(11 Jul 2013) STORYLINE:
More than three years after he died in prison, whistleblowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was found guilty of tax evasion by a Moscow court on Wednesday.
Federal judge, Igor Alisov, announced the verdict on Thursday by saying that "no ground for the rehabilitation of Magnitsky" was found.
The trial is the first under a 2011 Russian law allowing posthumous trials, but not the first time a dead person has been put on trial.
Magnitsky was a lawyer for US-born British investor William Browder when he alleged in 2008 that organised criminals colluded with corrupt Interior Ministry officials to claim a fraudulent 230 million (m) US dollars (152 million (m) GBP) tax rebate after illegally seizing subsidiaries of Browder's Hermitage Capital investment company.
He was arrested on charges of tax evasion and died aged 37, in detention in Moscow's Butyrka prison, of untreated pancreatitis in November 2009.
His death prompted widespread criticism from human rights activists and the Presidential Human Rights Council found in 2011 that he had been beaten and deliberately denied medical treatment.
It also led to the creation of the Magnitsky law, passed by the US Senate, which calls for sanctions on Russians identified as human rights violators.
Browder, was also found guilty in absentia along with Magnitsky of evading some 17 million (m) US dollars (11 million (m) GBP) in taxes.
He was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
"The final punishment of Browder shall be, by partial summation, shall be deprivation of freedom for the term of 9 years in the correction prison colony of ordinary regime and banning the right of entrepreneurial activity on the territory of Russia for 3 years," said the federal judge.
Browder has been banned from Russia since 2005 as a security threat and has been a strident critic of the lack of transparency at top Russian companies.
Browder said the verdict was shameful and compared the process to show trials under Joseph Stalin.
Russian State Prosecutor, Mikhail Reznichenko, said that the prosecution was satisfied with the court's decision.
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