Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Russia’s Dead Soul – A case of absurd Moscow justice.

The Wall Street Journal.

The Vladimir Putin era sometimes calls to mind Nicolai Gogol, a master of absurdist and biting social critiques of Czarist Russia. In the latest chapter, the prosecutor’s office in Moscow recently announced the reopening of a tax evasion case against Sergei Magnitsky, who has been dead for two years. A week earlier the Constitutional Court had declared that death was no impediment to the pursuit of justice, and the prosecutor even claimed that this investigation was for Magnitsky’s own good—to clear his name. The dead man’s family expressed “great wariness” on hearing the news.

Magnitsky was a lawyer at an American firm in Moscow whose clients included a Jewish rights group and an investment company, Hermitage Capital. In 2008, Magnitsky had claimed to unearth evidence of police corruption and embezzlement. Shortly thereafter, the police detained him on suspicion of helping Hermitage evade taxes. Magnitsky died after 11 months in police custody, at the age of 37.

His case illustrates Russia’s contempt for law and human rights, but it couldn’t be ignored when people outside Russia made a fuss. Senator Ben Cardin, the Maryland Democrat, last year called for officials implicated in Magnitsky’s case to be put on a visa blacklist and have their assets in the U.S. frozen. The State Department late last month slapped a visa ban on 60 Russians but minimized the impact by refusing to name them.

An organization called the Russian Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights investigated and found that Magnitsky was beaten and denied proper medical treatment, including for possible pancreatitis. The council, which reports to President Dmitry Medvedev, recommended that criminal cases be opened against the doctors who tended to Magnitsky and police investigators who interrogated him.

Mr. Medvedev says he wants to improve Russia’s rights record, but his efforts haven’t gotten far. That may have something to do with the reality that Mr. Putin—previously president and now prime minister—calls the shots in Russia. Another arm of the state that reports to Czar Putin, the ministry of interior, rebuffed the Medvedev council in a letter released last week, saying it saw “no reasons” to investigate, much less punish, police officials in connection with the Magnitsky case. So now it looks like the interrogators won’t be held to account for his death.

The title of Gogol’s classic “Dead Souls” refers indirectly to the deadened soul of Russia itself. It was published in 1842, and for obvious reasons it remains popular in Russia. срочный займ на карту онлайн срочный займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php zp-pdl.com займы на карту срочно

Justice for Viktor Bout!

Robert Amsterdam.com By JAMES KIMER

When it comes to Russian diplomacy, tit-for-tat is a natural reflex. We’ve seen it repeatedly from the expulsion of diplomats, awards given to Cold War spies, and peculiar analogies. While it’s all sadly childish, the measures usually don’t amount to anything meaningful or lasting.

However, the latest attempt at “asymmetric response,” as the Foreign Ministry likes to call it, is altogether more troubling. After a presidential declaration from Barack Obama that would put visa sanctions against certain Russian officials who had committed human rights abuses (ie, involvement in the Magnitsky and Khodorkovsky cases), as well as Sen. Cardin’s Magnitsky Act and other bills (S.1039), Russia is reportedly drawing up its own retaliatory list of U.S. citizens that would be forbidden from entering Russia.

According to a much discussed article in Kommersant, the Ministry has already cast a list of names for a visa blacklist which included U.S. officials linked to the cases of an alleged Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, and an alleged Russian drug smuggler, Konstantin Yaroshenko. Supposedly, in the minds of these officials, Bout and Yaroshenko are victims of injustice perpetrated by U.S. officials, serving as crass parables for figures such as Magnitsky and Khodorkovsky.

While the Russian version of the list hasn’t been made public and might not really exist in practice, the mentality behind this move is disturbing. On the one hand, why should the Russian government be working so hard to stand shoulder to shoulder with crooks like Artem Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov, two of the fellows who stole $230 million from the Russian taxpayers? Isn’t there a very important difference between responsible members of government and the people who got wrapped up in a blatantly criminal corruption scheme? For the vast majority of Russian citizens, these visa blacklists would never affect them … in fact, it resembles one small shred of hope that those who abuse their power may one day find it more difficult to scurry away their stolen funds for retirement in exile.

