Russia’s casualties of the new Cold War
“If we are slapped in the face, we must retaliate, otherwise they will keep on slapping us.” Thus spoke the Russian President Vladimir Putin, just before he signed into law the Dima Yakovlev bill, which bans the adoption of Russian orphans by US foster parents.
The American slap to which Mr Putin was responding was a new law that bans Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses from entering the US or having property there. Dubbed the Magnitsky act, the law primarily focuses on officials allegedly involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer who died in a Moscow prison in 2009.
Furious at this perceived meddling in Russian internal affairs, Russia decided to go beyond a mere tit-for-tat response. As well as drawing its own reciprocal list of US officials to ban from Russia, the Kremlin went one step further and banned adoptions, a move which has become one of the most controversial pieces of legislation of Mr Putin’s 12-year tenure as Russia’s leader. Rather than a retaliatory slap, say a growing number of critics, the bill appears more like shooting oneself in the foot to prove a point.
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Putin Aide Says U.S. Holds Key to Improving Ties
Strained U.S.-Russian ties will not improve unless Washington stops openly criticizing Moscow’s human rights record and supporting President Vladimir Putin’s foes, the top foreign policy official in the Russian parliament said.
Relations between the Cold War-era rivals took a dive after Putin’s return to the Kremlin in May, undermining a 2009 initiative by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russia’s then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, a more liberal Putin protege, to “reset” ties.
Alexei Pushkov, head of the international affairs committee in parliament’s lower chamber and a Putin ally, said the ties were “negatively stable” now and the “reset” could be considered over without an initiative on the highest political level to save it.
“The priority is political realism. Ideology matters should be secondary. I tell you, issues over ideology and values can destroy anything,” Pushkov said in an interview.
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Artists’ spat over Putin joins a Russian tradition
When famed viola player Yuri Bashmet declared that he “adored” President Vladimir Putin, he stirred little controversy in a country where classical musicians have often curried favor with the political elite.
But political drama spilled into the orchestra pit last month when Bashmet refused to condemn a new law prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian children, and in response the beloved singer Sergei Nikitin canceled his appearance at a concert celebrating the violist’s 60th birthday.
The spat joins a long Russian tradition of artists who have jumped — or been dragged — into the political fray. From composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who lived in fear of arrest under dictator Josef Stalin, to the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who returned to a liberalizing Soviet Union in 1991 and took up arms to defy Communist hardliners, Russian musicians and other artists have had a habit of becoming politicized figures.
At the core of the argument today is a question about what an artist’s role should be in Putin’s Russia: Attracting generous state funding for bigger and better artistic projects? Or challenging the political system in a way most ordinary citizens cannot afford to do?
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Russia opens trial of dead lawyer Magnitsky
A Russian court has opened the fraud trial against Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after accusing state officials of a multimillion-dollar tax scam.
The posthumous trial on Monday was initially scheduled for last December, but the judge adjourned the hearing after his family’s defence lawyers refused to participate, saying trying a dead man was illegal.
Because no lawyer for the Magnitsky family showed up, the judge ordered the lawyers association to appoint a defense attorney for the next preliminary hearing on February 18.
“Participation in this process is illegal and immoral,” Nikolay Gorokhov said in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Emma Hayward.
“Sergei Magnitsky’s mother and I characterise it as dancing on the bones of a dead man because you can not prosecute someone who is dead.”
The whistleblowing lawyer’s family has also refused to participate saying it is politically motivated.
“I think it is inhuman to try a dead man,” Magnitsky’s mother Natalya told Reuters news agency by telephone. “This is not a court case but some kind of farce, and I will not take part in it.”
Magnitsky was 37 when he died after 358 days in jail, during which he said he was denied treatment as his health declined. The Kremlin’s own human rights council aired suspicions he was beaten to death.
Russian authorities said he died of a heart attack, but his former employer, investment fund Hermitage Capital, says he was killed because he was investigating a $230m theft by law enforcement and tax officials through fraudulent tax refunds.
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Russia Hires Goldman to Boost Investor Image Abroad
Russia hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) to boost its image abroad as the most corrupt country among the Group of 20 last year seeks to attract foreign investors.
The Economy Ministry and the Russian Direct Investment Fund have signed a memorandum with Goldman under which the New York- based bank will advise on issues such as communicating government decisions, according to Deputy Economy Minister Sergei Belyakov. State-owned banks including OAO Sberbank (SBER) and VTB Group will also assist, he said.
“We don’t know how to communicate with investors,” Belyakov told reporters today in Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin last year ordered the government to improve Russia’s standing in the World Bank’s Doing Business rating to 20th by 2018. It climbed eight positions to 112 in the latest study, issued in October. While that’s better than BRIC peers India and Brazil, Russia is still the worst among major economies in terms of graft, Transparency International said last month in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index.
