President Dmitry Medvedev has fired a senior Moscow police official who coordinated a tax investigation into Hermitage Capital and its lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Medvedev has dismissed Major General Anatoly Mikhalkin from his position as the head of the city police’s department for fighting tax crimes, RIA-Novosti reported Tuesday, citing a presidential decree, which had not yet been published on the Kremlin’s web site late Tuesday.
The dismissal follows a decision by Medvedev to fire 20 prison officials earlier this month in connection with Magnitsky’s death in a Moscow detention center.
The Interior Ministry said Magnitsky, 37, died of heart failure on Nov. 16 while being held on charges of organizing a tax evasion scheme with William Browder, head of Hermitage Capital, once Russia’s largest foreign investment fund. The charges were filed after Browder and Magnitsky linked Mikhalkin and other Interior Ministry officials to the purported theft of $230 million in federal funds.
Browder praised Medvedev’s decision to fire Mikhalkin as “an important step.”
“However, the loss of someone’s job can never be compared to the loss of an innocent man’s life,” he said in an e-mailed statement. “We are calling for all those individuals who were involved in Sergei Magnitsky’s illegal detention and death — along with those involved in the $230 million theft he uncovered — to be brought to justice.”
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