‘The British government must confront Russia over human rights abuses’

The Daily Telegraph

An influential British businessmen has accused David Cameron of going soft on Russia and of naively treating the Kremlin with kid gloves out of a misplaced fear of Moscow.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph on the eve of the Prime Minister’s historic visit to Russia tomorrow, William Browder, the founder of UK-based Hermitage Capital Management, said the British government had shied away from tackling Russia on human rights issues and claimed that the Kremlin was laughing at Mr Cameron behind his back.

“The government needs to be realistic about dealing with Russia. But it doesn’t seem to understand its major strength in dealing with Russian officials,” Mr Browder charged.

“If they think that making nice with the Russians will solve any problems, it won’t. The Russians just laugh at anyone who is approaching them from a position of weakness.”

Mr Cameron’s visit is the first by a British leader since 2006, and the first since former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive tea in central London that same year. Ties between the two countries have been icy ever since and Mr Cameron is under huge pressure to forge a better working relationship with Moscow.

But rights activists, including Mr Browder – who has embraced human rights advocacy since Sergei Magnitsky, his tax lawyer, died an agonising death in a Moscow jail – are worried that the British government is getting it wrong.

In particular, Mr Browder, who used to be the biggest foreign portfolio investor in Russia and who has one billion dollars under management, said it was time that the UK slapped tough visa and financial sanctions on top Russian officials involved in a series of heinous crimes, including the death of Mr Magnitsky.

Mr Browder, a British citizen but American by birth, has used his personal fortune to try to get justice his friend.

Sergei Magnitsky, a married father of two, died aged 37 in a squalid Moscow prison in November 2009 after being jailed for almost a year without trial for a tax crime he insisted he did not commit. Before he died, Magnitsky had uncovered the biggest tax fraud in Russian history (£142 million) and had pointed the finger at what he said was a corrupt group of policemen, investigators, tax officials and others.

His jailers withheld essential medical care and he was in so much pain at times that he could not lie down. His cell floor was sometimes flooded with sewage, the lavatory was a hole in the corner of the room, and for a long time he was denied any visits by his wife Natasha, sons aged 17 and eight, or his mother. There are strong suggestions that he was physically beaten by prison guards.

Yet the official investigation into his death is still ongoing and none of many of the people involved have been punished. Some have even been promoted.

In July, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, sanctioned a visa ban of 60 senior Russian officials whom Mr Browder has linked to Magnitsky’s death, including a top official at the FSB, the successor organisation to the KGB. He wants the UK to follow suit.

“We have a simple question for the Prime Minister and the British government: should Britain allow Russian officials who tortured and killed a lawyer working for a British company into our country?” he said.

Furthermore, the very policemen Magnitsky accused of fraud were the people who arrested and locked him up.
And in a devastatingly cruel twist of fate, the same investigators have reopened a tax fraud investigation into the dead man and tried to summon his family for questioning. Unsurprisingly, his mother, who is said by sources close to her to be in a state “of extreme distress”, refused to be interrogated.

“It is not only that I don’t trust them,” she said. “I also fear them.”

Mr Browder’s campaign for justice has also found purchase in Europe. In December, the European Parliament voted through a resolution that freed EU member states to introduce a visa ban and asset freeze on the same 60 officials. The Dutch parliament has already voted unanimously in favour of adopting the resolution. Mr Browder said it was time for Britain to follow suit.

“Our Prime Minister has a duty of care to the British people and to British businesses not to encourage them to get involved in a situation where they put their money and their employees directly in harm’s way,” he said. “But so far the government has tried to dodge the question.”

Mr Browder, who has himself been banned from Russia and is still being investigated for alleged tax evasion there (which he denies), said the British government had to date “misplayed its hand”.

“The government has a much stronger hand to deal with the Russians than it seems to recognise,” he said. Mr Cameron is taking a large delegation of businessmen with him to Moscow but Mr Browder said that risked sending the wrong signal.

“Cameron should be warning British companies not to do business in Russia,” he said.

“There is way too much information out there about the terrible things that regularly happen to foreign businesses in Russia for him to make any positive representations about investing in Russia.” hairy girl срочный займ на карту онлайн zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php микрозайм онлайн