OREANDA-NEWS. June 01, 2011. The President instructed Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to tighten control over the investigation concerning criminal cases related to lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Yury Chaika’s press statement following his meeting with the President

PROSECUTOR GENERAL YURY CHAIKA: I just received instructions from the President of the Russian Federation to tighten control over the investigation into this affair. I would like to say that the matter falls into a set of criminal cases: it is a criminal case on tax evasion in the Russian Federation initiated against Brauder, Magnitsky, and other individuals and investigated by the Interior Ministry’s investigative agencies.

Just recently, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation initiated a criminal case over the death of Mr Magnitsky. It is precisely within the framework of this case that we will evaluate the legality of the medical personnel’s actions, the detention conditions, assess the relevance of criminal cases instigated and the reasonableness of the investigative agencies’ actions in instigating criminal cases against Magnitsky, Brauder, and other individuals.

And the third criminal case that was discussed concerns the embezzlement of the Russian Federation budget funds through VAT returns using forged documents. The criminal case against a number of individuals involved in such embezzlements has been instigated in the Swiss Confederation as well. We are working closely with the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office and have already contacted them directly; we have travelled to Switzerland, discussed all of these issues, and I think that through our joint efforts, we will identify the guilty parties that embezzled funds from the budget of the Russian Federation.

I want to emphasise again that the second case I mentioned, over the death of Mr Magnitsky, will allow us to thoroughly investigate the reasons and circumstances leading to his death, and evaluate the validity of the investigators’ actions. It was impossible to get to the core of this matter within the framework of the prosecutors’ investigation, and that is why a criminal case has been instigated. We hope that we will be able to establish the truth together with the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.