MOSCOW | Russian prosecutors said new criminal charges against U.S.-born Kremlin foe Bill Browder on Monday, just days before a Russian police officer may become president of Interpol in a move that some Moscow critics fear might politicize the law enforcement agency.
Browder and other critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin have argued that Russia has attempted to use Interpol against them. If a Russian is elected as its new president, it could encourage Moscow to intensify attempts to hunt down its critics abroad.
The new charges brought against Browder accuse him of creating a criminal group to embezzle funds in Russia. They also claimed that he could be responsible for the death of his employee, Sergei Magnitsky, in a Russian prison.
Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who alleged he had uncovered $230 million in tax fraud by Russian officials, died in 2009 while in pre-trial detention. A Russian presidential commission decided that he had been beaten and denied medical care, and two prison doctors were charged with negligence leading to his death; one was acquitted and the other went free because the statute of limitations had expired.
Browder staged an international campaign to bring Magnitsky’s killers to justice, and in 2012, the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act that imposed travel and financial sanctions on top Russian officials, including prosecutors. Several other countries have since adopted similar legislation.
Browder, who had owned a valuable investment fund in Russia before he was barred entry to the country, was convicted in absentia in Russia on charges of tax evasion and funneling money overseas in both 2013 and again last year, and sentenced to nine years in prison.
On Monday, Mikhail Alexandrov of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office told reporters that they have opened a criminal case into the poisoning of three people described as associates of Browder, saying it was “highly likely” that Magnitsky was poisoned as well with the same military-grade substance.
