Court upholds reopening of Magnitsky case

The Moscow City Court on Monday upheld a lower court’s refusal to consider a plea from the mother of the late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky to close a case against him on charges of tax evasion. “The ruling by Moscow’s Tverskoi [District] Court returning the plea to the applicant has been deemed legitimate and well substantiated,” the judge said. The judge explained that the plea was returned without consideration on its merits to enable Magnitsky’s mother to rectify the flaws made in filing it. She stressed the court ruling did not limit Natalya Magnitsky’s recourse to justice. Magnitsky's mother, Natalya, said in early September that the decision to reopen the tax evasion case was immoral. In August, investigators reopened the case after the Russian Constitutional Court had ruled that the death of a defendant did not lead automatically to the closure of an investigation. Magnitsky died after almost a year in a Moscow pre-trial remand center in November 2009. He had been arrested on tax evasion charges just days after claiming that police investigators had stolen $230 million from the state. The United States has imposed visa bans on at least 60 Russian officials allegedly involved in Magnitsky's death.