Nobody in Russia is even pretending that what happened to Magnitsky wasn’t an unpunished crime of the highest order. Even the president’s own Human Rights Council has determined that the lawyer’s death was caused by prison brutality, and yet no one has been held accountable for it. The retaliatory list is in this sense a “joke” for the Foreign Ministry, pulling out the ridiculous cases of people like Bout and Yakemenko … it’s the same sickness on display when they rushed to protect Andrei Lugovoi from extradition, the hapless but sexy spies, or the parades of congratulations for other convicted killers. It makes you wonder: if Anders Brevik were Russian, would be elected to Duma by now?

It’s not so much that Russian bureaucrats aren’t aware of the problems faced by certain state institutions – it’s rather the eagerness to dismiss them as fictional inventions of their enemies mixed with some classic nationalism leads reaches positively delusional levels.

It is easy to understand how deeply annoying and insulting it is when another country – especially one with such profound human rights issues of its own – begins lecturing you on how to handle certain cases. But the Russian government’s response puts them in a position of coddling some very bad people and a dysfunctional system, while also sending the message that it’s open season on the whistleblowers (ie – a posthumous criminal case against Magnitsky, perhaps just to break his mother’s heart a few more times).

If they wanted to really shut up those arrogant yankees, there’s another measure they could have taken: actually prosecuting somebody responsible for damaging Russia with their corruption instead of defending convenient mobsters. Instead Russia’s government is asking their citizens to pretend like those who commit fraud from their position in the Interior Ministry are heroes and patriots, and those who trafficked in guns and drugs are victims. It’s hard to know what’s more troubling – that we can’t займ на карту займы онлайн на карту срочно https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php hairy women

Russian Threats a Heavy Blow to Obama’s “Reset” Policy

The Foundry. By Ariel Cohen

The U.S. State Department appears to be preempting and diluting the Senate’s Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011 (S. 1039) by placing some Russian officials on a visa blacklist.

Last week, the State Department placed some 64 Russian officials on a visa blacklist that would prevent them from entering the United States. These Russian prosecutors and policemen all played a role in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the most famous whistleblower in post-communist Russian history.

Moscow’s position is as revealing as it is mind-boggling: It is ready to endanger the carefully constructed cooperation between U.S. and Russia in areas ranging from arms control to Afghanistan and Iran in order to protect a handful of corrupt police investigators and their high-ranking bosses who apparently stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the Russian state.

While the Russian Foreign Ministry loudly protests that the U.S. is being tough on Russia, the imposition of U.S. sanctions looks more like the State Department’s effort to prevent the Senate initiative and to save President Obama’s “reset” policy.

Russia has threatened to “respond asymmetrically” if the Magnitsky bill becomes law. In a tit-for-tat, President Dmitry Medvedev reportedly instructed the Foreign Ministry to draw up a list of U.S. officials who would be banned from Russia and prevented from banking there. These include prosecutors and other law enforcement officials working on cases of the arms dealer Victor Boot, who is accused of supplying weapons to terrorists, and pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who smuggled weapons and drugs and was nabbed by the U.S. in Africa.

Russian diplomacy now appears to fly cover for suspected organized criminals.

Much more serious are Russian threats to curb cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, and North Korea. If implemented, this would be the end of the reset.
The Obama Administration is clearly worried that inconvenient pressure from Congress is infuriating the Russians. It sure looks that it does. However, if the reset policy is truly based on mutual interests between Russia and the U.S., then cleaning the Augean stables of Russian corruption and criminality should not derail it.
Yet Moscow’s angry and overblown reaction to the visa ban against suspected criminals working for the Russian state clearly demonstrates its priorities and exposes its anti-Americanism. As Freedom House President and the former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the George W. Bush Administration David Kramer points out in a recent congressional hearing, if Russia is willing to hold back the reset solely based on the Magnitsky case, then the U.S. needs “to reexamine the relationship.”
So why is the State Department treating the Senate as an irritant? Unlike the Senate, the State Department did not implement asset freezes on questionable Russian officials. Foggy Bottom is against the Magnitsky bill and is campaigning for its defeat. However, according to Kramer, the bill has been integral in keeping the pressure on Russia and has “done more for the cause of human rights [in Russia] than anything done” by the two previous Administrations.

The U.S. policy toward Russia and other market authoritarians should be a balance of protecting American national interests and upholding American values. The cause of Sergei Magnitsky does that. The flagging “reset” policy does not.

