky Memorial Evening at the Sakharov Center
The Swiss Prosecutor General’s Office has closed criminal proceedings on the claim of the Hermitage Capital Management company William Browder, which was filed in March 2011. This is stated in a message published on the agency’s website. The reason for the claim was information about fraud with VAT refunds and embezzlement from the Russian budget, which was published by lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky, who died in 2009 in the pre-trial detention center “Matrosskaya Tishina”.
“The suspicions related to money laundering allegedly committed in Switzerland between 2008 and 2010 after fraud committed in Russia to the detriment of the Russian tax authorities at the end of 2007, which led to unjustified tax refunds totaling the equivalent of $ 230 million. These funds were allegedly laundered first in Russia, and then in a number of other countries and partly in Switzerland, ” the prosecutor’s office said.
“The circumstances related to the death of Sergei Magnitsky in Russia and its political consequences, including the Magnitsky lists, are not the subject of this investigation,” the Prosecutor General’s Office noted.
The investigators received information about a large number of bank accounts in Switzerland, sent many requests for mutual assistance abroad, including to the authorities of Moldova, Lithuania, Russia, Cyprus, the United States, and also interviewed a significant number of people in Switzerland and abroad.
An analysis of the data obtained led to the conclusion that during the investigation no evidence was found on the basis of which it was possible to charge anyone in Switzerland, so the prosecutors decided to close the case.
However, during the investigation, some assets frozen in Switzerland were found to be connected with a violation committed in Russia. As a result, the prosecutor’s office ordered to confiscate more than 4 million Swiss francs (about 322 million rubles).
Lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky was arrested in Russia in 2008 in the case of evasion of the Hermitage Capital fund from paying taxes. He died in 2009 in the pre-trial detention center “Matrosskaya Tishina”. In 2013, he was posthumously found guilty. According to the head of Hermitage Capital, William Browder, Magnitsky was killed in a pre-trial detention center, and his prosecution was due to the fact that the auditor revealed a corrupt scheme for withdrawing $230 million from the Russian budget.
Magnitsky’s death and Browder’s statements became the reason for the so-called “Magnitsky Act”, adopted in the United States, according to which sanctions were imposed against individual Russian citizens. Later, the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries joined these sanctions. Over the past ten years, Browder has initiated a number of investigations into possible money laundering by Russians in Sweden, Estonia, Austria and other countries.
In Russia, criminal cases were initiated against Browder for non-payment of taxes. In 2013, he was sentenced in absentia to nine years in a general regime colony. In 2018, a new criminal case was opened against him-the Prosecutor General’s Office said that the head of the fund created a transnational criminal community to evade taxes and related fraudulent schemes.
In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) granted the complaint of Sergei Magnitsky, his wife Natalia Zharikova and mother Natalia Magnitskaya. Magnitsky filed a complaint with the ECHR on his behalf on July 11, 2009, four months before his death. Magnitsky’s widow joined the complaint in March 2010; the auditor’s mother went to court in August 2012.
The court found that the Russian authorities had violated the right to life, the prohibition of torture in terms of conditions of detention and treatment by the prison authorities in relation to Magnitsky. The ECHR also agreed that Russia violated the provisions on a reasonable period of detention and the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time in relation to Magnitsky. The judges awarded the applicants & euro;34 thousand for two.
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