NB: This story has been updated. Please see new story here.
MOSCOW, July 11 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow’s Tverskoi Court is expected to hand down its verdict in a criminal case against deceased Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and his former boss William Browder on Thursday.
Magnitsky, who died in disputed circumstances while in pretrial custody in 2009, is being prosecuted for the alleged embezzlement of hundreds of millions of rubles from the federal budget by manipulating tax returns between September and October 2007. The trial is one of the first against a dead person in Russian or Soviet legal history.
A prosecutor asked a Moscow court on July 3 to find Magnitsky guilty, but end the criminal case against him.
The prosecutor also sought a nine-year prison term for Browder, the Hermitage Capital fund CEO, who is being tried in absentia. Browder earlier accused some of the officials responsible for prosecuting him and Magnitsky of fraud related to the takeover of Hermitage subsidiaries and subsequent tax rebate frauds by those companies.
Browder, once the biggest portfolio investor in Russia, was charged in absentia in March with illegally purchasing shares in Russian energy giant Gazprom at a time when foreign ownership of the world's largest natural gas producer was restricted.
Updated at 11:53 to clarify that this is "one of the first" times a dead person has been tried in Russia.
