Browder Expects Broader Magnitsky List Sanctions for Russian Officials in U.S., Europe
The United States may publish the extended version of the “Magnitsky list” as early as next month, while Europe is expected to pass a similar measure, Hermitage Capital investment fund president and bill supporter William Browder said.
The Magnitsky Act, enacted by the U.S. Congress in December 2012 and named after late Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, imposed personal sanctions on Russian officials responsible for human rights violations and obstructing the rule of law.
“The law is only one year old now,” an assistant to U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, who helped draft the bill, said in an interview for the Voice of America. “We are at the very beginning of its implementation process and anticipate its expansion both here in the U.S. and Europe.”
Executive Director of U.S.-based human rights NGO Freedom House David Kramer said his organization is currently working with lawmakers in several countries to “try to advance the adoption of a similar law as early as next year.”
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers say they are unaware of U.S. plans to expand the “Magnitsky list” or European intentions to pass similar legislation, Interfax reported.
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EU Lawmakers Expand Effort to Sanction Russian Rights Abusers
As the US administration readies its first annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Magnitsky Act, the law imposing visa and financial sanctions on Russian human rights abusers, European legislators are preparing a strategy to move forward with their own sanctions package. Last week, the European Parliament hosted the first meeting of the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Inter-Parliamentary Group, which brings together lawmakers from 13 countries (11 of them from the European Union) and an advisory board that includes representatives from Russia (among them, the author of this blog). The aim of the new coalition is to coordinate between the national parliaments and the European Parliament on the best way to move forward with barring Russian officials implicated in corruption and human rights violations from visiting and stowing their assets in EU member states and Canada.
The Magnitsky Act, passed by the US Congress last year with vast bipartisan majorities (365 to 43 in the House; 92 to 4 in the Senate), was, despite Kremlin assertions to the country, the most pro-Russian law ever adopted in a foreign country. With corruption and political repression being the founding pillars of Russia’s current regime, and with no independent judiciary to protect Russian citizens from abuse, external individual sanctions on those who commit these offenses are the only way to end the impunity. According to a Levada Center poll, 44 percent of Russians support US and EU visa bans on officials who engage in human rights violations, with only 21 percent opposing, and this despite constant attempts by the Putin regime to present individual sanctions against crooks and abusers as “sanctions against Russia”—an insulting equivalence for the country. Leading Russian opposition figures and human rights activists are publicly supporting the Magnitsky sanctions; many of their testimonies have been included in a new book edited by Elena Servettaz, Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law, which was presented in European capitals and Washington DC.
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Press Statement: Fourth Anniversary of Magnitskiy’s Death
Press Statement
Jen Psaki
Department Spokesperson
Washington, DC
November 15, 2013
We honor the memory of Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitskiy, who died November 16, 2009 in a Moscow prison after making corruption allegations against Russian officials.
Despite widely publicized, credible evidence of criminal conduct resulting in Magnitskiy’s death, Russian authorities have failed to bring to justice those responsible. Instead, in a posthumous trial earlier this year, a Russian court found Magnitskiy guilty in a criminal case.
We continue to call for full accountability for those responsible for Magnitskiy’s unjust imprisonment and wrongful death and we will continue to fully support the efforts of those in Russia who seek to bring these individuals to justice, including through implementation of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. быстрые займы онлайн онлайн займ https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/apply-for-payday-loan-online.php payday loan
Rogue states: Cross-border policing can be political
FOUR years ago this week the whistle-blowing accountant Sergei Magnitsky died in jail from beatings and abuse, having uncovered a $230m fraud against the Russian state. His client Bill Browder, a London-based financier, has been campaigning to punish those responsible with visa bans and asset freezes. But the Russian authorities have retaliated and are trying to extradite him on fraud charges, using Interpol, the world police co-operation body.
No Western country is likely to send Mr Browder to Moscow. But his travel plans are stymied by the risk of arrest . He had to cancel a visit to Sweden last month to talk to a parliamentary committee. Only after weeks of lobbying did the country’s police remove Mr Browder from their database. Germany, France and Britain have also publicly snubbed Russia’s request.
Interpol notes that its constitution prohibits “activities of a political, military, religious or racial character”; governments are not supposed to use it to settle scores with their opponents. Nevertheless its “Red Notices”, which seek the discovery and arrest of wanted persons for extradition, are open to abuse. Once issued, a Red Notice encourages—though it does not oblige—190 countries to detain the person named. 8,136 were given out last year, an increase of 160% since 2008. Interpol insists that it is not a judicial body: “queries” concerning allegations are “a matter for the relevant national authorities to address”.
