By Lucy Komisar
July 28, 2021

The Big Lie has shown its power in the major media’s adoption of William Browder’s Magnitsky hoax. Say and write the Lie over and over, and journalists in the “best” papers will discount the need for proof. And they will ignore contradicting evidence sent to them. Especially when it challenges their government’s narrative.

Three respectable media – The Financial Times, The Associated Press, and Reuters – have just run stories about Swiss prosecutors’ decision to drop a ten-year investigation based on charges by Browder that money stolen from the Russian Treasury ended up in Switzerland. Because there was no proof.

So far so good. But then all of those media repeated, with no evidence, the lies built around the story that Browder has been peddling for a decade. I repeat the narratives and demolish them. I will send them to the media and to the various “fact-checking” and “truth-telling” organizations set up to counter fake news. I predict all will ignore these inconvenient truths.

FT: Reporter Sam Jones, a true fabulist and Browder acolyte, pens a story that is a classic for disinformation.

Magnitsky the accountant is invented as a lawyer.

“Swiss prosecutors have closed a decade-long investigation into the money-laundering scandal exposed by Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the latest in a string of setbacks in the country’s efforts to tackle financial crime.”

That is already loaded. The Swiss say there was no proof of the crime Browder charged, no evidence that would cause action against anyone in Switzerland. But Sam Jones writes, “The decision to end the probe without any charges being brought was a “stain on Switzerland”, investor Bill Browder, Magnitsky’s former employer and a campaigner against Russian kleptocracy, told the Financial Times.

Actually, being a stenographer for Browder is a stain on the FT.

Note, about kleptocracy: Browder, together with U.S. billionaire Kenneth Dart and a small investor Francis Baker, majority owners of Avisma, a Russian titanium company, used transfer pricing to steal money from minority investors and the Russian tax authority. When evidence came to light, new owners of Avisma sued them in New Jersey under the RICO law and settled in 2000. New Jersey lawyer Bruce Marks won a believed-to-be multi-million-dollar payout.

When Browder was under oath in U.S. Federal Court in 2015, and not talking to a credulous reporter, he admitted that Magnitsky had not gone to law school, didn’t have a law degree, didn’t have a law license. And Magnitsky’s own testimonies list him as an auditor. He graduated from an economics college. Evidence.

Then Jones/FT: “Magnitsky died in 2009 after being tortured and mistreated in a Russian jail, where he had been sent after Russian officials accused him of colluding with Browder to defraud the Russian state.”

That explains the fake “lawyer” claim. Browder says he hired Magnitsky in 2007 to investigate the “tax refund fraud” (explained later), when in fact he worked him since 1997, handling his tax fraud. Browder acknowledged in court that his companies had filed for tax deductions for hiring disabled workers when in fact his shells had no workers, were used just to hold stocks. Browder testimony.

There is no evidence Magnitsky was tortured. Browder sent 40 documents to the Physicians for Human Rights in Cambridge, Mass. to persuade them, but their report said nothing of torture, just said he got bad medical treatment.

Even Browder the year after Magnitsky’s death did not claim torture. He invented that after he and former State Department official Jonathan Winer strategized to get legislation to block the Russians from going after him for massive tax fraud. (The Magnitsky Act is really The William Browder Protection Act.) Evidence.

The Fraud

Jones/FT: “Browder’s fund, Hermitage Capital, was for years the largest foreign investor in Russia. It was in fact the victim of a fraud, in which Russian officials siphoned off $230m using faked tax documentation, later accusing the fund itself to cover their tracks.”

Now that shows Jones knows nothing about the case. The victim was not Hermitage but the Russian Treasury. Browder even testified that after 2006, his companies were shells with no assets. He had moved them out of the country after he lost his visa. Jones must be reading old clips, since Browder told the same fake story to acolyte Catherine Belton when she worked at the FT.

And the Attorney General concluded that “despite extensive enquiries, it had not been possible to demonstrate that the funds under investigation in Switzerland originated from an offence committed to Hermitage’s detriment. The OAG has therefore decided to revoke Hermitage’s status as a complainant.” Assume Jones didn’t bother to read the decision.

