MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – A London court dismissed a libel case Monday brought by a Russian former police officer against British investment fund manager William Browder for publicly linking him to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
“These proceedings should be struck out as abuse of the process,” Judge Peregrine Simon said in concluding remarks, according to a copy of the judgment.
Pavel Karpov, a former Interior Ministry employee who was put on the Magnitsky List of Russian officials banned from the United States, had attempted to sue Browder over four articles and two videos implicating him in Magnitsky’s death that he said had damaged his reputation.
Hermitage Capital, Browder’s investment fund, and Jamison Firestone, the head of the law firm for which Magnitsky worked, were co-defendants in the case.
“There is a ‘degree of artificiality’ about his seeking to protect his reputation in this country,” Judge Simon said of Karpov in the judgment, although he also ruled that Browder had not succeeded in proving Karpov was complicit in Magnitsky’s death.
Magnitsky died in 2009 aged 37 in pretrial detention in Moscow, having been arrested by police days after he accused officials of carrying out a $230 million tax fraud involving Hermitage Capital. A Kremlin human rights commission said in a subsequent investigation that Magnitsky had been badly beaten shortly before his death.
“What is particularly abhorrent about the Karpov libel suit is that reputable English solicitors and barristers would effectively become mercenaries to assist corrupt Russian officials persecuting their victims outside Russia,” Hermitage Capital said in an emailed statement. "Thankfully, the court took a decision which reflects natural justice and common sense.”
Lawyers for Karpov said that the court had ruled that Browder and Hermitage Capital had “not come close to providing sufficient evidence to support the unjustified allegations they have made,” Bloomberg reported.
Karpov brought the claim to the London court after several similar libel suits he filed in Russian courts were dismissed.
Judge Simon also said that he took the decision to throw out the case because of the huge cost of further legal proceedings, and because even a favorable verdict “would be unlikely to assist (let alone achieve) the most important of the claimant’s stated objectives: his removal from the Magnitsky list.”
Karpov is one of 18 Russian officials the United States has officially linked to the death of Magnitsky and barred from entering the country, or owning assets there, under the Magnitsky Act passed by Congress last year.
In July a Russian court found Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion in a rare posthumous trial that was condemned by the United States and the European Union. Browder, who was tried in absentia on similar charges, was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison.
