Killed in Russian prison?

Russian film, television and theater producer Andrej Nekrasov and Norwegian Piraya Films The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes has received a lot of media attention. Not least, this is because one of the main characters, the American billionaire Bill Browders, has fought hard to stop all viewing of the film. A scheduled screening for the European Parliament was halted, and the Short Film Festival in Grimstad also chose to remove it from the poster after Browder got through a legal action against it in the Oslo District Court. Despite the opposition from Browder, the film has had its premiere for Washington, and the 25. June it had its world premiere at the Cinemateket in Oslo – with a subsequent lively discussion. The film is now being considered for viewing on NRK, while French and German TV stations have canceled it. The lawyer's fees can be added to the film's marketing budget.

Rarely have I felt a greater curiosity about a movie. I want to know what it is Bill Browder wants to hide.

Dead in prison. Andrei Nekrasov (b. 1958) worked in the 1980s, among others with the legendary Soviet filmmaker Andrej Tarkovsky, and has been central to a number of award-winning projects in film and television. His Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case from 2007 was about the killing of renegade FSB agent Aleksandr Litvinenko and his revelations that the FSB was behind bombs against Russian housing blocks in 1999.

Nekrasov fled to Norway in 2011 and became a freelance writer in Haugesund, where he has been based since. The collaboration with Torstein Grude in Piraya began with the documentary Russian Lessons from 2009, which addresses the Russian-Georgian war in 2008.

The two and a half hours long The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes addresses the circumstances surrounding Sergei Magnitsky's death in Russian prison on November 16, 2009.

December 14, 2012 Barack Obama signed the law "Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act". The law prohibited entering the United States for 18 named Russians, believed to be involved in the death of Bill Browder's Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. According to Browder, Magnitsky was arrested, tortured and eventually killed in Russian prison in an attempt to clean up the theft and abuse of Browder's companies, without anyone having been convicted in Russia. Those involved, however, have enriched themselves and been promoted, Browder claims. According to Browder, the theft was used to stage a historically large $ 230 million tax evasion, paid by Browder's companies in tax to the Russian state.

At a side event below this year's Oslo Freedom Forum in May under the auspices of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee told Browder about his strong commitment to this law in the United States, and his work to make it an international campaign to hit criminals in countries when people in exile are unable to to prosecute them. Then, in an article in Dagbladet on June 7, Browder wrote that he thinks the film must be stopped because it violates Magnitsky's memory. He pointed out that as many as five Russian documentaries have been produced and broadcast on Russian television in a Russian counter-campaign to substantiate the authorities' version. The Helsinki Committee is currently sitting on a 50-page presentation where Browder is right about what he considers to be a liar in the film. It appears that Andrei Nekrasov's version has not only been hampered by Russian state-controlled media, but is also being enforced in the US judiciary – by law firms representing Russian capital interests, which Browder believes have been harmed by the scam.

Rarely have I felt a greater curiosity about a movie. I want to know what it is Bill Browder wants to hide.

Nothing is true, everything is possible. What is portrayed in this film as Nekrasov's own surprising discoveries may be about an established Russian "propaganda version" to be reproduced in a form that seems credible to a western audience. There is reason to wonder if the Norwegian Film Institute, Fritt Ord and Piraya are aware of what they are doing. With Piraya's photographer Torstein Grude as a witness to the truth, Nekrasov plays the role of the critical fugitive documentary who originally intends to present Browder's version, but who – almost by chance – gets the snuff on his own that the basic conditions for Browder's version and international campaign do not hold: Did Magnitsky really get killed in the prison of seven men with batons after being handcuffed? Did Magnitsky really bring charges against unnamed police officers who motivated them to harm him? Did the named Russian policemen really enrich themselves?

