Browder Had Plenty To Gain From Magnitsky's Death - Russian Prosecutors

Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, had a lot to gain from the death of Sergei Magnitsky, as a means of avoiding exposure, an adviser to the Russian prosecutor general said Monday at a briefing.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th November, 2018) Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, had a lot to gain from the death of Sergei Magnitsky, as a means of avoiding exposure, an adviser to the Russian prosecutor general said Monday at a briefing.

"Based on the documents that were shown, an obvious conclusion can be made that, having received a false statement from Magnitsky ... Browder was interested in Sergei Magnitsky's death more than anyone else in order to avoid exposure," Nikolai Atmonyev said.

The Russian Investigative Committee has launched a case on the murder of accomplices of Browder � Valery Kurochkin, Oktay Gasanov and Sergei Korobeinikov � according to Mikhail Aleksandrov, an official with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.

Aleksandrov said that Magnitsky and other accomplices of Browder may have been poisoned by "diverse chemical substances with aluminum compounds."

Aleksandrov added that it "could be assumed with a high degree of probability" that Kurochkin, Gasanov and Korobeinikov "had been killed as a way to get rid of accomplices who may have given testimony exposing Browder."

The official also noted that toxic aluminum compounds that could have been used to poison the four men had never been studied in detail in Russia, while such countries as France, the United States and Italy had been conducting detailed research into these substances for decades.

"Among those chemical compounds ... posing danger to humans, there is a group of toxic aluminum compounds. Detailed targeted studies of these substances have not been carried out in Russia. A detailed analysis of scientific information shows that, for several decades, toxicological studies of aluminum compounds have been carried out exclusively by research institutions in the United States, France, and Italy," Aleksandrov said.

According to the official, the analysis of substances found in the bodies of Gasanov, Korobeinikov, Kurochkin and Magnitsky, leads to the conclusion that all four men, when still alive, had signs of chronic poisoning by a toxic water-soluble aluminum compound consumed orally.

Spokesman for the procurator general's office Alexander Kurennoy, in turn, said that it was yet unclear when Magnitsky, who had been held for almost a year in a Russian pre-trial detention facility until his death in 2009, might have been poisoned.

"It is difficult to say whether [the poisoning] took place before or during [Magnitsky's time in custody]," Kurennoy told reporters at a briefing.

The spokesman also said that poisoning had been suggested as the cause of Magnitsky's death based on new information obtained by the procurator general. Kurennoy added that the results of the ongoing review of previous examinations substantiated the theory.

Magnitsky, a tax and legal consultant for Browder's company, was arrested in Russia in 2008 over suspicion of tax evasion and died while still in custody in 2009, arousing controversy worldwide. Four years after his death, a Russian court ruled that Magnitsky had developed and implemented a tax evasion scheme while working for Browder, who, in turn, was also found guilty of evading taxes and sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison.

Earlier on Monday, Atmonyev said that a new criminal case had been launched against Browder and the businessman would be soon put on the international wanted listed and charged with forming a criminal group.