The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has passed a resolution, calling for those responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky, as well as the beneficiaries of the fraud he uncovered to be held accountable.
Mr Magnitsky, a Russian tax adviser and auditor, uncovered a US$230 million fraud involving corrupt officials and criminal networks linked to the Russian Treasury. In retaliation, he was arrested, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, and denied medical care. He died in a Moscow prison in 2009. In its 2019 judgment, the European Court of Human Rights found multiple human-rights violations in his case.
Why has Mr Magnitsky’s case not been resolved?
Passing a resolution based on a report by Lesia Vasylenko (Ukraine, ALDE), the Assembly highlighted that all criminal cases in Russia against officials involved in Mr Magnitsky’s ill-treatment have been closed, with no one held to account, while he himself was posthumously convicted of tax evasion.
“The proceeds of the crime exposed by Mr Magnitsky were laundered through a complex network, potentially involving waystations in several states” in Europe and beyond, the parliamentarians said. They welcomed the fact that in five Council of Europe member or observer states, investigations had resulted in convictions, settlements and/or confiscations of the proceeds of crime (France, Latvia, Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States), but regretted that in several others the proceedings had not led to any conclusions, convictions or confiscations so far.
Concerning Switzerland, the Parliamentary Assembly deeply regretted that the funds initially seized there “will return to the disposal of three Russian citizens with established links to the Russian state apparatus”, after the Swiss judicial authorities concluded that the money laundering could not be considered the work of a criminal organisation. It also regretted that the investigation had been “overshadowed by serious allegations that Swiss officials involved in the investigation accepted undue favours from high-ranking Russian officials and oligarchs”. While these allegations led to the conviction of one investigator, the Swiss authorities found that his conduct had no impact on the investigation or its findings.
The Parliamentary Assembly invited Switzerland and other member states to “introduce or expand the use of non-conviction-based confiscation, in particular by reversing the burden of proof as to the origin of unexplained wealth”, and to review the application of the “proportional confiscation” method. States that have not yet done so should also consider imposing targeted sanctions (“Magnitsky sanctions”), such as visa bans and asset freezes, against those reasonably believed to be responsible for or to benefit from serious human rights violations.
