William Browder: The man behind the Magnitsky List
William Browder is trying to hold to account Russians who he claims are responsible for the death of his lawyer, and US officials have drawn up a blacklist of those said to have been involved in the case. This week, the BBC has learned, new names are expected to appear on the list.
Browder got the phone call in the early morning of 17 November 2009. It was an unseasonably warm day in London, and he was still in bed.
A colleague told him the news. Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who had uncovered what he said was a $230m (£140m) tax refund fraud in Moscow and was being held in a detention centre, was dead.
Years later Browder still remembers how he felt when he heard. “It was like a knife in the heart,” he said.
Browder got out of bed and raced to the offices of his hedge fund company, Hermitage Capital, in the Golden Square area of London. He sent out a press statement pledging an independent investigation into Magnitsky’s death.
On that day and in the years that followed, Browder approached the case in the way he was trained at Stanford business school – methodically. He analysed documents and focused on the money.
Browder pushed people in Washington to support a bill, the Magnitsky Act, that was signed into law in December 2012. It featured a list of 18 individuals, including three from Russia’s interior ministry. Magnitsky’s List, as it is known, includes people “who signed the documents”, claimed Browder, that led to the lawyer’s imprisonment and death.
The US government will deny visas to these individuals, if they request one, as well as freeze assets in the US.
Browder’s pursuit of justice is both idealistic and single-minded. His critics say he has tried to shape US foreign policy for his own narrow goals and has lost sight of the bigger picture.
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New Battle Looms in US-Russian ‘War of Blacklists’
The United States and Russia face a potential renewed blacklist war as a deadline looms this week for Washington to report on controversial sanctions against alleged Russian rights abusers.
The US administration has until Saturday to submit to Congress its inaugural annual report on any additions to the so-called “Magnitsky List” of Russians deemed by Washington to be complicit in human rights abuses and subject to US travel and financial sanctions.
The report is almost certain to irritate Moscow if the blacklist is expanded and could prompt Russia to add to its own list of US officials hit with analogous sanctions after Washington published the names of 18 Russians on the Magnitsky List in April, experts said.
“If the administration comes out with a huge list, which I do not expect, the Russians might react more vigorously,” Steven Pifer, former US ambassador to Ukraine, told RIA Novosti. “But I guess it will be such that the Russians will retaliate by announcing that they’ve added some names to their list.”
The US blacklist is authorized under the Magnitsky Act, a US law designed to punish officials believed to be connected to the 2009 death of whistleblowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail and later broadened to include a range of alleged rights abusers.
The law, signed by President Barack Obama on December 14, 2012, was a central factor in the deterioration of ties between the US and Russia over the past 18 months. Moscow has repeatedly portrayed the law as US meddling in its internal affairs and has responded in part by banning Americans from adopting Russian children.
The Magnitsky Act requires the US State and Treasury Departments to report to Congress within one year of the date of the enactment of law, to clarify the number of individuals who were added to or removed from the blacklist and to explain the decisions.
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Rep. Jim McGovern sends a letter to Secretary Kerry about Magnitsky Act
Rep. Jim McGovern sends a letter to Secretary Kerry regarding the implementation of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act
Today, Congressman Jim McGovern sent a letter to Secretary Kerry, urging him to encourage his European counterparts to adopt legislation and/or measures similar to the ones outlined in the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. The letter comes in anticipation of a new report from the State Department and Treasury on the implementation of the Magnitsky Act.
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Washington: Europe Soon To Receive Magnitsky Law?
The pessimistic attitude clouding the American capital has been aggravated by the fiasco the “Obamacare” health insurance reform has set in place. To date, barely 10,000 Americans could sign up on the site created specifically to compare insurances and register.
Yet, at the heart of this depressed and discouraging climate are “everyday” citizens showing that one person can change the course of history. On Saturday, Nov. 16, a reception took place at 7 pm, organized by Freedom House president David J. Kramer. French-Russian journalist Elena Servettaz presented her book, “Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law: Should the EU Follow the U.S.?”
Servettaz, also a contributor to American and Russian media, collected contributions from 54 people involved in the Magnitsky affair. A brief recall:
About four years ago, Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer, died in a Moscow prison, beaten to death by the guards. His crime? Denouncing the biggest fiscal fraud ever committed in Russia. Even more, this fraud had been the work of state officials associated with a mafia gang (even if the distinction between the two is difficult to discern). Magnitsky, according to human rights lawyer William Browden, had noted the disappearance of $230 million owed to the state of Russia. While he wanted to get justice, he was arrested by those responsible for said embezzlement.
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FPI and CTR Analysis: Responding Effectively to Russia’s Anti-Gay Laws
Background
In June 2014, the Russian Duma unanimously passed a bill—which President Vladimir Putin signed into law—prohibiting so-called “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships to minors.” The following month, a law banning adoption by foreign same-sex couples, or even opposite-sex couples residing in countries where same-sex marriage is recognized, was enacted. Coming twenty years after the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia, these measures marked the culmination of efforts by Russian municipal and regional authorities to target the country’s LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) minority. Russian citizens found to be in violation of the federal statute can be fined 5,000 rubles (equivalent to roughly $150), businesses can be levied up to 1 million rubles and forced to close for up to 90 days, and foreigners face deportation.
