On Monday, November 19, Russian media reported that it is American-born British financier Bill Browder poisoned his former employee, Russian accountant Sergei Magnitsky.
Russian prosecutors were quoted as saying there was evidence that Magnitsky and three other men linked to Browder’s business – Oktay Gasanov, Valery Kurochkin and Sergey Korobeinikov – may have died as a result of poisoning. They revealed no evidence publicly.
“One of the lines of inquiry is [Magnitsky] was poisoned with chemical agents used for sabotage. These substances contain an aluminum compound. They caused acute liver failure that looked like death by natural causes," , a spokesman for the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said without evidence. "When he received from Magnitsky a false statement of provocative nature, Browder was interested in his death more than anybody else."
Alexandrov’s claim that Browder had the most to benefit from Magnistky’s death is not new. Russian businessman Dmitry Klyuev, who has also been implicated in Magnitsky’s death, to deflect blame to Browder.
Regarding the alleged poisoning, Alexandrov said "forensic examination” of biological samples taken from the four men made it possible to conclude that they “had symptoms of chronic poisoning with toxic, soluble inorganic substances introduced into their bodies."
Alexandrov said no detailed toxicological analysis had thus far been carried out, claiming toxicological research into aluminum compounds have been carried out for several decades only at research centers in a few countries, including the United States, France and Italy.
"Such compounds can be made only in special laboratories," he claimed.
Further details of the nature of these compounds purportedly found nine years after Magnitsky’s death in a Russian prison were not provided.
When reached for comment, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it had “no information” about "aluminum compounds," but otherwise did not comment on statements made by officials of OPCW States Parties.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not comment.
In any case, Russian officials apparently did not charge Browder with alleged poisoning of those four individuals.
the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI), a new criminal case has been opened against Browder only on suspicion of organizing a criminal network.
A report by RT stated that that charge falls under the auspices of “a UN convention,” without detailing which UN convention, adding: “This implies extradition of a criminal even if Russia does not have a bilateral treaty on the matter with a country he is arrested in.”
Moscow’s efforts to boost its chances of extraditing Browder that Alexander Prokopchuk, a former Russian Interior Ministry major-general, is in the running to become the new chief at the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL).
In May, Browder was arrested in Madrid, Spain after Russia issued an international arrest warrant through Interpol.
He was after Spanish National Police recognized the “arrest warrant wasn’t valid.”
At the time, The Atlantic magazine that Russia had tried to issue six INTERPOL red notices for him, “all of them ultimately rejected as abusive.”
Browder was once considered the largest foreign investor in the Russian stock market and a supporter of Putin. He was first blacklisted from Russia in 2005 for being an alleged “threat to national security.” His fund, Hermitage, subsequently closed its Moscow operations. Browder later charged that a cabal of corrupt Russian officials, using materials seized during police raids, took possession of three Hermitage companies in Russia, after which the officials fraudulently claimed $230 million that Hermitage had paid in taxes. That tax refund, the largest in Russian history, was approved in under 24 hours and paid out the following day.
The investigation of those moves against Hermitage was spearheaded by Magnitsky, an auditor from the Moscow-based law firm Firestone Duncan. Hermitage would go on to file 35 complaints against those implicated in the fraud case.
But in January 2008, Magnitsky himself was arrested after arriving to provide evidence to the prosecutor overseeing that case.
Magnitsky would go on to spend 11 months in pre-trial detention, where he was beaten and denied medical care after developing a host of medical conditions due to inhumane treatment.
Magnitsky was “neglected” in Russian prison, and shortly before his death was transferred to a detention facility with a hospital, where he was “handcuffed and beaten with rubber batons” on the day he died.