Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice (38 page)

His family and friends took turns to say good-bye and lay red roses at his feet. Natalia and his widow, Natasha, placed a garland of white roses around his head. They cried and cried and cried and put the lid back on and lowered him into the ground.

•  •  •

The cover-up blossomed at every branch of Russian law enforcement from the moment that Sergei died. On November 18, the Russian State Investigative Committee announced, “No ground has been identified to warrant launching a criminal investigation following Magnitsky’s death.” On November 23, three days after his burial, the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office issued a statement saying it had found “no wrongdoing by officials and no violations of the law. Death occurred from acute heart failure.” Finally, on November 24, the head of Matrosskaya Tishina declared, “No violations have been found. Any investigations into Magnitsky’s death should end and his case be filed in the archive.”

But Sergei’s case would not just go away. Every prisoner has his own way of dealing with the adversity of being in jail, and Sergei’s
had been to write everything down. In his 358 days in detention, he and his lawyers filed 450 criminal complaints documenting in granular detail who did what to him, when, how, and where. These complaints and the evidence that has since surfaced make Sergei’s murder the most well documented human rights abuse case to come out of Russia in the last thirty-five years.

I completely suppressed my emotions in the week following Sergei’s death. I’d tried to do as much as possible to achieve some sort of justice in Russia, but the consistent chorus of denial was demoralizing. When I came home on the evening of November 25, I sat at the dinner table with Elena. I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. I hoped she might rub my neck or say something to make it all better, just as she had so many times before. But at that moment, she was distracted.

I looked up to find her intensely reading an email on her BlackBerry. “What’s going on?”

She held up a hand, read some more, then said, “Medvedev just called for an investigation into Sergei’s death!”

“What?”

“President Medvedev is going to launch an investigation!”

“Truly?”

“Yes. It says that he was briefed about this case by his human rights commissioner and that he asked the general prosecutor and the justice minster to launch a probe.”

My mobile phone rang almost as soon as Elena had told me. It was Vladimir. “Bill, have you seen the Medvedev news?”

“Yes, Elena and I are reading it right now. What do you think?”

“You know, Bill, I never believe a word these people say—but how can this be bad?”

“I suppose it can’t,” I said. Although nothing could change the fact that Sergei was dead, this at least indicated that there might be some crack in Russia’s evil foundation. Maybe, just maybe, Russia wouldn’t operate on the Katyn principle of lying about everything in Sergei’s case.

Two weeks later, on December 11, Medvedev’s spokeswoman announced that twenty prison officials were to be fired “as a result” of Sergei’s death. When I heard this, I started to picture Sergei’s torturers being arrested at their homes and thrown into the same cells to which Sergei had been consigned.

Unfortunately, later that day, Vadim approached my desk with a grim look, clutching a handful of papers.

“What’s this?” I pointed my chin at the paperwork.

“The names of the fired prison officials. Nineteen had absolutely nothing to do with Sergei. Some worked in prisons as far away as Vladivostok and Novosibirsk”—both of which were thousands of miles from Moscow.

“Were
any
associated with him in any way at all?”

“One. But this is bullshit. It’s a complete smoke screen.”

On top of the denials and fake firings was the reaction to the Moscow Public Oversight Commission (MPOC) report that came out on December 28. The MPOC is a nongovernmental organization whose mandate is to investigate brutality and suspicious deaths in Moscow prisons. Shortly after Sergei died, it launched its own independent investigation into his death, headed by an incorruptible man named Valery Borschev. He interviewed guards, doctors, and inmates who had had anything to do with Sergei. He and his team also read Sergei’s complaints and the official files written about him. Their conclusions were definitive. The MPOC report stated that Sergei “was systematically denied medical care”; that he “was subjected to physical and psychological torture”; that his “right to life was violated by the state”; that “investigators, prosecutors, and judges played a role in his torturous conditions”; and finally, that “after his death, state officials lied and concealed the truth about his torture and circumstances of his death.”

