MOSCOW, June 4 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul) – The Moscow City Court ruled that damages award in a libel suit brought by former Russian Interior Ministry officer Pavel Karpov against chief executive of Hermitage Capital Management William Browder, managing partner at law firm Firestone Duncan Jamieson Firestone, and two affiliates of Hermitage Capital Management, be increased to 8 million rubles (about $151,000), Karpov told RAPSI on Thursday.

Initially, Karpov sought 255 million rubles ($4.8 million) in damages over alleged defamatory statements about him linked to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management. Later he increased the sum to 6.16 billion rubles ($116.1 million). 

Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court dismissed the lawsuit in August 2014, but on March 10 overturned the ruling and awarded Karpov damages of 100,000 rubles ($1,900).

Notably, in 2012, Karpov filed a libel suit with London's High Court over four videos and two articles linking Karpov to the death of Magnitsky. The suit was dismissed in October 2013. 

Magnitsky was arrested after accusing Russian officials of $230 million worth of fraud, and died in prison under suspicious circumstances.

He was posthumously found guilty of tax evasion by a Moscow court in July 2013.

Browder was convicted in absentia and sentenced to nine years in prison in the same trial.