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Russia works on response to US visa blacklist

The FT. By Charles Clover in Moscow

Russia is working on an “adequate” response to a US visa blacklist of Russian officials suspected of human rights violations, most likely creating a similar blacklist of US officials suspected of violating the rights of Russian citizens.

Last month, the US blacklist was made public in an effort by the administration to head off a piece of legislation which would impose even worse sanctions on suspected human rights violators in Russia.

On Wednesday, Moscow’s respected Kommersant newspaper said Russia’s foreign ministry had already drawn up a list of US officials who would be barred from entering Russia in a tit-for-tat response to the US ban.

However, a foreign ministry official, speaking anonymously to Russian news agency Interfax, said the final decision on how to respond to the US move had not yet been taken.

“It might be a list of Americans who would be prohibited from entering Russia, but so far the issue is still in the stage of development,” said the official.
The Kommersant article said Russia might retaliate against US officials involved in cases such as that of Viktor Bout, the alleged gun runner who was extradited from Thailand to the US last November. Another such case is that of convicted Russian drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was arrested by US special forces in Liberia last year.

“In the last few years we have regularly been witness to blatant violations of the rights of Russians, and the application of US laws to Russian citizens and Russian companies in an extraterritorial manner. This is unacceptable and must not go without a response,” Interfax quoted the official as saying.

The US visa blacklist, made public last month, was an attempt to dissuade US legislators from passing a bill known as the Magnitsky Act, named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer working for a US firm who died in prison in 2009. The Act would ban 60 Russian officials allegedly involved in his death, but also other Russian officials involved in torture, murder and wrongful detention in 22 other cases named in the bill’s text. The bill has been expanded to include not just travel bans, but asset freezes as well.

In publicising the visa ban, the state department was understood to be making the point that the US already prohibits visas to be given to those suspected of violating human rights, as such, there is no need for the additional legislation.

Russia’s government has threatened to retaliate “asymmetrically” if the Magnitsky Act were to be made into law, perhaps by slashing transport of supplies to Nato troops in Afghanistan through Russian territory, which is one of the fruits of the current thaw in Russian-US relations since 2009, known as the “reset”.
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Foreign Ministry Drafts Retaliatory Blacklist of U.S. Officials

The Moscow Times. By Nikolaus von Twickel

The government on Wednesday offered the first glimpse of a retaliatory blacklist compiled in response to Washington’s decision to slap travel restrictions on Russian officials implicated in the 2009 prison death of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The Foreign Ministry confirmed that it has drawn up a list of U.S. officials who might be banned, but stressed that no final decision has been made, Interfax reported.

The ministry declined further comment, but Kommersant reported that the “dozens of names” on the preliminary list include U.S. agents responsible for the arrest of businessman Viktor Bout and pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko.

Bout was arrested on arms-smuggling charges in Thailand in 2008 and extradited to the United States last November. Yaroshenko was arrested last summer on drug-smuggling charges in Liberia. Both are currently in U.S. prisons and awaiting trial amid angry complaints from Moscow that their rights were violated.

Bout’s lawyer Viktor Burobin told Kommersant that he believed three agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, who participated in his client’s arrest were on the list. The report said another DEA agent was probably blacklisted in connection with Yaroshenko’s arrest.

The blacklist tit-for-tat originated with the case of Magnitsky, whose supporters say he was tortured and killed by a group of 60 corrupt law enforcement officials in a trumped-up case. They have championed Western governments to impose sanctions against those officials, including one who arrested Magnitsky after he accused him and others in the group of stealing $230 million in government funds.

The United States became the first country to do so last month when the State Department announced that it had blacklisted dozens of officials but fewer than the 60 implicated in the Magnitsky case.

The State Department has said the measures were part of a broader program to refuse U.S. visas to individuals guilty of human rights abuses, but a leaked memo makes it clear that the decision was more an attempt by President Barack Obama’s administration to stop a Senate bill that advocates targeting a much wider group of Russians with tougher sanctions.

President Dmitry Medvedev’s spokeswoman Natalya Timakova has denounced the blacklist as a fallback to the Cold War, and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said this week that Washington has damaged ties with Moscow.

“We see this as an attempt to draw political profit from an extremely complex issue that is totally unclear,” he told Kommersant, referring to the Magnitsky case.

