MENU
Documenting
war crimes in Ukraine

The Tribunal for Putin (T4P) global initiative was set up in response to the all-out war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022.

Magnitsky family condemns lies in film at European Parliament about Sergei Magnitsky

28.04.2016   
Sergei Magnitsky’s widow and mother have condemned the Green Party in the Euro¬pean Par¬lia¬ment for showing a new false, offen¬sive and defam¬a¬tory film by Russ¬ian film¬maker Andrei Nekrasov about their mur¬dered hus¬band and son

Mag­nit­sky Fam­ily Blasts the Green Party in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment for Host­ing Pre­miere of a False and Offen­sive Film about Sergei Mag­nit­sky 

The widow and mother of Sergei Mag­nit­sky have writ­ten to the Green/EFA fac­tion in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment (see their let­ter) protest­ing the pre­miere of a new false, offen­sive and defam­a­tory film by Russ­ian film­maker Andrei Nekrasov about their mur­dered hus­band and son. The pre­miere will take place this after­noon at 5:30 pm at the Euro­pean Parliament.

The pre­miere is spon­sored at the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment by the Greens/EFA Group, and hosted by Heidi Hau­tala, Finnish MEP, Vice Pres­i­dent of the Green/EFA Group, who was reported in the Finnish press to be film­maker Andrei Nekrasov’s girl­friend.

The Mag­nit­sky fam­ily expressed their indig­na­tion in the let­ter about this new attempt to blacken Sergei Magnitsky’s name. They view this film as pro­mot­ing the inter­ests of those who Sergei Mag­nit­sky exposed and who are afraid of the truth he had uncovered.

“This film has been made in the inter­est of those who are scared of the truth uncov­ered by Sergei Mag­nit­sky, - said Sergei Magnitsky’s mother and widow. - “By this let­ter the fam­ily of Sergei Mag­nit­sky state their highly neg­a­tive reac­tion to this film and protest against uncon­scionable attempts to blacken Sergei Magnitsky’s name. We are cat­e­gor­i­cally against pub­lic view­ing of the Andrei Nekrasov’s film, against its dis­tri­b­u­tion in any form.”

The let­ter from the Mag­nit­sky fam­ily states that the film con­tains false infor­ma­tion and lies about Sergei Mag­nit­sky. They are cat­e­gor­i­cally against any show­ing or dis­tri­b­u­tion of this film, includ­ing and espe­cially at the Euro­pean Parliament.

 “We believe that the film by Andrei Nekrasov, based on his inven­tions, and not on doc­u­ments and facts, is degrad­ing to the dig­nity of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, degrad­ing to the deceased, who can­not defend him­self, ” says the let­ter from the Mag­nit­sky family.

The film by Andrei Nekrasov and pro­ducer Torstein Grude of Piraya Films (Nor­way) is designed to per­pet­u­ate a Russ­ian gov­ern­ment dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign about the Mag­nit­sky case for a West­ern audi­ence. The film claims that Sergei Mag­nit­sky was not beaten in cus­tody, was not a lawyer, did not tes­tify against Russ­ian offi­cials, did not inves­ti­gate the US$230 mil­lion fraud, but instead com­mit­ted it him­self.
These false claims are con­tra­dicted by numer­ous doc­u­ments. In par­tic­u­lar, the claim that he wasn’t beaten is refuted by the pho­tos of his injuries from the state autopsy; his death cer­tifi­cate stat­ing he had a sus­pected cere­br­ial cra­nial injury; cer­tifi­cates from the deten­tion cen­ter where he died record­ing the appli­ca­tion of rub­ber batons; the Russ­ian state foren­sic opin­ion find­ing that Sergei Magnitsky’s injuries were con­sis­tent with blunt force trauma.
Magnitsky’s pro­fes­sion as a lawyer is demon­strated by his role in rep­re­sent­ing his mul­ti­ple clients in court, pro­vid­ing them legal advice, and his own tes­ti­mony iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as a lawyer.

The fact that Sergei Magnitsky’s tes­ti­fied against police offi­cers is proven by his tes­ti­mony from 5 June 2008 in which he described the theft of Hermitage’s com­pa­nies and fraud­u­lent claims against them, men­tion­ing police offi­cer Kuznetsov 14 times and police offi­cer Kar­pov 13 times, his 7 Octo­ber 2008 tes­ti­mony in which he con­firmed his 5 June 2008 tes­ti­mony and tes­ti­fied that the same group who stole Hermitage’s com­pa­nies stole US$230 mln from the Russ­ian budget.

The claim that Sergei Mag­nit­sky stole US$230 mln is refuted by the dis­cov­ery of the illicit pro­ceeds from the fraud on accounts con­nected to the Russ­ian offi­cials and mem­bers of their fam­i­lies; the joint travel of the crim­i­nals and Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials involved in the fraud; the fact that Mag­nit­sky helped Her­mitage report the crime three weeks before the crim­i­nals applied for the fraud­u­lent tax refund, and the fact that the same crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion did sim­i­lar crimes before and after.

The false and defam­a­tory alle­ga­tions about Sergei Mag­nit­sky that Nekrasov tries to make have been refuted in the past by inde­pen­dent inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions includ­ing the Coun­cil of Europe, the EU Par­lia­ment, the US State Depart­ment and many oth­ers who have stud­ied the case in detail. Fur­ther­more, the alle­ga­tions in the film are also con­tra­dicted by the Russ­ian government’s own evi­dence, court records, and expert conclusions.

In Sergei Magnitsky’s own hand-written state­ment, 4 days before his death, on 12 Novem­ber 2009, he wrote:

 “By now it has been a year that I am being held hostage in prison in the inter­ests of the per­sons, who are inter­ested to ensure that those actu­ally guilty in the theft of 5.4 bil­lion rubles [US$230 mil­lion] from the bud­get will never be brought to jus­tice. … Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko does not want to iden­tify the other per­sons, who made this fraud pos­si­ble. He wants the lawyers of the Her­mitage Fund, who pur­sued and con­tinue to pur­sue attempts for this case be inves­ti­gated, be forced to emi­grate from their coun­try, in which crim­i­nal cases were fab­ri­cated against them on phony grounds, or like me be detained in custody.

My deten­tion in cus­tody has absolutely noth­ing in com­mon with the pur­pose of crim­i­nal jus­tice, which I referred to ear­lier. It has noth­ing in com­mon with the legal pur­pose of restraint listed in Arti­cle 97 of the Russ­ian Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dural Code, but this is a pun­ish­ment to which I have been sub­jected for merely defend­ing the inter­ests of my client and, ulti­mately, the inter­ests of the Gov­ern­ment, because should my client’s inter­ests be real­ized, should the law enforce­ment agen­cies stop obstruct­ing the inter­ests of my client and instead assisted them, then the theft of 5.4 bil­lion rubles from the state would not be pos­si­ble. The actual pur­pose of my crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion and my deten­tion in cus­tody are in con­flict with the law.”

The mother of Sergei Mag­nit­sky has pre­vi­ously writ­ten to the pro­ducer of the film, but received no reply.

Let­ter from Sergei Mag­nit­sky Fam­ily: http://russian-untouchables.com/docs/Letter%20from%20family%20%20on%20Nekrasov%20movie.pdf

http://lawandorderinrussia.org/2016/magnitsky-family-blasts-the-green-party-in-the-european-parliament-for-hosting-premiere-of-a-false-and-offensive-film-about-sergei-magnitsky-by-andrei-nekrasov/

 Share this