Borschev filed this report with five different government agencies, including the Presidential Administration, the Ministry of Justice, and the General Prosecutor’s Office.

None of them ever replied.

It didn’t matter to the authorities that
Novaya Gazeta
had published Sergei’s unedited prison diaries on its front page, and that everyone read them.

It didn’t matter that Sergei’s name had been mentioned in 1,148 articles in Russia and 1,257 articles in the West since his death.

It didn’t matter that Sergei’s murder violated the social contract everyone had accepted: if you didn’t get involved in anything controversial—politics, human rights, or anything to do with Chechnya—then you could get on with life and enjoy the fruits of the authoritarian regime.

The Russian authorities were so wrapped up in their cover-up that they ignored the most emotive aspects of Sergei’s story. He was just a middle-class tax lawyer who bought his Starbucks coffee in the morning, loved his family, and did his tax work in his cubicle. His only misfortune was to stumble across a major government corruption scheme and then behave like a Russian patriot and report it. For that he’d been plucked out of his normal life, incarcerated in one of Russia’s darkest hellholes, and then slowly and methodically tortured to death.

It didn’t matter that any Russian could just as easily have been Sergei Magnitsky.

I’d suspended disbelief, wishfully thinking that Russia was beyond the Katyn principle of massive state-sponsored lying, but it wasn’t. Evil hadn’t withered under the bright lights of publicity.

If I wanted to get any justice for Sergei, then I was going to have to find a way to get it outside of Russia.

1
 The predecessor organization of the KGB and FSB.

But how does one get justice in the West for torture and a murder that took place in Russia?

Since the British government had proved to be so unhelpful, I needed to broaden my scope. Given my personal history, the next logical place to turn was the United States.

I made several appointments for early March 2010 in Washington, DC, arriving on the second of the month. Washington was cold and drizzly. My first meeting was with Jonathan Winer, a top international criminal lawyer. Before going into private practice, Jonathan had been the deputy assistant secretary of state for narcotics and law enforcement—commonly referred to in Washington as the “DASS for drugs and thugs.” He’d been responsible for US foreign policy regarding narco-traffickers and the Russian Mafia. He’d been effective, and a real tough customer.

I went to his downtown office on the morning of March 3. Based on his reputation, I was expecting a tall, rugged Clint Eastwood type of character, so when I arrived at his office I thought I’d gone to the wrong place. The person before me was a five-feet-six-inch, middle-aged, balding man with a long, narrow face who reminded me of one of my favorite economics professors from college. He hardly looked like the crime-fighting superhero I’d been imagining.

Jonathan ushered me into his office. We sat and he politely asked me to go through the whole story. He listened intently, periodically scribbling notes on an index card, not saying a word. Only when I
was done did he start talking, which was when I began to see how he’d earned his reputation.

“Have you been to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on this yet?” he fired at me in a low, staccato voice.

“No. Should I have?”

“Yes. Add them to the list.” He put a check mark next to one of the notes on his index card. “What about the House Committee on Investigations?”

“No. Who are they?” I was starting to feel inadequate.

“It’s a House committee that has virtually unlimited subpoena powers. Add them to the list too. What about the US Helsinki Commission?”

“Yes, I’m seeing them on my last day in Washington.” I felt a little better that I wasn’t totally failing the test. I somehow wanted this man’s approval even though I’d only just met him.

“Good. They’re important. I want to hear about that meeting when it’s over.” He put another check mark in his notes. “What about the State Department? Are you seeing anyone there?”

“Yes, tomorrow. Someone named Kyle Scott. He runs the Russia desk.”

“That’s a start. They won’t give you anyone more senior until later, but it works for now. It’s important that you know what you’re going to say to Kyle Scott.” Jonathan paused. “Do you have a plan?”

Every question he asked made it more and more clear that I had no idea what I was doing. “Well, I’d intended to tell them the story of what happened to Sergei,” I said meekly.