Nekrasov follows the Russian channel Russia Today's slogan "Question more", drags on and wounds in known ways doubts about the documentation and established truths that conflict with the interests of the Russian regime. We know the same from all the hypotheticals that have been launched to reveal that it was a Russian BUK rocket that shot down the Malaysian passenger plane over eastern Ukraine. Do the holes on the hull really come from a BUK? Shouldn't they then turn inwards and not outwards? All documentation can be contrasted with counter-documentation. All arguments with counter-arguments. As British TV producer Peter Pomerantsev with Moscow time has described today's postmodern Russian reality: "Nothing is true. Everything is possible. »

Sympathetic figure. The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes begins as a movie, turns into a movie about the movie, and ends up as a movie about the reception of the movie. Browder's resistance is central – it is thematized and suspected in words, images and sound – and helps give manufacturing credibility. Why doesn't Browder respond to the documentary's countless attempts to get in touch with him? And why does he respond so elusively and with acute memory loss during a critical American hearing? And does not Nekrasov take the Western establishment with his pants down when those who are supposed to have investigated the case before the Council of Europe and the US Congress admit to having relied on Browder's translated documentation, and did not go through the Russian documentation on their own?

When Browder and the Western establishment's credibility and reality are broken, we get the alternative version of the Russian regime and Nekrasov: Browder staged, using Magnitsky himself, the "theft" of his companies, to enrich himself from the tax evasion and blame Russian authorities. Magnitsky was not a warning of power violations, but was himself questioned for their own crimes. The version is substantiated through interviews in Russia with Russian officials who Browder is accusing of the crime, and which explains Nekrasov how it really is.

The Putin refugee Nekrasov with his big curly hair, light underbites and slightly despairing, thoughtful attitude is a figure that is easy to get sympathy for and identify with. This identification factor is the film's nerve, with Nekrasov's voiceover, person and perspective at the center. Although I have the preconditions to be positive for Browder's version, I allow myself to be influenced, and feel that I am being placed in the same state of doubt that allegedly drives Nekrasov.

Suspicion. As a favor of Russian government propaganda aimed at a western audience, it can be particularly successful. But it does make me feel the need – like Nekrasov – to do my own research on the matter:

A Google search brings me to two 2012 documentaries by Dutchman Hans Hermans and Martin Maat, which are freely available online [just click on the titles]. The film Our Friend Putin deals with the Putin regime's control of Gasprom and Russian oil and gas resources. Bill Browder is interviewed not only as the largest foreign investor in the Russian market, but also as a shareholder rights activist. The business idea he made good money for was to clean up Russian companies and make them profitable. Through its active ownership in Gasprom, Browder stood in the way of the Putin regime's ambitions, and in 2005 became a persona non grata in Russia, allegedly a threat to the country's interests.

Their second documentary, Justice for Sergey, jumps out of the first, and goes into the Magnitsky affair as a case study of what the Putin regime has evolved into. We meet family, friends and colleagues of the late Magnitsky, and are presented with the story of a lawyer who defies Browder's advice to leave Russia for his own safety. He chose to be a patriot and take up the fight with the regime – with a deadly outcome. The same patriotic choice that oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky made when he was arrested instead of fleeing.

In Nekrasov's portrayal, it boils down to suspecting – nearsighted and jealous – whether Magnitsky died of violence or "just" because he did not receive the medical treatment he needed.

That the Putin regime, after clearing the troublesome Browder off the pitch, was loosening his companies and values ​​these hidden (as they have been loosening all independent capital) seems probable. That the stock activist and anti-corruption campaigner Browder, from his forced exile by means of Magnitsky, will have staged the theft of his own companies, in order to account for the biggest tax evasion in Russian history by Russian strawmen, seems far less likely. For those of you who have seen the film, Nekrasov and Grude have apologized to me.

When Andrei Nekrasov himself takes the lead in the film, the reasons why he does this are interesting. Why does he do that, what drives him, who is this Russian Putin refugee in Norway? Here it can also be explored – behind Magnitsky.

Se leader page 2. The film is being considered for an early screening at NRK.
Also view on Chapter in Stavanger, Nordic panorama,
Love & Anarchy in Finland and BIFF in Bergen.