There was indeed a fraud. Viktor Markelov, jailed for managing collusive lawsuits, testified that Magnitsky — a “Sergei Leonidovich” — was a party to it. Shell companies were set up in 2007 to sue Browder’s companies: “You failed to keep our agreement. You owe us $1billion.” Browder’s companies “agreed” to pay and filed documents with the tax authorities to get a $230million refund on 2006 taxes. Of course, the $1billion was not transferred. (Browder never supplied documents to claim that.) So how was Browder the victim?

Second, Jones asserts Russian officials stole the money by using fake documentation. That’s a fuzzy compilation of Browder’s charge that officials used real documents stolen from Magnitsky’s office to take over the Browder companies and engage in the fake law suits. There is no evidence of that.

In fact, the only way to change ownership of a company in Russia is for the original owner to go in person to the registration office and file papers or for the company to file a power of attorney to do so. The evidence is that Browder’s Cyprus shell did the latter. See the bill of sale. Which means Browder was a party to the fraud. Evidence.

Jones/FT: “Switzerland was one of the key conduits through which the Russian officials were thought to have laundered the money. About $24m linked to the fraud is still frozen in accounts at Credit Suisse and UBS.”  “Thought” means declared by Browder. “Linked to the fraud”? No evidence of that, in fact rejected by the Swiss prosecutors.

Jones/FT: “Magnitsky name has become a byword for western anti-corruption efforts. So called “Magnitsky laws”, which empower governments to act against foreign officials they suspect of human rights abuses, have come into force in the US, UK and EU.”

No, Magnitsky laws are a byword for weaponizing “human rights” to attack western adversaries. Do the tortures the U.S. committed in Abu Graib and Guantanamo count as human rights abuses? Or the imprisonment of Julian Assange for exposing U.S. crimes?

The story ends with a Browder ad hominin attack on the Swiss for not supporting the “facts” adopted by the U.S., UK, Canada and others in the west.

Talking about facts, here’s how Browder changed his Magnitsky death story.

AP story, Berlin dateline, no writer listed.

AP: “Swiss prosecutors said Tuesday they have closed a decade-long investigation into suspected Russian money laundering linked to a fraud scandal in which late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky played a leading role.”

No, Browder invented that, Magnitsky was not a lawyer didn’t claim anything. Here are his testimonies, see line 8, he was an auditor, he makes no charges.

AP: “Magnitsky drew controversy in 2008 after claiming that an organized crime group had colluded with corrupt Russian Interior Ministry officials to claim a $230 million tax rebate through illegally obtained subsidiaries of Hermitage.”

No, AP, the “subsidiaries,” the Hermitage shell companies, were transferred with Browder’s collusion. His shell company in Cyprus provided power of attorney for the “sale” to Viktor Markelov, later jailed for managing the fraud. Markelov implicated Magnitsky. Evidence.

“Magnitsky was arrested on tax evasion charges and died in prison in November 2009, with human rights advocates saying he was beaten and denied medical care behind bars.”

Tax evasion charges are correct. The European Court of Human Rights ruled he was justly arrested for that.

The “beating” is contradicted by Physicians for Human Rights (Cambridge Mass) to whom Browder sent 40 documents. They say he died of badly treated disease. Evidence.

 Reuters: Short story, so not so many lies, just the one that is is the beginning of Browder’s invention.. “Swiss federal prosecutors have closed a decade-long investigation into a graft scandal linked to the 2009 death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail, they said.”

It’s so EASY to check that Magnitsky is not a lawyer. So why doesn’t Reuters do it? Magnitsky’s testimonies line 8 list him as an auditor at Firestone Duncan, run by Jamison Firestone, a Browder collaborator.

Why do these lies matter?

These lies by major media matter, because they cast doubt on all the stories they write about U.S. adversaries. Now, without evidence from unbiased sources, I don’t believe most of what I read in the mainstream press about Russia, China, Venezuela or any other country the U.S. wants to demonize. Note that the number of (sympathetic) stories about jailed Alexei Navalny dwarf what is printed or broadcast about (unsympathetic) jailed Julian Assange. Carl Bernstein wrote an important story about the reporters and editors the intelligence agencies had on their payrolls. Given the lies the media writes about the Browder/Magnitsky hoax, that’s still a concern.