According to a press release sent by Hermitage Capital Management to TheOtherRussia.org on Monday, Dutch legislators made the decision while taking into account that “Sergei Magnitsky died while in detention in Russia under circumstances that give rise to suspicion, after he uncovered a massive corruption scheme, and also the fact that his case has exposed the deteriorating condition of the observance of human rights [in Russia], and acknowledging that, among a range of other measures, the US Senate and House of Representatives have taken initiatives connected with limiting the ability of Russian civil servants who have taken part in Magnitsky’s death to enter the country and freezing their assets.”

The representatives stressed that the situation was unacceptable and that Russian civil servants responsible for Magnitsky’s death remain unpunished more than a year and a half after the fact.

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Russian Foreign Ministry has denounced the Dutch sanctions as “unacceptable.”

The Dutch vote follows a number of measures currently under consideration by US lawmakers to ban Russian civil servants connected with the case from the country. In April 2010, US Senator Benjamin Cardin sent a list of 60 people responsible for the lawyer’s persecution and death to the US State Department.

This past June, Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov presented US congressional leaders with a list of more than 300 Russian civil servants against whom he said the US should introduce visa sanctions on account of violations of Russia’s obligations under international law to respect civil rights and freedoms.

Kasparov called upon the US to annul the antiquated Jackson-Vanik amendment and introduce in its stead specific visa sanctions against “those [civil servants] who violate democratic and human rights in Russia.”

Russian lawmakers have threatened their Western counterparts with respective sanctions in the case that measures are taken against those involved in the Magnitsky case.

Representatives of Hermitage Capital expressed outrage at how Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has overseen the handling of the cases related to Magnitsky’s untimely death in a Moscow detention facility. Magnitsky himself had complained that Chaika’s actions violated his constitutional rights, says the press release.

Over the course of three and a half years, says Hermitage Capital, the Prosecutor General’s office and Yury Chaika personally actively impeded the investigation into unlawful actions by civil servants in Magnitsky’s case. Now they are trying unconvincingly to mask their criminal negligence, as well as, possibly, notorious actions that lead to the theft of more than 11 billion rubles ($393 million USD) from the treasury and the death of Magnitsky, who uncovered these crimes, say his colleagues.

“It is bewildering that the supervision of the investigation of Magnitsky’s case has been charged to the person bearing direct responsibility for the criminal inactivity and lack of supervision and proper reaction to Sergei Magnitsky’s numerous appeals about violations of his rights…a person whose actions themselves ought to be checked out first of all,” says Hermitage Capital.

On May 31, Yury Chaika received an order from President Medvedev “to intensify control over the course of investigation of the criminal cases connected with lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.”

Sergei Magnitsky was arrested in November 2008 after uncovering a tax fraud scheme that allegedly involved members of the Russian government, judiciary, mafia, and others. He spent 11 months in a pretrial detention facility on trumped-up charges of tax evasion. On November 16, 2009, Magnitsky died of apparent heart failure. His colleagues say the lawyer was denied medical treatment and that his death was directly brought about by the actions of Russian law enforcement officials.

Update: This article has been corrected from earlier versions. Please see statement below. We apologize for any misunderstanding.

Moscow’s Tverskoy Court has sanctioned a warrant to arrest Hermitage Capital Management executive Ivan Cherkasov in absentia, Gazeta.ru reports.

Interior Ministry investigator Oleg Silchenko had announced on May 3 that he was seeking the arrest of Cherkasov, a colleague of deceased lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who has lived in London since 2006, on the basis that the Hermitage Capital executive has failed to pay 2 billion rubles in taxes.

Cherkasov’s lawyers asked the judge to delay the court hearing for several days to give them time to study court materials and prepare their defense with Cherkasov himself. However, as lawyer Aleksandr Antipov told the BBC’s Russian service, this request was denied with no explanation as to why.

Antipov added that they would appeal the arrest in Moscow City Court, since, in his words, today’s decision by the Tverskoy Court has demonstrated the inobjective nature and dependence on investigators of the courts.

Hermitage Capital has issued a press release decrying the decision:

Late this evening, Judge Kovalevskaya of Moscow’s Tverskoy Court approved a request by Internal Affairs investigator Silchenko for the arrest in absentia of Ivan Cherkasov, a colleague of Sergei Magnitsky and partner of Hermitage Capital. Cherkasov’s lawyers consider the decision by Judge Kovalevskaya to be without basis, unlawful, and unconstitutional, and will appeal it in Russian courts as well as in the European Court of Human Rights.

The press release can be read in its entirety in Russian here.

Silchenko was the lead investigator in the case against Magnitsky for trumped-up charges of tax evasion, and his subsequent promotion following the lawyer’s scandalous death in a Moscow detention facility has drawn scathing criticism from human rights advocates and other supporters of Magnitsky, who say that Silchenko’s actions lead to the lawyer’s death. While the presidentially-ordered investigation is ongoing, nobody yet has been charged. An independent commission announced last week that Magnitsky’s arrest had been illegal.

