YouTube crusade

21 July 2010 By Jason Bush

The official variety has fallen far short in investigating the Hermitage lawyer’s claims about a $230 million fraud. His boss has taken to the net to show two police officers’ unlikely wealth, with more revelations promised. The publicity campaign seems to be gaining momentum.

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In recent weeks a group called The Friends of Sergei Magnitsky has posted two videos on YouTube alleging that two Interior Ministry officers, Lt Col Artem Kuznetsov and Major Pavel Karpov, have accumulated wealth and property worth millions of dollars, spending many times their official salaries on luxury apartments, cars, and expensive foreign holidays.

Two days after the first YouTube video was posted on June 22, the Interior Ministry's Department of Economic Security said that an investigation had been launched into the allegations made against Lt Col Kuznetsov. Lt Col Kuznetsov has not commented.

Major Karpov has issued a public statement denying the charges, and called on Russia's Prosecutor General to press libel charges against those behind the video.

On July 1, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office announced that detectives involved in the Magnitsky case were still being investigated, reversing a decision not to prosecute the officers announced the previous day.

In July last year, a U.S. court allowed lawyers for Hermitage Capital to subpoena Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, and the U.S. branch of Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital. At the time, Hermitage said that the records would help track $230 million that it claimed was stolen by Russian officials and laundered through New York.

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