Sergei Magnitsky was not a revolutionary, or a freedom fighter, or an activist. He was a lawyer, representing an American financial company; but that is not the most remarkable thing about him. What made Sergei Magnitsky a martyr is the fact that he was a Russian citizen, and a person who cared about his country.

When the Russian police raided the Moscow offices of Hermitage Capital, Magnitsky's employer, they confiscated sets of documents. A short time later, these documents were used to fraudulently re-register the companies in the name of someone completely unrelated to the Hermitage. The companies then filed for a return of taxes that the company supposedly overpaid. In just one day, the request was approved, and the conspirators received 5,4 billion rubles - 230 million US dollars - from the Russian state budget.

When Sergei Magnitsky learned of this, he collected evidence and filed complaints against the people involved. Unfortunately, the conspirators included high-ranking law enforcement officers. Magnitsky was arrested on false evidence. The men who stole the money from the Russian state kept Magnitsky in a jail cell, tortured him, denied him contact with his family - pressuring the lawyer to retract his complaints. Magnitsky's colleagues who were involved in the Hermitage Capital case had either cracked, or fled Russia - but this one man would not back down. After a year in jail, he died of pancreatitis, screaming in pain, as an ambulance team stood outside the door of his cell for an hour and 18 minutes, denied entry by the same cops who stole the money.

If there is one aspect in which Magnitsky was fortunate, it was the fact that his employers did not abandon him. Police and officials stealing money from private enterprises, especially foreign investors, is a common occurrence in Russia - I've written about it before. Hermitage Capital was certainly aware of this: its CEO had been very public about the foul play and fraud against minority investors in Russian state-run corporations. For a financial company like Hermitage, this was the cost of doing business, and ultimately the profits that could be gathered in this resource-rich country made it worthwhile.

But Sergey Magnitskiy was not defending the interests or wallets of American bankers. The $230 million was stolen from the Russian state budget - not a loss of potential profit, not a misuse of public resources, but an actual theft of money that was supposed to be spent on infrastructure, development and healthcare. So Hermitage Capital and Magnitskiy's actual employer, the law firm of Firestone Duncan, funded a campaign to shed light on the murder and theft.

You can find all the evidence and the details of the story at the campaign's website. Or take ten minutes out of your day to watch the videos below.

And if you think this is just one tragic occurrence, that these people were seduced by the promise of a huge payout (which, naturally, lined the pockets of more than just a few mid-ranking cops), and that things so outrageous do not happen in Russia every day, think again.

Bonus surrealism: Russian lawmakers say they plan to overhaul the law on economic crimes, resulting in the early release of as many as 100,000 imprisoned executives and entrepreneurs as the government seeks to attract investors.