The world’s largest energy exporter plans to raise a record $10 billion from asset sales this year, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said in an interview with Bloomberg Television this month. While corruption continues to be an issue, it’s less of an issue for foreign investors who have already committed to Russia, Shuvalov said.
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Russia presses on with plans to try dead whistleblower
Russia pushed forward with plans for the posthumous trial of a lawyer on tax evasion charges on Monday, despite a boycott by relatives and lawyers who said President Vladimir Putin’s government was “dancing on the grave of a dead man”.
Sergei Magnitsky died in 2009 after complaining repeatedly he was denied treatment as his health declined in jail, prompting the United States last month to bar entry to Russians accused of involvement in his death or serious rights abuses.
Putin, restored to the presidency in May, has dismissed the international furor over the case, saying last month the lawyer had died of a heart attack.
Although Putin has rejected suggestions Magnitsky was tortured in prison, the Kremlin’s own human rights council has voiced suspicions he was beaten to death.
Magnitsky’s former employer, investment fund Hermitage Capital, says the lawyer was killed because he had accused law enforcement and tax officers of stealing $230 million from the state by setting up bogus tax refunds.
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Fate of Europe’s common currency linked to murder
EU faces a dilemma — prop up Cyprus despite it role as a money-laundering tax haven for Russian robber barons or risk collapse of the euro
In an extraordinary twist in the story of the European Union’s troubled common currency, the fate of the euro is now linked to the murder of a Moscow lawyer and the laundering of billions of dollars in ill-gotten money by Russian oligarchs through their favourite tax haven, the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
For months, the Communist president member Cyprus, Demetris Christofias, has been appealing for the equivalent of $22.7 billion to bail out his island’s troubled economy, which like 16 other members of the 27-member European Union uses the euro as its currency.
But there is mounting resistance among EU governments to coming to the aid of the Cyprus government because of the island’s role as a tax haven and money laundering route for Russian billionaire oligarchs.
European governments are also outraged by the story that a Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was tortured to death in a Russian prison in 2009 after revealing that Russian tax authorities bilked a British investment fund of $230 million and laundered some of the money through Cyprus.
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The Still-Clenched Fist in Moscow
This year is shaping up to be a worrying one for Russian President Vladimir Putin. After a long delay, the U.S. Congress finally passed the Magnitsky Act last month, committing to travel and banking sanctions against the Russian government officials who turn the wheels of Mr. Putin’s repressive machine. Taking aim at the apparatchiks this way can shake the entire Kremlin power structure.
It remains to be seen whether the State Department will vigorously enforce the law, having attempted to scuttle it before Congress passed it. But with proper enforcement, the law could undermine the standard mafia-boss promise that governs Mr. Putin’s ruling clique—”Stay loyal to me and I will protect you, no matter your crimes.”
A generation of Western leaders has accepted Mr. Putin and allowed him largely to back up this boast. Russian oligarchs shop for English soccer clubs and Manhattan penthouses while corrupt judges and vicious security officers enjoy their foreign holidays. Alexander Sidyakin, the member of parliament who co-wrote recent laws cracking down on protests and nongovernmental organizations, has vacationed on both coasts of the U.S. while publicly vilifying America.
The Kremlin responded to the Magnitsky Act by banning American adoption of Russian orphans (through a bill co-written by Mr. Sidyakin). This brutal policy can be understood only as a sneer from Mr. Putin to emphasize that he is capable of anything. The message of ruthlessness was meant not only for the West but for the millions of Russians who marched in protest of Mr. Putin’s rule last year.
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Corruption and Cover-Up in the Kremlin: The Anatoly Serdyukov Case
At the World Economic Forum at Davos on Wednesday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was asked the inevitable question about Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian attorney who exposed a $230 million tax fraud perpetrated by organized criminals and Russian state officials, only to then be blamed for the crime himself. He died in prison in 2009, when Medvedev was president, after being tortured and denied medical attention, as Medvedev’s own Presidential Human Rights Council concluded. Magnitsky’s name has since been woven into US human rights law following the passage and presidential signing of a bill that would sanction and blacklist Russians complicit in his persecution as well as any other individuals credibly accused of “gross violations of human rights,” such as, say, Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov. This legislation has driven the Kremlin to paroxysms of anti-American hysteria, culminating in the Duma’s recent ban on American adoptions of Russian orphans.
Nevertheless, the Russian prime minister was unimpressed. Although he professed to feel “pity” for Magnitsky, Medvedev described him as no ” truth seeker,” just “a corporate lawyer or an accountant and he defended the interests of the people who hired him” — a reference to Magnitsky’s former client, William Browder, whose investment fund, Hermitage Capital, was used as the vehicle for transacting the tax fraud. (Browder is almost singlehandedly responsible for turning the plight of his slain lawyer into an international human rights scandal and, consequentially, an American law).
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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
