Magnitsky showdown nears

The Moscow News

The Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate backed on Tuesday the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which, if passed by Congress and the U.S. president, will impose sanctions on some 60 Russian officials.

The bill will deny entry to the United States and freeze the accounts of those allegedly responsible for the persecution and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was allegedly killed in jail in 2009 after exposing a graft scheme for a tax refund of $230 million set up by a group of Russian law enforcers, tax officers and judges.

Supported unanimously by the Senate’s panel, the bill has fairly good chances of being adopted. “The White House has never indicated an inclination to veto this legislation,” the office of the bill’s sponsor, Senator Ben Cardin, told The Moscow News.

The only way the bill can be withdrawn is if Russia starts a murder investigation into the death of Magnitsky and the crime he exposed, U.S. lawmakers say.

“If Russia was to prosecute those responsible for Sergei Magnitsky’s death, there would no longer be a need to include those individuals on the public list,” Cardin’s office said.

However, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office started a criminal case against Magnitsky himself last August, charging him with embezzlement of the same $230 million in tax refunds.

Russia has threatened the United States with a “tough” response to the panel’s move. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told federal Rossiya 24 TV on Wednesday: “It’ll be balanced but won’t add more tensions to our relations, but it’ll be a tough response.” Ryabkov added that Russia’s response “will not necessarily be symmetrical.”

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All four parties in Russian parliament denounced the act as interference in Russia’s domestic affairs. RIA Novosti cited First Deputy Chairman of the Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee Andrei Klimov as saying that the Magnitsky Act “runs counter to… Roman law, since charges have been made without evidence and investigation.”

Head of the Duma Anti-Corruption Committee, Irina Yarovaya, was quoted by the United Russia website as saying: “Under the Magnitsky bill, a foreign state is passing a guilty verdict against citizens of a different state without a corresponding court decision. It’s nonsense.”

In a move that is supposed to mitigate the effect of the bill on U.S.-Russian relations, the Senate committee adopted a softer version of the Magnitsky bill, which will allow the U.S. government to keep the names on the Cardin list a secret.

Maria Lipman, an expert with the Carnegie Moscow Center, believes that the Magnitsky bill could not tarnish bilateral relations, as they have not been very good recently anyway.

“If they were built on strong trade and economic ties, there would be no such bill at all,” Lipman told The Moscow News. “The Magnitsky Act would never be passed if there was a strong Russian lobby in Congress.”

Jackson-Vanik hopes

Lipman said there had been no similar bills aimed against China, the United States’ biggest trading partner, where human rights violations are perhaps more widespread than in Russia.

The Magnitsky bill has been linked with the U.S. initiative to establish normal trade relations with Russia by repealing the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which limited trade with the Soviet Union, and introducing permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with Russia.

It is unclear when the Magnitsky bill will be presented to the full Senate. “The timing is still to be determined, but it is expected to move simultaneously with PNTR,” Cardin’s office said.

Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, has pledged that both bills will be passed by the end of the year. “This is an opportunity to double our exports to Russia and create thousands of jobs across every sector of the U.S. economy, all at no cost to the U.S. whatsoever,” he said at a committee meeting earlier this month.

As much as it is interested in revoking Cold War era economic sanctions, Russia is seeking an “asymmetrical” reply, while not perhaps having much to retaliate with. Lipman said that a “tough response” against Obama’s administration may backfire on Moscow.

“No matter what measure Russia may take, it won’t discredit the U.S. government, while the Magnitsky Act has already discredited Russia, at least in the eyes of those who care about the observation of human rights,” Lipman said. hairy girl микрозаймы онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php hairy girls