People are starting to forget the case of Magnitsky, the lawyer who was tortured to death in prison. That is wrong, and it only encourages our, uh... law enforcement agencies to grow more brazen and dodge any real investigation into the case. Many will remember that some time ago The New Times published a piece about it: The Price of Death. What struck me about the article was how plainly and directly it accused specific Interior Ministry officials (naming names and positions) of organizing a contract case, taking bribes, and so on. In other words, The New Times was accusing police officers (Investigative Committee investigator under the Interior Ministry Oleg Silchenko, deputy head of an Interior Ministry Investigative Committee department Colonel Natalya Vinogradova, and others) of crimes under the Russian Criminal Code. At a minimum: Article 124, failure to provide assistance to a sick person; Article 290, taking a bribe; Article 301, unlawful detention, remand in custody, or holding in custody; Article 302, coercion to give testimony. I expected a scandal, or at least some kind of follow-up. The prosecutor's office is supposed to respond to media reports of crimes. Either they should investigate the cops' actions, or—if they believe it is all made up—investigate the magazine for libel or knowingly making a false accusation. But nothing happened. Maybe the prosecutor's office doesn't read The New Times. So I wrote them a letter. I said that an article had been published accusing Interior Ministry Investigative Committee investigator Oleg Silchenko and deputy department head Colonel Natalya Vinogradova of serious crimes. I asked them to conduct an inquiry and inform me of the results. A few days ago, I got a reply:
Nice work, right? The possible crimes of investigator Silchenko and Colonel Vinogradova are modestly described as "other issues." They wrote a bunch of irrelevant nonsense about which articles of the Criminal Procedure Code the criminal case had been opened under, which has absolutely nothing to do with my complaint. I already know which articles those were. What I was asking them to look into was, for example: *"The money was delivered to Directorate 'K' of the FSB (Federal Security Service)," a knowledgeable Interior Ministry source told The New Times. "The price was $6 million. The FSB officers oversaw the process, while the actual execution was entrusted to investigators from the Interior Ministry's Investigative Committee." More specifically, investigator Oleg Silchenko. *or *"While my husband's case was underway, Vinogradova screamed at me and extorted $1.5 million," says journalist Olga Romanova, wife of the convicted businessman Alexei Kozlov. "Later I was contacted by an intermediary, Pavel Sharai, who held the rank of lieutenant general in the Foreign Intelligence Service. In the SVR, he headed the Department of Economic Security. He promised to resolve everything and also said that all of Vinogradova's relatives were in the FSB." *The subject of bribes and extortion is not really addressed in the prosecutor's letter. I wonder why. Well, there is already plenty to deal with as it is, but this cannot be ignored. We are going to be persistent. We have filed suit against the prosecutor's office, that's what. We are going to make them sort out all these Silchenkos, Vinogradovas, and Sharais.