MOSCOW. Aug 4 (Interfax) - Russia's Investigative Committee has dismissed a claim by lawyer Sergei Magnitsky's mother that officials investigating Magnitsky's death in a Moscow remand prison in 2009 have replaced his medical records with fake documents misdiagnosing his diseases.
Magnitsky, who was a lawyer for British hedge fund Hermitage Capital and was charged with tax evasion, died in the Matrosskaya Tishina jail on November 16, 2009, at the age of 37.
His death drew a broad public backlash. The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case on charges of failure to provide medical assistance to a patient and negligence.
"In was established in the course of the investigation that, in treating Magnitsky, his physician, [Larisa] Litvinova, failed to diagnose the principal diseases that led to Magnitsky's death," Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax on Wednesday.
"As a result, no appropriate medical assistance was given to him, and he was receiving no treatment for those diseases."
This means that the allegation of Magnitsky's mother, made via her lawyer, "is not true," and "the Investigative Committee qualifies it as nothing else than an attempt at pressure on the investigators," Markin said.
Earlier on Wednesday, a Hermitage representative told Interfax: "The investigation replaced diagnoses of Magnitsky's illness that progressed in the pre-trial detention center with unconfirmed medical documents in an attempt to cover up deliberate actions of medical personnel and officials of the Butyrka pre-trial detention center."
This is stated in a complaint from Nikolai Gorokhov, a lawyer for Magnitsky's mother, sent to the Investigative Committee's Main Investigation Department chief, he said, noting that a copy of the complaint was sent to Russia's prosecutor general.
Markin said in his interview with Interfax on Wednesday that the inquiry into Magnitsky's death had included a comprehensive medical investigation carried out by the Russian Forensic Medical Center, "the leading Russian state expert institution in this field."
"Highly proficient specialists in various medical fields, including specialists at the Bakulev Research Center for Cardiovascular Surgery, the Sechenov State Medical University and other scientific centers of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, were involved in this investigation," the spokesman said.
"The investigation resulted in the conclusion that Magnitsky suffered from various diseases, principally secondary cardiomyopathy aggravated by diabetes mellitus and chronic active hepatitis, which led to Magnitsky's death," he said.
The probe also showed Magnitsky to have suffered from other diseases, ailments that were not the direct causes of his death and included diseases mentioned by lawyer Nikolai Gorokhov, Markin said.
"It was also established that, when Magnitsky was in custody, he did not undergo any diagnostic procedures, as a result of which physician Litvinova misdiagnosed [his] principal diseases," the spokesman said.
He mentioned that Litvinova and her chief Dmitry Kratov are under prosecution.
The inquiry will end soon, and "the investigators will undoubtedly inform the public on its findings," Markin said.
"Moreover, the definitive assessment of the evidence collected by the investigator in this case will be made by court," he said.