Jonathan smiled benevolently, as if he were talking to a child. “Bill, Scott will have a detailed intelligence report on you and Sergei. With the resources of the US government, he’ll probably know more about your story than you do. As far as the State Department is concerned, the primary purpose of this meeting is damage control. They’ll be trying to figure out if this situation is serious enough to force the government to act. Your objective is to show them that it is.”

“All right. How do I do that?”

“It all depends on what you want from them, Bill.”

“What I really want is to create consequences for the people who killed Sergei.”

Jonathan rubbed his chin for a few seconds “Well, if you really want to put the cat among the pigeons, I’d ask them to impose Proclamation Seventy-seven Fifty. It allows the State Department to impose visa sanctions on corrupt foreign officials. Bush created it in 2004. It would really get under the Russians’ skin if they were slapped with that.”

The 7750 idea was brilliant. Visa sanctions would cut right to the core of what it meant to be a Russian crook. When communism ended, corrupt Russian officials spread across the globe, filling up every five-star hotel from Monte Carlo to Beverly Hills, spending their money as if it were their last day on earth. If I could convince the US government to restrict their travel, then it would send shock waves through the Russian elite.

“Would the State Department actually do that?” I asked.

Jonathan shrugged. “Probably not, but it’s worth a shot. Seventy-seven Fifty has rarely been used, but it’s on the books, and it’ll be interesting to see how they justify
not
implementing it with the evidence you have on this case.”

I stood. “Then I’ll do it. Thanks so much.” I left Jonathan’s office feeling empowered. I was still a Washington outsider, but now at least I had a plan—and an ally.

I arrived at the State Department on C Street the following morning. The plain, hard-angled building looked more like an elongated cinder block than the seat of US diplomatic power. After passing through a lengthy security screening, I was greeted by Kyle Scott’s secretary, who led me down a series of drab, linoleum-covered corridors, her black high heels clicking rhythmically. Finally, we reached a door labeled
OFFICE OF RUSSIAN AFFAIRS
.

She opened the door and held out her hand. “Please.” I went into a small suite, and she led me to the corner office. “Mr. Scott will be right with you.”

Normally a corner office is meant to convey some sort of seniority, but as I settled in, I realized that it was the only sign that Kyle Scott had any status. His room was cramped and only big enough for a desk, a love seat, a small coffee table, and a couple of chairs. I took the love seat and waited.

After a few minutes Kyle Scott entered, an assistant in tow. “Hello, Mr. Browder.” Kyle Scott was about my height and age and had close-set, brown eyes. His white shirt, red tie, and gray suit were standard-issue US government bureaucrat. “Thank you so much for meeting me today,” he said, generously not acknowledging that I was the one who had asked for the meeting.

“No, thank you for making the time for me,” I replied.

“I have something here that I think will make you very happy,” he said with a conspiratorial smile. The assistant—a young woman wearing a gray pantsuit and a bright red silk scarf tied around her neck—wrote notes in a spiral notebook. Scott twisted to grab an overstuffed manila folder off his desk—a folder, no doubt, that contained all of his briefing material on Sergei and me, just as Jonathan had predicted. Scott brought his knees together, placed the folder on his lap, and removed a sheet of paper from it.

I was intrigued. “What is it?”

“Mr. Browder, each year the State Department publishes a human rights report, and this year, there are two
very strong
paragraphs in the report about the Magnitsky case.”

I’d heard that organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had whole teams working throughout the year on strategies for getting their cases into this document—and here was Kyle Scott handing it to me on a silver platter.

While this may have been a big deal in other cases, it wasn’t in ours. The Russian government couldn’t have cared less about a couple of paragraphs in a US government human rights report. The Russians were actively covering up a massive crime, and the only thing they cared about—the only thing that would get their attention—was real-life consequences.

Kyle Scott watched me expectantly for my reaction.

“Can I read what’s been written?”

He handed me the sheet of paper. The paragraphs were reasonably punchy, but they were just words.