According to Gazeta.ru, lawyers for Hermitage Capital sent a request to the Russian Internal Ministry on May 3 asking for Silchenko to be removed from the investigation of Magnitsky’s death. According to the lawyers, Silchenko has a possible personal stake in the outcome of the case. However, the request was turned down.

Earlier, Hermitage Capital CEO William Browder told The Independent that he believed the arrest warrant for Cherkasov to be retaliation for a video expose of the tax fraud case uncovered by Magnitsky that they posted on YouTube in mid-April:

“Clearly our expose has caused significant upset within the ranks of this criminal syndicate to the extent that we’ve shocked them into retaliation,” he said. “This is an escalation in the attack on us. The next logical step would be for the same corrupt officers to misuse the Interpol system or the extradition process in an attempt to further deflect attention away from the government corruption which we exposed. It shows that no-one is in control of Russia’s judicial system.”

The Independent also quoted a statement by Cherkasov denying the allegations:

“The highest levels of law enforcement in Russia have been abusing their offices for political, criminal and retaliatory purposes since this whole saga began,” he said. “It is being done shamelessly, and the whole world watches on in amazement. Either the Russian President and Prime Minister are powerless to fight officials who are stealing enormous amounts of state money, or they are direct beneficiaries. Either way, it is a terrible condemnation of what is happening in my country.”

Correction: This article previously quoted erronious Russian reports that the Russian Internal Ministry issued an “international arrest warrant” for Hermitage Capital CEO William Browder on May 4. The Russian reports, put out by ITAR-TASS and cited by numerous other Russian news agencies, mistook a quote by Internal Ministry investigator Oleg Silchenko about a request to Interpol by the Internal Ministry to have Browder placed on an international wanted list in connection with tax evasion charges for a new development, while the request was actually issued back in 2009. See this article by Reuters for details on the 2009 request. There are no actual new developments involving Browder. We apologize for any misunderstanding the original article may have caused.

A play based on the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky is set to stage its North American premiere in Washington, DC on May 4, 2011.

The play, called “One Hour Eighteen,” is a highly acclaimed production based on excerpts from Magnitsky’s personal diary. As has been the case in Moscow since premiering last June, the play will be followed by a group discussion.

Sergei Magnitsky’s tragic death has become a symbol for those working to further human rights and the rule of law in Russia today. After uncovering a $230 million tax fraud case implicating a variety of Russian officials, bankers, and members of the mob, Magnitsky was arrested and placed in a Moscow detention facility. After eleven months of being denied proper medical care, he died without ever seeing trial in November 2009. What followed was an unprecedented global outcry demanding justice for what, upon closer inspection, appeared to be a case of premeditated murder. While a still-ongoing independent inquiry ordered by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev concluded last week that Magnitsky’s jailing and treatment was illegal, no charges have been filed in the case.

The play’s premiere in Washington could not be more timely, as Russian investigators announced this morning that they are seeking the arrest of one of Magnitsky’s colleagues, Ivan Cherkasov, in connection with his accusations that tax inspector Olga Stepanova was involved in the fraud Magnitsky uncovered. Stepanova was one of the central figures in a YouTube mini-doc released in April by Magnitsky’s supporters, where evidence is presented that she and three other inspectors garnered $42.9 million for aiding in the fraud.

A court is set to consider the motion on May 4.

The play will be staged on Wednesday, May 4 from 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. RSVP is required. Click here for more details.

William Browder, CEO of the investment advisory firm Hermitage Capital Management where Magnitsky had worked, said at the hearing that the lawyer’s persecution and death came as a direct result of his testimony against corrupt officials in the Russian Internal Ministry and other federal agencies. While detained, the CEO told the commission, Magnitsky was asked to alter his statements that officials had appropriated $230 million from the Russian government, and was tortured when he refused.

Browder asked the rights commission to support an effort by US Senator Benjamin Cardin to ban 60 Russian civil servants connected with Magnitsky’s death from obtaining visas to visit the United States. As Cardin put it, the officials “remain unpunished and in a position of power,” and said that the State Department reserves the right to deny a visa to anyone “engaging in, or benefiting from, corruption.”

Browder also asked that the United States Treasury freeze all assets kept in American banks by the civil servants in question, and asked that the United States work with other countries to do the same.

While many of the civil servants included in Cardin’s list are high-ranking officials, their names are largely unfamiliar to the Russian public. Among the most notable is Aleksei Anichin, head of the Internal Ministry’s Investigative Committee, as well as Moscow City Police Lieutenant Colonel Artem Kuzhetsov, who oversaw Magnitsky’s case.

In response, committee chair and US Representative Jim McGovern promised that he would introduce legislation that would not only ban the 60 officials from obtaining visas, but would also prohibit them from making US investments.

“One of the things that I would like to do is we’ll not only send a letter to Hilary Clinton, but I think we should introduce legislation and put those 60 people’s names down there and move it through the committee and make a formal recommendation from Congress, pass it on the floor, and say to the administration, ‘This is a consequence. You have to do this. Because if you don’t, nothing’s going to happen,'” said the congressman.

