Destruction of Samples in Magnitsky Case Appears to be a Deliberate and Calculated Attempt to Prevent Justice
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today raised concerns over the cremation of tissue, organs, and other samples in the death investigation of 37-year-old lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Given the ongoing and controversial nature of the investigation, destruction of the samples by the Russian authorities is contrary to best practices within any judicial system.
Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer investigating a corruption case for a client, UK-based investment firm Hermitage Capital Management, died following 358 days in police custody in Moscow in November 2009. Magnitsky, who had uncovered an alleged $230 million tax fraud perpetrated by a group of senior police officers and government officials, was arrested on November 24, 2008 and charged with tax evasion. The high profile case has focused international attention on human rights abuse and corruption in Russia.
PHR’s experts, including a leading forensic pathologist, reviewed available documentation to provide an independent voice in support of the Magnitsky family. In April, Russian officials turned down a formal request by Magnitsky’s mother, seeking PHR’s independent investigation into her son’s tragic death.
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A Conversation with Garry Kasparov
World Policy Institute
For nearly three decades, since he first exploded onto the world scene, Garry Kasparov ruled the chessboard. A product of the Soviet system that elevated chess and its greatest champions to a pantheon reserved only for the most revered members of the elite, this grandmaster from the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan was at once worshipped and feared. Millions played this de facto national game in small, crowded, smoky rooms and vest-pocket parks across the Soviet Union. Those at the pinnacle of political power feared him as they watched, helplessly, the arrival of a popular outlander into their most hallowed precincts. At age 13, he won the Soviet junior championship, and within three years was rated number 15 in the world, becoming a grandmaster a year later.
It was in the final decade of the Soviet era that Kasparov rose to international fame. In January 1984, with just five years left until the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was the number 1 ranked chess player in the world. But ahead of him lay one last hurdle for the world title—Anatoly Karpov, darling of the nomenklatura, embraced by President Leonid Brezhnev and each of his successors as an example of the finest product of the Soviet system. To take on the Soviet chess establishment, Kasparov joined the Communist Party and just months later played Karpov in a marathon 48-game match, which concluded a year later with 24 more games, leaving Kasparov triumphant. By 1987, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Komsomol—the union of Soviet youth. But in November 1989, the wall came down, and the Soviet Union began its rapid disintegration. While Kasparov continued to play chess—brilliantly—he had begun to look beyond the chessboard to the new, open society that held so much promise, he hoped, for new beginnings.
Today, Kasparov has transcended his circumscribed beginnings and has sought to build a bridge from the game of chess to the transformation of the Russian government, a political game where the stakes are so much higher. A leader of Moscow’s liberal opposition, he is confident that the end is near for the system that for so long curbed his aspirations for a free Russia. And, even more broadly, there are profound lessons to be learned from the link between his game and the societies where its most accomplished players flourish, as he explained to World Policy Journal editor David A. Andelman and managing editor Christopher Shay.
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US business warns against Russian sanctions bill
A bill to punish Russian officials for alleged human rights abuses would badly damage U.S.-Russian ties and hurt U.S. exports, business groups said on Tuesday, two days before a key congressional panel will vote on the measure.
The bill would require the United States to deny visas and freeze the assets of Russians linked to the detention and death of Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-graft lawyer who died in a Russian jail in 2009 under suspicious circumstances.
The legislation is expected to win approval on Thursday in the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee, clearing the way for the full House to take up the measure, either on its own or part of a trade bill.
Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, whose members include major U.S. exporters such as Boeing, Microsoft and Caterpillar, told reporters on Tuesday the Magnitsky bill was “seriously flawed.”
He argued it would make it even harder to get Russia’s cooperation on issues ranging from Iran’s nuclear ambitions to Syria’s bloody crackdown on dissent.
U.S. companies also fear they will lose sales coming from Russia’s entry into the WTO because Moscow will retaliate by turning to other suppliers, Reinsch said.
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The Magnitsky Act: The Moment of Truth
This Thursday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will put the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act up for a vote. The bill seeks “to impose sanctions on persons responsible for the detention, abuse, or death of Sergei Magnitsky, and for other gross violations of human rights in the Russian Federation, and for other purposes.”
This past May, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak threatened to retaliate if the Magnitsky bill becomes law. Instead, the Kremlin should have acknowledged its failure to save a person’s life, conducted proper investigation, and thanked American lawmakers for trying to step in where Russian law enforcement failed so abysmally.
The death of Sergei Magnitsky in a Russian prison is a tragedy and demonstration of rampant corruption in the Russian state’s highest echelons. But it is also a symptom of graft and rampant crime blocking normal trade relations between the U.S. and Russia.
Sergei Magnitsky was a 37-year-old attorney and accountant who worked for Hermitage, then-the largest Western private equity fund in Russia. In the course of his work, he uncovered a giant corruption scheme that involved embezzlements of $230 million from the Russian Treasury by law enforcement and tax officials. After making accusations, he was arrested on fabricated tax evasion and tax fraud charges.
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Putin Opens a New European Offensive and Plays Hard-Ball with US
The Russia-EU summit that takes places today (June 4) in Strelna outside St. Petersburg was pre-scheduled as a routine event without any significant predicted achievements. But President Vladimir Putin did not want to start his new term at the helm of Russia’s foreign policy in such a boring way (Kommersant, June 2). In order to add more symbolism and intrigue, he paid his first official foreign visit to Belarus last Thursday and then proceeded with two blitz-visits to Germany and France (RIA Novosti, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, June 1). This activity was supposed to compensate for his decision not to attend the G8 summit at Camp-David two weeks ago and for Russia’s absence from the NATO summit in Chicago. It also marked the tenth anniversary of Putin’s visits to Berlin and Paris that formed the “triangle of old Europe,” which took a firm negative stance against the US intervention in Iraq (Gazeta.ru, May 31). No lasting rapprochement came out of that moment of unity, but for Putin it remains one of his cherished triumphs.
