Word: moscow
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...risk losing their assets when they're targeted, but they can also end up in jail on trumped-up charges brought by corrupt law enforcement officials and prosecutors. Russian businessman Alexei Kozlov, who claims he was the victim of a raid aimed at seizing his synthetic leather factory in Moscow, was convicted of fraud in May and sentenced to eight years in prison. In a telephone interview from prison, Kozlov said that Butyrka is teeming with entrepreneurs locked up on phony charges brought against them in raider attacks. "Before I landed behind bars, I thought only criminals were in jail...
...Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, imprisoned on tax evasion charges, told Russian Interior Ministry investigators that he was being denied medical care and subjected to "inhumane and humiliating conditions" in Moscow's notorious Butyrka jail. The treatment, he said, resulted from his refusal to give false testimony against himself and others. A month later, Magnitsky, 37, was dead. The Interior Ministry, which had charged the lawyer with conspiring to help William Browder, head of the London-based investment firm Hermitage Capital, allegedly evade more than $3 million in taxes, said it had not been aware that he had been...
...Interior Ministry has denied any ulterior motives in Magnitsky's detention, saying he was being held solely because of the tax evasion charges. (Browder says those charges were without merit.) In April, a Moscow court convicted a sawmill foreman, Viktor Markelov, of fraud in connection with the raider scam, sentencing him to five years in prison. The verdict mentions only "unidentified persons" as Markelov's co-conspirators and does not include any reference to the Hermitage subsidiaries being stolen. But the company says Markelov was likely just a bit player and notes the $230 million has yet to be returned...
...Then, on Dec. 15, came a sign that authorities may be cracking down on individuals suspected to be involved in the raid on Hermitage's assets. The Kremlin said that Medvedev had dismissed Anatoly Mikhalkin, the head of the tax crimes department of the Moscow police. Police spokeswoman Zhanna Ozhimina denied the move was linked to the Magnitsky case, saying that Mikhalkin had stepped down because of his age. But Hermitage says Mikhalkin may have been fired because he had signed off on documents used in the seizure of its subsidiaries. (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory...
...Moscow officials are blaming Islamic extremists for the Nov. 27 bombing of the Nevsky Express, which shuttles many dignitaries between St. Petersburg and the capital. Twenty-seven people were killed--including two heads of government agencies--and nearly 100 injured by militants suspected to be from the volatile Caucasus region, the location of republics like Ingushetia and Chechnya. A security analyst noted that agitating forces in the area "are not interested in local nationalism or separatism but see themselves as being at war with Russia...