McGovern said that banning visas is the very least the United States should do in response to “serious human rights violations.” “People who commit murder,” he said, “and I think that’s what happened in that case, should not have the right to travel here and invest in business here and make money here and there should be a consequence. If we can’t get the consequence to happen in Russia, well then maybe there’s something we can do here [and] maybe other nations can do the same thing.”

Washington’s discussion of Magnitsky’s case has coincidentally coincided with the death of Russian businesswoman Vera Trifonova in a pretrial detention facility on April 30. Trifonova, who was detained in December on charges of fraud, was reportedly denied medical attention after refusing to plead guilty to investigators. Her lawyer contents that she was “purposefully destroyed” per request of a business partner who owed her a large sum of money. Since Trifonova died in the same facility as Magnitsky – Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina – her case is widely being seen as a repeat offense on the part of the penitentiary service.

During a hearing on the lawyer’s death in the Russian Public Chamber on Thursday, Federal Penitentiary Service Deputy Director Aleksandr Smirnov stated that “We are by no means minimizing our guilt, which is obviously there.” He asked, however, that no definitive conclusions be made until the results of a review ordered by President Dmitri Medvedev were made available, which should be within two to three days.

Also during the hearing, chairman of the Public Chamber’s law enforcement committee Anatoly Kucherena requested that Prosecutor General Yury Chaika order a review of the accusations of denied medical treatment, which Magnitsky’s mother had blamed in his death in a message to the Public Chamber. Kucherena also asked that the results of the review be made available to the mother.

Sergei Magnitsky died on the night of November 17 in the Moscow criminal detention facility Matrosskaya Tishina. The cause of death was reported as a ruptured pancreas and acute cardiovascular failure. On November 19, an inter-regional prosecutorial investigative committee in Moscow refused to order a repeated forensic examination. After an international outcry from human rights groups, President Dmitri Medvedev ordered a review into the death on November 24.

Materials written by Magnitsky and published after his death show that the lawyer had requested medical attention on numerous occasions. Prior to his arrest, the lawyer had been working with the British investment firm Hermitage Capital Management, which was once Russia’s largest investment firm but has campaigned against numerous corrupt Russian bureaucrats and politicians. He was later arrested on allegations of tax evasion, but never charged. Colleague Bill Browder directly blames the prison system for Magnitsky’s death. “He was their hostage and they killed their hostage by denying him medical attention,” he told the BBC.

The Kremlin meeting with the council was the second this year, and participants discussed a variety of issues for more than three and a half hours in hopes of achieving concrete results.

In his opening remarks, President Medvedev noted that the law had been amended to reflect the discussion held during the first meeting on April 15 and that he was in favor of extending financial, material, and consultation support to non-profit organizations. He stressed, however, that much more needed to be done. “I am not a supporter of dramatizing anything,” Medvedev said.

Ella Pamfilova, head of the council, assured Medvedev that her group was ready to put forth effort to fight corruption but had strong reservations about the process. “There is one serious problem – who will realize this and how it will be realized,” she said.

Participants told Gazeta.ru that significant time was spent discussing problems of the effectiveness with the war on corruption. Complaints filed by citizens concerning the behavior of public servants are often answered by those same public servants, which Kirill Kabanov, Leader of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, insisted must be prohibited.

Kabanov said that the president was presented with detailed documentation of violations in law enforcement agencies, and that Medvedev understands very well that taking authority away from public servants would not be an easy task. Since many have become accustomed to cashing in on their positions of authority instead of fulfilling their actual duties, says Kabanov, the government must give “a signal to bureaucrats that we’re speaking seriously.”

Pamfilova addressed the scandalous death of 37-year old Hermitage Capital Management lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died on November 16 after being denied medical treatment in a Russian jail, where he had been held for a year without charge. “It’s a frightening tragedy when a 37-year old lawyer perishes and the perpetrators aren’t known, but only under investigation,” she said. Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital Management, which has campaigned against numerous corrupt Russian politicians and bureaucrats, directly blamed the prison for the death. “He was their hostage and they killed their hostage by denying him medical attention,” he told the BBC.

The discussion between the president and the council did not include the fraudulent regional elections on October 11, which the president has admitted were flawed but refused to annul, saying that any issues should be resolved in court. He dismissed Pamfilova’s concern that Russians have a very skeptical view of their judicial system, and that recommendations to resolve controversial problems in the court were largely seen as mockery. “What can be an alternative to an appeal to the court?” Medvedev asked in response. “Either lynching, which we, as you understand, have undertaken at more than once point in the history of our government at various times, or an appeal to the party committee. And both of those are located far from the main path of the development of civilization.”

The presidential council is set to meet again in spring 2010, which Pamfilova has proposed be dedicated to a discussion of the volatile situation in the North Caucuses.

President Medvedev has stated on numerous occasions that the war on corruption was a high priority for his administration. A number of recent scandals, however, have garnered skim responses from the Kremlin. An internal memo was obtained on November 16 by activists that indicted police chiefs of conspiring to illegally disrupt a series of lawful protests. A police officer in Novorossiysk came forward earlier in the month with 150 hours of audio backing up claims he first posted on YouTube detailing corruption in law enforcement agencies. Blatant fraud in the October regional elections has been statistically documented, but was at once acknowledged and dismissed by the president.