Magnitsky Case ‘Not to Affect’ Russia-EU Visa Talks – Diplomat

RIA Novosti

Controversy around the high-profile death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009 will not affect talks between Russia and the European Union on scrapping visa restrictions, a senior official said on Monday.
“The talks are going ahead according to schedule,” Russia’s envoy to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, told RIA Novosti.

Chizhov called against “politicizing this situation” and said there would be a meeting of “high-ranking officials” at an unspecified date which would “clear up all the remaining questions.”

The Netherlands imposed travel bans on some 60 Russian officials over the Magnitsky case in July 2011, and a number of EU parliaments have vowed to follow suit.

Magnitsky, who worked for a British investment fund, was detained in November 2008 after accusing officials of a $230 million tax fraud. He died a year later in his cell after deliberate neglect and beatings, the Kremlin’s human rights body said in a report in 2011.

Last month, a U.S. Senate panel unanimously passed the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act,” a bill that would penalize Russian officials linked with Magnitsky’s jailing and death, as well as other human rights abusers in Russia.

Russia has called the bill an attempt to interfere in its domestic affairs and threatened to respond.
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