Ryabkov stressed that no final decision has been made about the Russian blacklist. “We have drafts that contain various people from various agencies. Right now [they] are being discussed,” he said.

Talk of a retaliatory blacklist has been ongoing for months in Moscow. In June, State Duma deputies announced a bill that would enable the authorities to freeze blacklisted foreigners’ assets in Russian banks and ban them from conducting business in Russia.

Maxim Rokhmistrov, first deputy chairman of the Liberal Democrat Party’s Duma faction, said the bill was not connected to the Foreign Ministry’s blacklist. “Deputies won’t decide who to ban. We just want to make it easier for the executive branch to make the necessary decisions,” he told The Moscow Times.

Critics have derided these retaliatory steps as empty talk because unlike Russian officials, some of whom even send their children to U.S. schools, American officials are highly unlikely to have vested interests in Russia.

But Ryabkov denied that a blacklist was an unrealistic sanction, suggesting that the Foreign Ministry would target Americans with ties to Russia.

“These are people with ties to Russian-American relations, including humanitarian issues. Any American responsible for rights violations against Russian citizens can end up on that list,” he said.

But not everybody was impressed.

Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the Kremlin’s retaliation was pure farce because it aimed to protect officials suspected of stealing state assets. “The reaction to the Magnitsky blacklist shows that Russia is prepared to openly protect criminals and corrupt individuals, even when it runs counter to its national interests,” she said by telephone.

She said the Foreign Ministry’s talk of symmetric retaliation only put the country back into the role of the Soviet Union. “It shows that they are still prone to the illusion of a bipolar world,” she said. быстрые займы на карту hairy woman zp-pdl.com zp-pdl.com микрозаймы онлайн

Russia bars US officials to take revenge over Magnitsky case

The Independent. Europe. By Shaun Walker in Moscow

Russia has drawn up a list of Americans who are banned from entering the country, in a tit-for-tat response to a US move to blacklist dozens of Russian officials accused of involvement in the death of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, relations between Moscow and Washington have undergone a much-vaunted “reset”, but the Magnitsky case is aggravating tension, with Moscow furious at what it sees as pressure and interference in its internal affairs.

Sergey Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, told the respected daily Kommersant yesterday that Russia’s retaliatory list would include “people who cause problems in Russian-American relations”.

Another source in the foreign ministry told the paper that the list involved “people who took part in the cases against, for example, Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko”.

Mr Bout was extradited to the US from Thailand in November 2010 on suspicion of weapons trafficking, after being arrested when he allegedly offered to sell weapons to US agents posing as Colombian rebels. He has denied all the charges and says he is a legitimate businessman.

Mr Yaroshenko, a cargo pilot, was detained last year in Liberia and was convicted in April by an American court of attempting to smuggle drugs into the US via Latin America. Russia says that that the Americans essentially kidnapped Mr Yaroshenko and extradited him from a third country without their permission.

The exact names of the people on the Russian list have not been made public, and the popular Russian website Snob joked that it was possible that Nicholas Cage was among the people placed on the Russian blacklist. The Hollywood actor played a shady arms dealer loosely based on the character of Mr Bout in the 2005 film Lord of War.

The original American list contains officials from the interior ministry and prosecutor’s office implicated in Mr Magnitsky’s death. He died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after being charged with helping the investment fund Hermitage Capital evade taxes. He denied the charges, and his supporters say they were trumped up by corrupt officials trying to cover up an enormous tax fraud that the lawyer had uncovered.

William Browder, the founder and chief executive of Hermitage, has accused Russia of attempting to cover for those behind the alleged fraud, and said yesterday it was cynical to equate the cases of Mr Bout and Mr Yaroshenko with the Magnitsky case.

“Now that the US government is banning those torturers and murderers involved in the Magnitsky case from coming to the US, instead of prosecuting any of the key people involved, the Russians are retaliating by imposing their own sanctions on US officials prosecuting Russian arms dealers and drug smugglers,” Mr Browder said.

Labour MP Chris Bryant told The Independent yesterday that he believes the Russian officials on the US blacklist should also be banned from the UK. “I have provided a list to the Home Office and strongly pushed that they should not allow any of these people visas to the UK,” unshaven girls онлайн займ https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php buy over the counter medicines

Turmoil Continues in Magnitsky Case

The Other Russia.

