Russian Lawyer Thrown From Window Was a Witness for the U.S. Government

Source: Daily Beast | March 23, 2017 | Michael Weiss

A lawyer connected to murdered Putin foe Sergei Magnitsky has been thrown from a window in Moscow. He was a witness for the U.S.

Two common causes of death for contemporary Russians are heart attacks and falling to one’s end from great heights. In some cases, these fatal tendencies even have something to do with high cholesterol or tragic mishaps.

In 2008, a clothing salesman called Semyon Korobeinikov lost his footing on a balcony somehow and tumbled to his demise.

A year later, Korobeinikov was named as the purchaser of Universal Savings Bank, a dubious financial institution that had been fingered by investigators as a way-station for stolen Russian money. Only he didn’t buy the bank. It was part of a government ruse to exonerate the true owner, an ex-convict called Dmitry Klyuev, a reputed mob boss implicated in a series of massive tax frauds that cost Russian citizens $1 billion.

Korobeinikov might have therefore borne witness against Klyuev, if he wasn’t conveniently already 6 feet under.

In 2009, in a related case, Russian tax attorney Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death by eight prison guards, according to a report published by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s own human rights commission. The Kremlin claimed he died of a coronary. Then it put him on trial posthumously for tax evasion.

The case prompted U.S. anti-corruption and human rights legislation, known as the Magnitsky Law, which put the Russian government under Vladimir Putin on notice that it could not always get away with such abuses.

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In an ongoing asset forfeiture and money-laundering case initiated by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the alleged vehicle by which these dirty assets were washed clean was a Cyprus-registered company called Prevezon Holdings Ltd. (The U.S. attorney behind the case was Preet Bharara, fired by the Trump administration after refusing to resign.)

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Gorokhov had intimate knowledge of the literature connected with the Magnitsky affair because he has represented the murdered lawyer’s justice-seeking wife and mother for six years.

On Wednesday, he was due to testify in the Moscow City Appeals Court to argue against another court’s refusal to re-investigate the conspiracy that Magnitsky uncovered, based on new evidence. That evidence suggested a former investigative head of the Russian Interior Ministry was fabricating or revising old files related to the case, and doing so at the behest of the Klyuev Group.

But on Tuesday, the 53-year-old Gorokhov plummeted from the fourth floor of his apartment building in Moscow. He was trying to move a bathtub to an apartment at the top of the building, according to the Russian press.

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Gorokhov, Browder said, is currently in the intensive-care unit at Botkin Hospital with severe head trauma, although his injuries no longer appear life threatening.

So, we may yet learn if he fell or was pushed. Or if he will get his day in court as a witness for the U.S. government.

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