Russian Lawyer Who Fought Corruption Dies in Prison

MOSCOW Nov. 18, 2009— -- A Russian tax lawyer working for an investment firm that railed against government corruption died in a Moscow detention center, prompting the head of the company he was representing to charge today that he was "slowly killed through mistreatment in prison."

Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old father of two, died from heart failure and toxic shock Monday night, Russia's Interior Ministry announced Tuesday.

In September, Magnitsky wrote that he had developed pancreatitis and other ailments that were being ignored by prison officials while he was held in "disgusting" conditions.

The lawyer had been arrested nearly a year ago, accused of helping the London-based investment company Hermitage Capital, evade taxes, a charge Hermitage's CEO calls absurd. Hermitage had once been the biggest investor in the Russian stock market, but gotten into hot water with the Russian authorities after alleging widespread corruption.

"They took a perfectly healthy, vital 37-year-old man, and subjected him to such horrific conditions that 11 months later he died in their custody," Hermitage CEO William Browder told ABC News.

"This is not about business, this is about the complete breakdown of the justice system," said Browder. "If you can have an innocent man on trumped-up charges taken hostage and then slowly killed through mistreatment in prison. It's medieval."

Authorities would have been forced to indict or release Magnitsky next week because Russian law does not allow anyone to be kept in pre-trial detentiion for more than a year.

"Which raises all sorts of suspicions about the timing of his death," says Browder. "It's clear the investigators were being forced into a very place where they had a very flimsy case."

In late 2005, Browder was barred from entering Russia after which Hermitage started to divest, leaving behind shell companies with no assets. In June 2007, Hermitage's offices were raided, along with the offices of their law firm Firestone Duncan, where Magnitsky worked.