...............and our conscience – Tartu College, Dec. 10 William Browder expelled from Russia, will speak about his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. He died while incarcerated and tortured in Russia after his false arrest for exposing the theft of $230 million of taxes – the largest tax fraud in Russian history.
Browder is leading a global campaign for Sergei Magnitsky by urging Western parliaments to enact laws denying visas to and freezing the assets of Russian officials culpable in the killing of Sergei Magnitsky.
As the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, Browder is a leading global shareholder rights activist and an advocate of better corporate governance at Russian and other emerging markets companies.
Before being suddenly denied entry into the country in November 2005, Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia. He was declared “a threat to national security” for exposing corruption at large Russian companies.
In 2008, Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered massive fraud committed by Russian officials involving the theft of $230 million of state taxes which Hermitage had paid in 2006. After testifying against the officials involved, Magnitsky was arrested and imprisoned without trial by those very same officials. After spending a year in pre-trial detention he died as a result of torture and denial of medical care despite over twenty requests for assistance. He was 37 and left a wife with two children.
Since then Browder has led a worldwide media and legislative campaign to get legislation introduced by the US Congress, Canadian and European parliaments to enforce visa bans and freeze financial assets of those who perpetrated the crimes.
The 5:30 pm, Monday, December 10th talk is co-sponsored by Tartu College, the Central and Eastern European Council of Canada and the Estonian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Admission free.
