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Kommersant has a letter written by Russian opposition members, human rights activists and cultural figures in the US Senate which contains a request to impose the same restrictions on officials involved in the Yukos case as those which are being imposed on authorities associated with the Sergey Magnitsky case. The list compiled by the opposition includes 305 people: Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, head of the Investigation Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin, Moscow City Court Chairwoman Olga Yegorova, investigators, state prosecutors and judges associated with all parties in the Yukos case. The authors of the letter are hoping that the people whose names have been blacklisted will be banned entry to the United States and their foreign bank accounts, if they exist, will be frozen.

In particular, the letter addressed to the US Senate was signed by co-chairmen of the People’s Freedom Party Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov, human rights activists Lyudmila Alekseeva and Lev Ponomarev, film director Eldar Ryazanov, People’s Artists of Russia Lia Akhedzhakova and Natalia Fateeva.
“With this letter we are showing support for the pending Sergey Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011,” reads the letter. “However, Magnitsky’s case is not the only of its kind in our country.”

As was reported by Kommersant, US draft law N1039 provisions travel and financial restrictions for officials responsible for the violation of human rights in their country. They could be banned entry to the United States and their US bank accounts, if they exist, could be frozen. The bill’s lead sponsor, Senator Ben Cardin, did not deny that it was mainly created to prosecute those responsible for the death of the Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergey Magnitsky. The senator included 60 representatives of Russia’s law enforcement agencies in the black list. Meanwhile, the draft law allows the US State Department to include new names on the list each year. The draft law has already been introduced in the Senate, but its review date remains unknown.

Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, head of the Investigation Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin, Moscow City Court Chairwoman Olga Yegorova, investigators, state prosecutors and judges associated with all parties in the Yukos case.

The letter’s authors insist that the list of the penalized Russian officials must be expanded by inclusion of those responsible for the dissolution of Yukos and prosecution of the company’ leaders. The list compiled by the opposition also includes, in addition to the others named above, former prosecutor general Vladimir Ustinov and Deputy Prosecutors General Viktor Grin, Yury Biryukov and Aleksandr Zvyagintsev. The list also includes three state prosecutors in the Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev case, Dmitry Shokhin, Valery Latkhin and Gulchekhra Ibragimova; several dozen witnesses headed by the senior investigator for particularly important cases, who arranged the prosecution of the main Yukos shareholders, Salavat Karimov; judges of the Basmanny, Khamovnichesky, Meshchansky, Moscow and other city courts where the Yukos case was heard, as well as 13 Russian Supreme Court judges.

The list does not include Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who are considered to have masterminded the Yukos affair.

“Inclusion of politicians in the list, and especially first persons, would greatly complicate the document’s approval by the US State Department. Therefore, we focused on specific administrators,” one of the initiators of the letter, St. Petersburg-based author and human rights activist Nina Karteli, told Kommersant. “The list has been handed over to the Senate, and if the bill is adopted, we will certainly insist on its application to the Yukos prosecutors.”

“I think the probability that the bill will pass is about 70 percent,” Vladimir Ryzhkov told Kommersant.
The Russian opposition plans to take full advantage of the US Rule of Law Accountability Act. Lev Ponomarev told Kommersant that human rights activists could create a special group of experts who would compile new lists of officials who may have violated human rights on the territory of the Russian Federation. After approval, these lists would be sent to the US State Department. Meanwhile, last weekend US senators met with the leader of the Khimki Forest activists, Evgenia Chirkova. She, too, has given a list to the US Senate of officials responsible, according to environmentalists, for deforestation. It includes Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov, Transportation Minister Igor Levitin, Governor of the Moscow Region Boris Gromov, and 10 other officials.

As was reported by Kommersant, Russian authorities have promised to respond to the Sergey Magnitsky legislation in a similar fashion, freezing bank accounts and blocking entry to the Russian Federation for those involved in the Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko cases. The former is under arrest in the US on arms trafficking charges, the latter was sentenced to 20 years in jail for drug trafficking.

“At this time, we do not know about the human rights activists’ list, though it will not lead to anything other than a new list war,” a high-ranking source in the Russian government told Kommersant. “Russia will simply be forced to react accordingly. Such initiatives could not but evoke regret – though they are once again showing on whose side these so-called human rights activists are and whose money they are working for.” займы на карту без отказа payday loan https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php займ на карту онлайн