MOSCOW, January 31. /ITAR-TASS/. The Moscow City Court declared lawful the 9-year sentence to Hermitage Capital head William Browder. Browder was sentenced to in absentia to 9 years for tax evasion in prison amounting to more than 522 million rubles.

Russia issued an international arrest warrant against British citizen William Browder on July 25 on charges of Gazprom shares theft in the amount of nearly 3 billion rubles.

On October 8, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow upheld Browder’s criminal prosecution, declining the appeal of his attorney.

Sergey Magnitskym, auditor at Hermitage Capital Fund, died at the age of 37 in the intensive therapy ward at a hospital of the Matrosskaya Tishina detention center on November 16, 2009, after 11 months of keeping under arrest and seven days after the accusation was brought against him. Before the transfer to the hospital, he had been kept at the Butyrskaya prison. The detectives have found that Magnitsky was not given timely medical treatment and an adequate therapy course, when his state of health had worsened sharply.

The criminal case was terminated against Magnitsky over his death on November 30, 2009. The investigation was resumed on August 9, 2011, on the instruction from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office that was based on a verdict by the Russian Constitutional Court of July 14, 2011.

Magnitsky’s family refused to participate in the trial, finding it unlawful and groundless.