Browder Links Russia's New Criminal Case Against Him With Magnitsky Act

CEO of UK-based Hermitage Capital Management Bill Browder said on Monday that a new case launched in Russia against him was linked with the Magnitsky Act.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th November, 2018) CEO of UK-based Hermitage Capital Management Bill Browder said on Monday that a new case launched in Russia against him was linked with the Magnitsky Act.

"On the eve of Interpol deciding whether a Russian official should be president of Interpol, the Russian prosecutor's office holds a huge press conference about me and how they will chase me down anywhere in the world. I really struck a nerve with the Magnitsky Act," Browder wrote on Twitter.

Browder noted that he considered statements on his involvement in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky were connected with the upcoming discussion on the EU-wide Magnitsky Act.

"Tomorrow the Dutch government will be inviting all EU member states to The Hague to propose an EU wide Magnitsky Act. In advance of that, the Russian government today has accused me of murdering Sergei Magnitsky. Kafkaeske to say the least," he noted.

Earlier in the day, Nikolai Atmonyev, an adviser to the Russian prosecutor general, said that a new criminal case was launched against Browder in Russia in connection with him creating a criminal community.

Moscow plans to put the businessman on the international wanted list under the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. This convention provides for extradition even when there is no bilateral extradition treaty between the countries concerned.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office deems "highly likely" that Magnitsky was killed on Browder's orders "as one of his closest accomplices." The prosecutors believe that Magnitsky and other accomplices of Browder may have been poisoned by "diverse chemical substances with aluminum compounds."

In late 2012, the United States adopted the so-called Magnitsky Act, which imposes travel bans and financial sanctions on Russian officials and other individuals believed to have been involved in the death of Magnitsky. The Russian authorities have repeatedly highlighted the inadmissibility of politicization of the Magnitsky case.

Then, the Magnitsky Act was given the status of a global law. Sanctions under it are not limited to citizens of Russia, but are applied to all countries whose citizens violate, according to the United States, human rights.