But Mr Browder’s case is just one of many arousing controversy. Three years ago Algeria issued a Red Notice against Henk Tepper, a Canadian potato farmer, in a row involving export paperwork and suspect spuds. He was released in March after a year in a Lebanese jail and wants to sue the Canadian government for not protecting his rights. Interpol took 18 months to accept that the Red Notice issued against Patricia Poleo, a Venezuelan investigative journalist, by her government was politically motivated. Indonesia pursued Benny Wenda, a West Papuan tribal leader who ended up marooned in Britain; Belarus hounded an opposition leader, Ales Michalevic, when he fled to Poland.
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Lawmakers From 21 Countries Form Magnitsky Group
Lawmakers from 21 countries have formed a commission to promote sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the prison death of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
The Justice for Sergei Magnitsky commission, which was holding its inaugural meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday, includes lawmakers from Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Poland and 15 other countries.
It is headed by Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister and attorney general who served as lawyer to prominent prisoners of conscience such as Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Natan Sharansky in the Soviet Union, according to its website.
“This will be the inaugural launch of a global, coordinated campaign to impose Magnitsky sanctions internationally,” Cotler said in an e-mailed statement.
“The Magnitsky case has come to represent all that’s wrong with Putin’s Russia,” he added. “By forming the inter-parliamentary group on the Magnitsky case, we hope to give expression to the best initiatives from parliaments around the world and implement them across the countries represented by parliamentarians participating in this group.”
The group timed its first meeting with the fourth anniversary of Magnitsky’s death on Nov. 16, 2009, said a spokesman for Hermitage Capital, once Russia’s largest foreign investment fund and the employer of Magnitsky at the time of his death.
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Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law: Should the EU follow the US?
Registration: Click here to register.
Kraft Center (606 West 115th Street, between Broadway and Riverside)
Please join the Harriman Institute for a panel discussion with Elena Servattaz, editor of Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law: Should the EU follow the US? and Radio France Internationale staff correspondent and anchor, and William Browder, CEO of Hermitage, current head of the global campaign for justice for Sergei Magnitisky and his former employer. The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Alexander Cooley, Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at Barnard College.
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Tax Official Cleared in Magnitsky Case
Russian investigators cleared a Moscow tax official off the “Magnitsky list” who was implicated in a $230 million swindle.
The Investigative Committee said it found no evidence that Olga Stepanova was involved in the alleged tax return fraud scheme, Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Friday.
The committee was also cited as saying it could not question two other tax officials linked to the case. It said earlier they have left the country.
Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has claimed that Stepanova authorized an illegal tax return in 2007 that robbed companies linked to Hermitage of 5.4 billion rubles ($230 million).
Magnitsky was himself arrested after the exposé on unrelated tax evasion charges he called fabricated.
He died in custody in 2009 of health problems amid claims that he was denied treatment and subjected to physical abuse.
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Andy McSmith’s Diary: Magnitsky’s law will be the legacy he deserved
Next week will mark a grim anniversary, four years to the day since a Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died of ill treatment in prison because he refused to end his lone campaign to expose corrupt officials who had embezzled more than £140 million from Russian taxpayers.
Unfortunately for his persecutors, Magnitsky wrote everything down, including names. An act passed by the US Congress empowers the American government to refuse visas and freeze assets of the people on his list, but nothing prevents them coming to London, where one even tried to bring a libel case that was thrown out of court.
Today, there was a ceremony in the Commons to launch a book by a young Paris based Russian journalist, Elena Servettaz, who has collected essays from more than 50 people, including 19 from Russia or Belarus, who want more governments to pass a Magnitsky Law, something neither the UK nor the EU is keen to do.
Magnitsky’s widow, Natalya Zharikova, was there. She told me: “This book shows how many people cared about Sergei.” So was William Browder, the London based investment fund manager who hired Magnitsky to represent his firm and so feels a personal responsibility for what became of him – and who is, by the way, the grandson of Earl Browder, war time head of the American Communist Party.
The Tory MP Dominic Raab is pushing for a British Magnitsky Law. “I don’t want the henchmen of despots and dictators waltzing into this country spending their money or sending their kids to school here. That offends me,” he said.
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Investigative Committee chief Bastrykin would be honored to be put on Magnitsky list
rbth.co.uk
Russian Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin says he would be honored to be included in the so-called ‘Magnitsky list’, i.e. a list of Russian officials the U.S. sees as responsible for human rights abuses, whom Washington plans to deny entry to the country.
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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
