April 8

Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky (Russian: Сергей Леонидович Магнитский; 8 April 1972 – 16 November 2009) was a Russian accountant andauditor whose arrest and subsequent death in custody generated international media attention and triggered both official and unofficial inquiries into allegations of fraud, theft and human rights violations. Magnitsky had alleged there was a large-scale systematic theft from the Russian state sanctioned and carried out by Russian officials. He was arrested and eventually died in prison seven days before the expiration of the one year term during which he could be legally held without trial. In total, Magnitsky served 358 days in Moscow's notorious Butyrka prison. He developed gall stones, pancreatitis and a blocked gall bladder and received inadequate medical care. A human rights council set up by the Kremlin found that he was beaten up just before he died. The Independent 19 March 2013 His case has become an international cause célèbre and led to the adoption of the Magnitsky bill by the US government at the end of 2012. Russian officials believed to be involved in the lawyer’s death were barred from entering the United States or using its banking system. In response Russia blocked hundreds of foreign adoptions. In early January 2013, the Financial Times editorialised that "the Magnitsky case is egregious, well documented and encapsulates the darker side of Putinism" and endorsed the idea of imposing similar sanctions against the implicated Russian officials by the EU countries.

In 2013 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a D.C-based nonprofit news organization, obtained records of companies and trusts created by two offshore companies which included information on at least 23 companies linked to an alleged $230 million tax fraud in Russia, a case that was being investigated by Sergei Magnitsky. The ICIJ investigation also revealed that the husband of one of the Russian tax officials deposited millions in a Swiss bank account set up by one of the offshore companies.