Developments continued this week in the case of the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, with the United States and Russia at odds over visa sanctions and lawsuits flying from all sides.

On August 9, a Moscow regional court threw out a slander case by investigator Pavel Karpov against a group of human rights activists who say Karpov was found to have stolen budgetary money during the Magnitsky investigation.

Meanwhile, another slander lawsuit by Federal Prosecutor Andrei Pechegin against Magnitsky’s colleague, lawyer Jamison Firestone, is still ongoing. Pechegin is demanding that Firestone recant his statements that the prosecutor worked to hinder an objective investigation of the theft of 5.4 billion rubles from the Russian federal budget – which Magnitsky was investigating prior to his death – and also for persecuting Magnitsky.

Also on Tuesday, Magnitsky’s colleagues made a request for materials on 20 rejected complaints that he had made while being held in a Moscow pretrial detention facility, mostly regarding his deteriorating health condition.

For example, Magnitsky filed formal complaints that he was being denied medical procedures to treat pancreatitis and gallstones, that he was being unlawfully persecuted, and that his other rights were being violated. However, Prosecutor Pechegin had rejected these complaints and responded that there had been no physical or psychological pressure on Magnitsky and that there was no basis for any reaction on his part.

Russia has recently come under increasing international pressure as a result of Sergei Magnitsky’s death. On July 27, the US State Department announced a visa ban on several dozen Russia officials connected with the case, including a number from Russia’s federal security services, which the US considers party to Magnitsky’s “torture and murder.”

Russia responded with a statement that it would be introducing retaliatory sanctions against a group of American officials. Reports surfaced on Wednesday that the list had been prepared, which the Russian Internal Ministry denied. hairy woman payday loan https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php https://zp-pdl.com/apply-for-payday-loan-online.php займ на карту онлайн

EU mulls sanctions against RF officials over Magnitsky case

ITAR-TASS World Service.

LONDON, August 11 (Itar-Tass) — The European Union cannot exclude the possible introduction of punitive measures against a number of Russian citizens in connection with the Magnitsky case, spokesman for the European External Action Service (EEAS) Michael Mann has said.

If the Russian authorities fail to conduct an adequate investigation into the causes and circumstances of the death of Magnitsky, taking steps with regard to Russian officials cannot be excluded, he noted.

Last month, the US Department of State imposed visa sanctions against Russian citizens figuring in the so-called “Magnitsky list.” Michael Mann made it clear on Thursday that it is possible that the European Union can also take several measures in connection with the case, unless a due investigation of the case is conducted and those responsible for the law violations punished.

“It is of great importance for Russia’s future that this case is investigated properly by the Russian judicial authorities, and that those responsible for any wrongdoing are brought to justice,” EEAS spokesman Michael Mann said in a written statement to EUobserver. “Should this not take place, we cannot exclude further reactions by the EU or its member states.”

The statement was sent in answer to questions if the EU will follow the US in imposing a visa ban on 60 Russian officials believed to have embezzled 160 million euros in tax money and killed Magnitsky when he exposed the scam.

The US took the step in July despite Russian threats of retaliation – Russian daily Kommersant on Wednesday (10 August) reported that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered his own blacklist of “several dozen” US officials.

The deadline for any EU reaction is late August when the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation is expected to complete its probe into the Magnitsky affair. The committee has so far named two prison doctors for giving him inadequate medical treatment. Magnitsky’s mother and his former employer, UK-based venture capitalist Bill Browder, see it as a bid to scapegoat junior officials while letting senior suspects, such as the head of the Moscow tax authority, Olga Stepanova, off the hook. Two recent developments augur badly for EU requests to see justice, according to EUobserver.

In July the interior ministry voided the findings of Medvedev’s Human Rights Council after it said ministry officials were guilty of stealing money and that Magnitsky was murdered in prison. Last week the ministry said it will prosecute the deceased lawyer for alleged tax evasion. The move is widely seen as a smear campaign. “The Russian government has shown no intention of prosecuting the real culprits at high levels in the interior ministry who tortured and killed Sergei Magnitsky. As a result, there has been a distinct shift in the attitude of the EU toward this case,” Browder noted. “Ultimately, the EU will follow the US in imposing visa sanctions and eventually both will freeze the assets of those people responsible.”

