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"Magnitsky list" investigator suspected of extortion

Dmitriyeva denied her guilt at a court hearing on Wednesday and threatened to testify against high-placed persons

MOSCOW, October 5 (Itar-Tass) — Reports on Wednesday said police had detained special investigator of the Interior Ministry's main investigation department (GSU) for Moscow Nelli Dmitriyeva. She is a member of the team that probed the Magnitsky case. Dmitriyeva denied her guilt at a court hearing on Wednesday and threatened to testify against high-placed persons.

Special investigator Dmitriyeva was detained in her office, the "Novye Izvestia" writes. According to official information of the Investigative Committee (SK), she had asked contraband case suspects to pay her 3 million U.S. dollars for exempting them from criminal responsibility. The investigators ascertained that to take the bribe, Dmitriyeva had enlisted her acquaintances. Criminal proceedings were opened over taking a large bribe through intermediaries.

The Interior Ministry stated that the detainee had nothing to do with the case against Hermitage Capital Management lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. But in the list published by a U.S. Congress commission on security and cooperation in Europe her name was put under number 14. The 60 Russian officials on the list have been denied entry visas to the USA. It is not the first time the Interior Ministry denies obvious facts. For example, law-enforcers saw nothing in the report on the investigation into the Magnitsky case by the working group under the presidential council either, "member of the Moscow Helsinki group Valery Borshchev told the "Novye Izvestia," adding that "the degree of Dmitriyeva's involvement in the Magnitsky case is not known, but she certainly was not put on the list by accident."