Talk:Sergei Magnitsky/Archives/2019

Lead much too long
The lead is much too long and detailed. The content about abortions is WP:OFFTOPIC and not biographically relevant. We have the article Magnitsky Act for that content. Additionally, the last two paragraphs are much too detailed for a lead section. This is investigative stuff that belongs in the body, not in the lead. R2 (bleep) 21:40, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

a Russian lawyer who specialized in anti-corruption activities - or a tax-avoidance-scheme accountant?
there is no conclusive proof that Magnitsky was either "lawyer" or "specialized in anti-corruption activities". Moreover, he was aparently complicit in fraudulent tax-avoidance schemes, as detailed by Jamison Firestone himself:

OC: Just for the record, do you dispute the other line of the state prosecutor's case, i.e. that Magnitsky-Browder circumvented a clause in the tax law, which saw them reduce their tax burden by taking on disabled staff?

JF: They absolutely did set up companies with disabled staff. [...] Kalmykia was one of about 11 of these regions in Russia. Many companies, both foreign and domestic, moved parts of their business to these regions to take advantage of the favorable tax regimes.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/oliver-carroll/fighting-for-magnitsky-interview-with-jamison-firestone

I see: "employing" disabled people in trumped-up positions in underdeveloped russian areas, that have lower taxes to support actual local economic development there, now counts as "anti-corruption activities". Interesting. --Felixkrull (talk) 20:52, 12 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Using selective quotation was not a good way to support your biased claims, man. Everyone can open the link and check. -- A man without a country (talk) 09:20, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Auditors are not lawyers
Mr Magnitsky was an auditor. These are a sub-category of accountants. He was not a lawyer.Royalcourtier (talk) 05:06, 8 February 2014 (UTC)


 * By most accounts he was a lawyer. He even helped defend a fellow inmate while in prison.   What reference do you have that he wasn't?Hilltrot (talk) 09:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC)


 * His defender in court confirmed that Magnitsky had only degree in finance, not legal one - http://echo.msk.ru/programs/razvorot/726597-echo/ . Also, there was a scans of his documents http://www.rospres.com/finance/7525/, so called 'employment history book' have no entries of his position in any company as lawyer - only as auditor. 176.222.206.247 (talk) 20:31, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Has this been resolved, is there any evidence that suggests he earned a law degree ?

Abandontranslation (talk) 19:20, 4 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Looking for evidence of that would be original research, which is forbidden by Wikipedia policies. We are a tertiary source. Here, our job is to reflect what reliable sources say. If reliable sources contradict one another, it may be appropriate for us to note the disagreement, but it isn't up to Wikipedia to decide. We call him a lawyer because the sources that describe him as a lawyer are many. Just to name a few, "Sergei Magnitsky: independent investigation into death of lawyer slams Russia (Telegraph)"; "U.N.-appointed human rights experts to probe death of Russian lawyer Magnitsky" (Washington Post); "Row over Russia lawyer jail death" (BBC). In terms of the alternative evidence suggested above, scans of his documents are excluded as sources on Wikipedia because they are primary, and while they could be used in this article to verify content they explicitly contain, they can't be used to assert that he did not have a law degree, because who knows if they are complete? The other source may or may not be reliable, but for a non-Russian reader it's hard to tell whether there's anything more than hearsay in there. The translation I read says, "A friend of mine wrote on Twitter today that yesterday the Investigative Committee reported...." What a friend on Twitter says that a committee reported isn't likely to qualify for inclusion. :) As WP:WEIGHT says:

Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserves as much attention overall as the majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views (such as Flat Earth). To give undue weight to the view of a significant minority, or to include that of a tiny minority, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject. This applies not only to article text, but to images, wikilinks, external links, categories, and all other material as well.

Paraphrased from Jimbo Wales' September 2003 post on the WikiEN-l mailing list: If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts; If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents; If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article. Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public.

If you can prove a theory that few or none currently believe, Wikipedia is not the place to present such a proof. Once it has been presented and discussed in reliable sources, it may be appropriately included. See "No original research" and "Verifiability". This is a kind of long-winded response, sorry. Really it just means that resolution is that as long as there is not even a significant minority of reliable sources reporting that Magnitsky was not a lawyer, our policies require us to reflect the reliable sources that say he was. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:13, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * There aren't any reliable sources saying I'm not a lawyer either, but that doesn't make me one. 2601:644:1:B7CB:4D3D:6C95:5CEF:9772 (talk) 07:41, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Are there reliable sources that say you are? Because there are a lot of reliable sources that say this man is. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:30, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * There are in fact now reliable sources that say Magnitsky was not a lawyer. Quoting The New Yorker: "Browder has often said that, in response to the raid, he went out and hired Sergei Magnitsky, “the smartest lawyer I knew in Moscow.” Actually, Magnitsky, then thirty-five, was a tax adviser who worked for the firm that had advised Hermitage for a decade."

Bill Browder said in sworn testimony that Magnitsky had no law degree and never passed the bar - the testimony is only in both written and video form. Does that count? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.222.138.30 (talk) 02:56, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Whether or not Magnitsky was a registered lawyer has been disputed, although this narrative has been propagated by Western Media, Bill Browder, and even described in the U.S. Congressional Magnitsky Act as a lawyer. In a controversial documentary 'The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes', colleagues of Sergei described him as a brilliant accountant. https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2018/06/reuters-prints-fake-news-the-latest/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.62.48.115 (talk • contribs) 06:04, 27 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The Bill Browder article says "Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant and auditor who had represented his company as Power of Attourney" [sic] Keith McClary (talk) 20:16, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

See this Wikipedia article on what is required to practise law around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admission_to_practice_law#Russia "It is not necessary to have a license to practice law in Russia as a legal consultant, but only the members of the Russian bar associations (advocates) are permitted to appear in court on criminal matters. In Russia, an advocate must obtain an undergraduate degree in law (four years) and a Specialist in Law or Jurist degree (one year), then pass oral examinations." Sergei Magnitsky was educated as an accountant from the Plekhanov Institute in Moscow. When working for law firm Jamison Firestone he practised law for his clients representing them in court on numerous occasions. Here is a quote where the Russian President (he is himself a lawyer) call Sergei Magnitsky a Lawyer. "Russia Putin calls Hermitage Capital lawyer Magnitsky's death "tragedy": Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on F...https://twitter.com/SputnikInt/status/6128637276KørenSierkegaard (talk) 19:23, 12 November 2019 (UTC)