The visit to Minsk served to demonstrate more than just that the Russian-Belarusian integration project remains on track despite protracted quarrels and less than ideal personal chemistry (Kommersant, June 1). Putin brought some fresh aid to the struggling neighbor despite Belarus’s broken promises of letting Russian companies partake in its privatization program. Additionally, the Russian president effortlessly established that Belarus remains a legitimate member of the European family of nations despite the objects being raised in the West against the authoritarian habits of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (Moskovskie Novosti, June 1). This cordiality sent a signal to Ukraine that a compromise on gas prices is possible – and that its political price would not be that heavy, particularly since the EU pays no attention whatsoever to Kiev’s desperate pleas to receive assistance (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, June 1).
Putin’s intentions in France and Germany were far more serious than just getting acquainted with President Francois Hollande and re-introducing himself to the far-from-smitten Chancellor Angela Merkel. His overwhelming concern is about Gazprom’s retreat in the European market, where the volume of its gas deliveries contracted by as much as 20 percent in the first four months of 2012, compared with the same period a year ago (RBC Daily, May 30). Putin cannot grasp the paradox of the arrival of the “golden age of gas” that has turned energy export from a major political asset into a bad headache, thanks first of all to the “shale gas revolution” in the United States (Gazeta.ru, May 25). As the oil price goes south, Russia’s stock market cannot find a bottom. This denies Putin the advantage of a solid economic base in his attempts to exploit opportunities emerging out of the divisive euro-zone crisis (Newsru.com, May 30). Seeking to camouflage this weakness, Putin plays the few cards he presumes are his trumps to maximum effect, including Russia’s special position on the civil war in Syria.
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House takes lead on Russian human-rights bill
The House Foreign Affairs Committee this week will become the first panel to vote on human-rights legislation that lawmakers of both parties say is a precondition to normalizing trade relations with Russia.
The panel is scheduled to mark up the so-called Magnitsky bill, sponsored by U.S. Congressional Human Rights Commission co-chairman Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), on Thursday. The bill has the support of committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and is expected to easily pass the House despite Russian threats of retaliation.
“If this new anti-Russian law is adopted, then of course that demands measures in response,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Yuri Ushakov said last week.
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US trade representative to talk in Moscow on Jackson-Vanik repeal
ITAR TASS
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk will discuss in Moscow this week issues of US-Russia bilateral trade and economic cooperation in the context of the forthcoming Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), as well as the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment. He will meet with Russian officials, as well as representatives of the business community, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) reported on Sunday.
Kirk will begin his trip to Russia with a visit to Kazan, where a two-day meeting of trade ministers of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is opening on Monday. They will discuss issues of the development of regional economic integration, trade and investment liberalisation. In addition, the agenda of the meeting includes issues of improving transport and logistical chains, food security and intensive interaction for the strengthening of innovation-based growth.
After the forum, Ambassador Kirk will go to Moscow where on Wednesday he “will hold bilateral meetings with the Russian government” officials. The USTR Office has not specified with whom. The main issues under discussion are likely to be the forthcoming Russia’s accession to the WTO and the repeal by the US Congress of the notorious Jackson-Vanik amendment. Earlier, the US Congress began debate on the final normalisation of trade and economic relations with Russia in light of its WTO accession. For the full normalisation of trade relations with Russia, the US Congress should repeal the discriminatory Jackson-Vanik amendment – a relic of the Cold War that once linked trade-related issues with freedom of emigration from the USSR.
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EU-Russia Summit: deficiencies in the rule of law in Russia cannot be swept under the carpet. Tunne Kelam MEP, Laima Andrikiene MEP and Bernd Posselt MEP
EPP Group in European Parliament
“Concerns about deficiencies in the rule of law and the abuse of human rights in Russia cannot be swept under the carpet by EU leaders attending this weekend’s EU-Russia Summit”, said Members of the EPP Group Tunne Kelam, Laima Andrikiene and Bernd Posselt. “In particular, the cases of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Sergei Magnitsky should be raised. These summits are an opportunity for frank discussion and the EU should not lose this opportunity.”
“The EU’s dependence on Russian energy exports can sometimes make us reluctant to criticise the Kremlin and point out our concerns. However, if the EU really cares about its own values, it should not hesitate to stress those values to others. Russia is a member of the Council of Europe and must be held to its commitments under international law. This is no time to go soft on Russia”, said Laima Andrikiene MEP.
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Discussion about US Magnitsky Act
Voice of Russia (American Edition)
http://m.ruvr.ru/data/2012/05/31/1292300979/Rob_Pomerantz_Magnitsky_Bill_053012.mp3
Wiliam Pomerantz, Woodrow Wilson Centre, speaks to Voice of Russia about the comments made by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Ushakov, when he claimed that Russia would retaliate against the US if Congress pushed ahead with the Magnitsky Act.
The US Magnitsky Act, led in Congress by Senator Ben Cardin, would ban Russian government officials from entering the US if they were involved in the late layer’s torture and death in custody and it would also make their names public in order to ‘name and shame’ them.
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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
