Hermitage Capital receives more death threats

Date: Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Author: Philip Aldrick, Telegraph

A senior executive at Hermitage Capital Management has received death threats for pursuing allegedly corrupt Russian police officers in events that echo the killing last year of the hedge fund's former investigative lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
 
Friends and relatives take part in the funeral ceremony of Sergei Magnitsky at a cemetery in Moscow Photo: ANDREW OSBORN
The director, who asked to remain anonymous, has been leading Hermitage's inquiry into an alleged $230m (£150m) fraud against the Russian taxpayer that implicates police.
The threats, left as a phone voicemail, follow an explosive YouTube documentary about the millionaire lifestyle of one official linked to Mr Magnitsky's death who is alleged to have committed the fraud. The video has been viewed almost 200,000 times in a fortnight.


Hermitage's lawyers have written to Scotland Yard's Economic & Specialist Crime and Counter Terrorism units to report the "credible and real conspiracy to commit future crimes against [staff] in the UK".
The voicemail arrived at 3.53am last Saturday. The voice, which was digitally disguised, said: "I am coming for you. I am going for you, mother------... I'll ---- you, mother------." The call appears to have been from an unregistered Russian number, similar to those "which typically belong to the Russian intelligence services", Hermitage's lawyers said.
Mr Magnitsky died in prison while awaiting trial on charges of tax evasion brought by police officers whom he had testified were involved in the fraud.
Days before Mr Magnitsky's death, a colleague received from an unregistered Russian number a series of text messages warning that someone would be killed. After the lawyer's death, one gloating message arrived.