A former colleague of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in pre-trail detention in 2009, faces arrest for evading tax payments as the head of the Russian branch of British investment company Hermitage Capital Management.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that police were investigating Ivan Cherkasov, the former head of its Moscow branch.
Magnitsky was jailed in 2008 after attempting to defend Hermitage Capital, once Russia's top foreign investor, against the same charges.
Magnitsky accused Russian tax and Interior Ministry officials of using Hermitage to carry out a $230 million tax fraud. He died aged 37 from acute heart failure after 11 months in a Moscow pre-trial detention facility.
Magnitsky was kept in appalling conditions and was refused crucial medical treatment in what Hermitage says was an effort to coerce him to admit his role in its alleged tax evasion.
Hermitage head William Browder has been barred from Russia since 2005.
An official investigation, ordered by President Dmitry Medvedev, is under way. No one has yet been charged with Magnitsky's death.
The presidential Human Rights Council said last week that the charges against Magnitsky were fabricated and had no legal basis.
MOSCOW, May 3 (RIA Novosti)
