Russian police have recovered some 15 percent of the money allegedly embezzled from the country’s budget by the Hermitage Capital investment firm with the help of Sergei Magnitsky, whose death in a Moscow prison last November caused international outrage, a spokesperson said on Monday.
"About 15 percent, or 685 million rubles ($22.15 million), was discovered during the investigation. It [the money] has been seized and placed in the Russian Interior Ministry's deposit account," Russian Investigative Committe Spokesperson Irina Dudukina said.
Another Hermitage Capital employee, Viktor Markelov, has already been sentenced to five and a half years in jail for his part in the embezzlement, while a case against employee Vyacheslav Khlebnikov will soon be taken to court.
Investigations will continue until all the stolen money has been found, Dudukina said.
Magnitsky, who worked for law firm Firestone Duncan, acting for Hermitage Capital Management, died in Moscow's notorious Butyrka pre-trial detention center last November.
Russian investigators claim that Magnitsky conspired with Hermitage Capital head Bill Browder, who has reportedly been banned from entering Russia, to establish dummy firms to illegally buy and sell shares in Russian energy giant Gazprom.
Hermitage Capital insists however that after testifying about the involvement of Russian Interior Ministry officials in the largest ever theft of Russian state funds, Magnitsky was illegally detained and imprisoned by those very same officials in order to silence him.
Magnitsky was kept in the cramped 8.2 sq m cell with two others for almost a year and died after being refused essential medical treatment for an embolism. Browder said Magnitsky was "killed" after refusing to sign a confession admitting his role in the company's alleged tax scam.
The death provoked uproar both in Russia and abroad, with President Dmitry Medvedev calling for a full investigation into the case. Earlier this year, the president pushed through a law allowing suspects in economic crimes to be released on bail.
MOSCOW, November 15 (RIA Novosti)
