Dead lawyer found guilty of tax fraud

A Moscow court has convicted dead Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky of tax evasion, provoking outrage over the posthumous prosecution of a man whose death in pre-trial detention led to a major diplomatic row with Washington.

Magnitsky was convicted along with his former boss, the US-born British citizen William Browder, the head of the Hermitage Capital investment fund, who was sentenced in absentia to nine years in a prison colony.

However the case against Magnitsky ended with his verdict and a refusal to exonerate him, as the authorities cannot take a case against a dead man any further.