MOSCOW, August 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Hermitage Capital Management investment advisory firm co-founder and CEO William Browder has been summoned to a New York court to testify about his business in Russia.

The subpoena was delivered by lawyers of Prevezon Holdings owned by Russian citizen Denis Katsyv. The hearing is scheduled for August 15.

Browder has been summoned as the principal witness in the US government’s lawsuit filed against Prevezon Holdings in September 2013. The company was suspected of having legalised a part of the money allegedly stolen from the Russian budget. American prosecutors demanded then that all of the company’s assets in the United States be seized.

The lawsuit was filed on the heels of the Magnitsky Act and became the first case opened under the new legislation adopted in December 2012 against the persons the U.S. authorities believed were responsible for the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in Russia.

It turned out during the almost year-long inquest that the main source of information for the U.S. Congress and prosecutors was Browder himself as well as unsigned articles from the Internet.

Prevezon Holdings then demanded that the claimant’s principal witness be called to court. Browder succeeded in avoiding subpoenas for several months but was eventually served with one in Colorado where he had been spotted by private detectives and was trying to run away from them.

The Russian lawyer of Prevezon Holdings and Denis Katsyv, Natalia Veselnitskaya, said “the U.S. [government] basically did not conduct any investigation and only copied, on its own behalf, the stories told by Mr. Browder who has been sentenced in our country for stealing millions and who has been put on the wanted list for other doings as well”.