Though these measures are ostensibly aimed at “protecting” children from sexually explicit material, their effect is to stigmatize sexual minorities and prevent them from engaging in a necessary conversation about civil equality and their place within Russian society. The federal statute effectively makes it illegal to speak about homosexuality in neutral (never mind positive) terms, bans public demonstrations demanding respect for gay people, and could even be used to arrest same-sex couples for holding hands in public. As such, the law violates universally binding norms concerning free speech, assembly, and association. Such norms are enumerated in Russia’s own constitution and laws, as well as those of the United Nations, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and Council of Europe instruments, all to which Russia is party.
The legislative attack on Russia’s gay community must be seen in the context of the Putin regime’s broader assault on civil society. A year before the anti-gay legislation was enacted, the Duma passed a regressive law requiring non-profit organizations receiving funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents,” likening many pro-democracy and humanitarian groups to espionage fronts. Simultaneously, the Russian government expelled USAID and has continually harassed employees of European political foundations. Russian government officials, abetted by their political allies in the Orthodox Church, routinely speak of homosexuality as a decadent, Western import aimed at weakening Russia from within; Putin himself has justified official state homophobia by lamenting Europe’s declining birthrate, which he partially blames on gays. These efforts simultaneously divert attention from government corruption, and also strengthen Putin’s political ties to Russian social conservatives.
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Fair Trials International group urges reforms for Interpol arrests
The case of a Russian environmental activist who fled the country but was later arrested, despite finding sanctuary in Finland, reveals how political motives can sometimes improperly influence international police work, a London-based group said this week.
The international police network in question is Interpol, which represents 190 member countries, including the United States, allowing them to issue international warrants or request information about suspects facing criminal charges at home.
Fair Trials International, an advocacy group for those arrested abroad, issued a report early Thursday asserting that the agency is used by some of its members — including Russia, Belarus, Turkey, Iran and Venezuela — to pursue political ends.
Pyotr Silaev, a 28-year-old Russian who took part in a protest in Moscow in July 2010 against the destruction of a forest in the suburb of Khimki, illustrates how Interpol can be wrongly used, according to Robert Jackman, a Fair Trials spokesman.
When police began arresting some of the demonstrators and accused Silaev of hooliganism, he fled to Finland, which accepted him as a political refugee.
Later, Silaev traveled to Spain and was arrested there on a Russian request issued through Interpol. He spent eight days in prison and six months stuck in Spain while fighting extradition to Russia. A Spanish court eventually refused to extradite him, ruling that his arrest was politically motivated. Fair Trials is trying to get his name stricken from the Interpol database.
When Moscow police wanted Interpol help to arrest William Browder, the investment banker who campaigned for the United States to punish Russia for human rights abuses, Browder quickly found a way to give the international agency his side of the story.
Interpol promptly declared the request to locate Browder — who fought for passage of the U.S. Magnitsky Act — politically motivated and deleted the entry from its database. Browder’s situation showed that individuals are shielded from abuse by Interpol, according to Ronald K. Noble, the agency’s head.
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Former Prosecutor Details Violations in Magnitsky Case
Moscow Times
A former senior federal prosecutor has accused her one-time colleagues of illegally intervening in the probe into the 2009 death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, as well as committing legal violations in connection with other high-profile cases.
Galina Tarasova, who says she was fired from the Prosecutor General’s Office in April, said Sergei Bochkaryov, a department head at the agency, phoned Investigative Committee officials “giving them oral orders” and “sending some kind of documents” in connection with the committee’s probe into Magnitsky’s death.
Two other senior officials at the Prosecutor General’s Office — David Kutaliya and Timur Borisov — “obstructed oversight of the probe into Magnitsky’s death” by “creating red tape,” Tarasova said in an interview published on pro-nationalist news website Russkaya Planeta on Wednesday.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is charged with overseeing the work of the Investigative Committee to ensure that investigators do not violate the law while carrying out criminal probes, Tarasova explained. Prosecutors also approve charges before sending a case to court.
Tarasova linked her dismissal to her complaints to superiors about the legal violations committed by her colleagues.
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The Story of How the Magnitsky Act Was Born
Seldom does the death of a single person create shockwaves across the entire planet. However, when an ordinary Russian, a lowly accountant, was imprisoned and eventually died in a Russian prison, his name became a symbol for the struggle for human rights, and the reasons for a significant rift in the international community.
The Sergei Magnitsky Act, a law passed by the United states congress, sanctioned some of Russia’s business and political elite. The Russian government responded by stopping any citizens of the United States from adopting Russian children. The death of Magnitsky has stressed the world’s relations with Russia, continues to eat away at what little trust many have left for the corrupt Russian government, and has put the struggle for universal human rights back into the international spotlight.
But the story of the Magnitsky Act starts with humble beginnings, with a businessman, William Browder, setting up a meeting with a human rights advocate to speak about the plight of his tax lawyer. The story is told by Kyle Parker, the senior policy advisor for Russia at the U.S. Helsinki Commission, who spoke at Bowdoin College on Monday at an event called “From Chechnya to Pussy Riot: Human Rights and the Russian Reset.” The text below the audio is taken directly from the flyer for the event. – Ed.
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To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