Magnitsky was a Firestone Duncan attorney representing a UK-based investment advisory firm Hermitage Capital Management on trumped-up charges of tax evasion and tax fraud. He was a specialist in civil law. Over the years of its operation, Hermitage had supplied information to the press on a number of occasions related to corporate and governmental misconduct in alleged corruption within state-owned Russian enterprises. Company co-founder Bill Browder was soon expelled from Russia as a national threat, though Browder himself has indicated that he represented only a threat “to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats,” believing that the ouster was conducted to leave his company open for exploitation. In November 2005, Browder arrived in Moscow to be told his visa had been annulled. He was deported the next day and has not seen his Moscow home for 10 years.

In June 4, 2007, Hermitage’s office was raided by the police. The offices of Firestone Duncan, Hermitage’s law firm, were also raided. In both cases, tax documents were stolen. In October 2007, Browder received word that one of the firms maintained in Moscow had a judgement against it for an alleged unpaid debt. This was the first Browder had heard of it, according to him.

Magnitsky was arrested and imprisoned at the Butyrka prison in Moscow in November 2008 after being accused of colluding with Hermitage. Held for 11 months without trial, he was, as reported by The Telegraph, “denied visits from his family” and “forced into increasingly squalid cells.” He developed gall stones, pancreatitis and calculous cholecystitis, for which he was given inadequate medical treatment during his incarceration. Surgery was ordered in June, but never performed; detention centre chief Ivan P. Prokopenko later indicated that he “…did not consider Magnitsky sick…Prisoners often try to pass themselves off as sick, in order to get better conditions.”

On November 16, eight days before he would have had to have been released if he were not brought to trial, Magnitsky died for reasons attributed first by prison officials as a “rupture to the abdominal membrane” and later to heart attack. онлайн займы займ на карту онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php срочный займ

EU ‘cannot exclude’ US-type sanctions on Russian officials

EU Observer. BY ANDREW RETTMAN

RELATED Russia dashes EU hopes in high-profile murder probe US visa ban on Russian officials poses questions for EU Dutch minister ignores parliament on Russia sanctions.

The EU has said it “cannot exclude” the possibility of punitive measures against Russian officials if Moscow fails to adequately investigate the alleged murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

“It is of great importance for Russia’s future that this case is investigated properly by the Russian judicial authorities, and that those responsible for any wrongdoing are brought to justice,” European External Action Service spokesman Michael Mann said in a written statement to EUobserver.

“Should this not take place, we cannot exclude further reactions by the EU or its member states.”

The statement was sent in answer to questions if the EU will follow the US in imposing a visa ban on 60 Russian officials believed to have embezzled €160 million in tax money and killed Magnitsky when he exposed the scam.

The US took the step in July despite Russian threats of retaliation – Russian daily Kommersant on Wednesday (10 August) reported that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered his own blacklist of “several dozen” US officials.

The deadline for any EU reaction is late August when the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation is expected to complete its probe into the Magnitsky affair.

The committee has so far named two prison doctors for giving him inadequate medical treatment.

Magnitsky’s mother and his former employer, UK-based venture capitalist Bill Browder, see it as a bid to scapegoat junior officials while letting senior suspects, such as the head of the Moscow tax authority, Olga Stepanova, off the hook.

Two recent developments augur badly for EU requests to see justice.

In July the interior ministry voided the findings of Medvedev’s Human Rights Council after it said ministry officials were guilty of stealing money and that Magnitsky was murdered in prison.

Last week the ministry said it will prosecute the deceased lawyer for alleged tax evasion. The move is widely seen as a smear campaign.

“The Russian government has shown no intention of prosecuting the real culprits at high levels in the interior ministry who tortured and killed Sergei Magnitsky. As a result, there has been a distinct shift in the attitude of the EU toward this case,” Browder told this website.

“Ultimately, the EU will follow the US in imposing visa sanctions and eventually both will freeze the assets of those people responsible.”

PRESS ARTICLE Moscow draws up blacklist of US officials
STATEMENT Russian foreign ministry statement on US sanctions
VIDEO Russian ‘untouchables’ video
TAGS External Action Service Tax
RELATED Russia dashes EU hopes in high-profile murder probe US visa ban on Russian officials poses questions for EU Dutch minister ignores parliament on Russia sanctions займ на карту займ онлайн https://zp-pdl.com zp-pdl.com займ срочно без отказов и проверок