U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday demanded that "justice be delivered" in the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow pretrial detention center last November.

"Among others, we remember the murdered American journalist Paul Klebnikov; the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in pretrial detention last year," Clinton told a U.S.–Russia civil society summit in Washington. "We continue to urge that justice be delivered in these cases."

The death of Magnitsky, who colleagues say was targeted by Interior Ministry officers he accused of stealing $230 million, is testing President Dmitry Medvedev's commitment to curb corruption.

The Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said it was investigating reports of extravagant spending by an officer, Artyom Kuznetsov, at the center of Magnitsky's death. A ministry spokesman said the accusations contained in documents published by Magnitsky's former colleagues on the Internet last week were being taken "quite seriously."

(MT, Reuters)