European Parliament Committee Backs Magnitsky Sanctions
The European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has proposed that 32 Russian officials be sanctioned by the EU due to their involvement in the death of Russian whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The European Parliament had previously called on EU member states to emulate the United States’ so-called Magnitsky List and freeze assets and impose visa bans on Russian officials, but certain European countries have blocked any such move.
However, after the March 17 decision by EU foreign ministers to sanction 13 Russian officials and an additional eight Crimeans for their roles in the crisis in Ukraine, there are hopes that EU member states might change their minds.
It is also the first time the European Parliament has presented the names of those they want punished.
The whole European Parliament is expected to overwhelmingly endorse the proposal during its April plenary. hairy woman онлайн займ https://zp-pdl.com www.zp-pdl.com займы онлайн на карту срочно
A European Magnitsky List
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament voted on Tuesday to sanction 32 Russian officials involved in the persecution of Sergei Magnitsky, the Moscow lawyer who died in custody in 2009 after exposing official graft. The legislation follows America’s 2012 Magnitsky Act that currently targets 18 officials. When the European Parliament convenes in April, passage would send a signal that Russia’s neighbors will no longer ignore the nature of the Putin regime.
The bill would require all EU states to impose a “visa ban on these officials and to freeze any financial assets that they, or their immediate family, may hold within the European Union.” Among them are a number of Interior Ministry officers, including Oleg Logunov, who as head of the legal department of the ministry’s investigative committee was instrumental in Magnitsky’s unlawful detention. Also included is Igor Alisov, the judge who presided over Magnitsky’s Kafkaesque posthumous “tax-evasion” trial, and who read a “guilty” verdict to an empty defendant’s cage in 2013.
Europe may be tardy in targeting Magnitsky’s killers, but the Obama Administration’s record is worse. It first tried to kill the Magnitsky Act and then tried to water it down. An overwhelming majority in Congress from both parties forced the law on President Obama. Vladimir Putin retaliated by putting U.S. officials on a sanctions list of his own, and he even stopped Americans from adopting Russian orphans.
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Ros-Lehtinen, McGovern Pen Letter to President Obama Urging Russian Officials be Added to Magnitsky List
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee, joined by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Co-Chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, today sent a letter to President Obama asking for the Administration to add names of Russian officials responsible for human rights abuses to the Magnitsky list. The Magnitsky list was established in 2012, when the President signed the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act into law, and was named after Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky who was imprisoned by Russian authorities after he began investigating a large fraud scheme that involved Russian tax officials. Magnitsky was thrown into the notorious Butyrka prison where he was held for over 11 months without trial and was beaten, tortured and denied much needed medical treatment and subsequently died in custody as a result of his harsh treatment.
Statement by Ros-Lehtinen:
“Putin and his officials have grown increasingly brazen with their attempts to silence dissent and with their human rights abuses against those in Russia who try to shine a light on the corruption of the state, yet the Administration has hesitated to take action despite having received several names to be added to the Magnitsky list. No names have been added to this list since April 2013, and that sends a message to the Kremlin that it can continue to violate the rights of the Russian people and the United States will sit by and take no action. I thank Jim and I are happy to join forces in urging the President to use the full intent and scope of the Magnitsky list to promote human rights in Russia, and we hope he will add more names to the list.”
Statement by McGovern:
“The Magnitsky Act can be an important tool in the effort to promote human rights – but only if the Administration uses it,” Rep. McGovern said. “I am proud to join with my colleague Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in this bipartisan effort, and I look forward to the Administration’s response.”
To read the letter, please click here.
For the list of names Reps. Ros-Lehtinen and McGovern submitted, please click here. hairy girl займ онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php hairy girl
Why Russia No Longer Fears the West
The West is blinking in disbelief – Vladimir Putin just invaded Ukraine. German diplomats, French Eurocrats and American pundits are all stunned. Why has Russia chosen to gamble its trillion-dollar ties with the West?
Western leaders are stunned because they haven’t realized Russia’s owners no longer respect Europeans the way they once did after the Cold War. Russia thinks the West is no longer a crusading alliance. Russia thinks the West is now all about the money.
Putin’s henchmen know this personally. Russia’s rulers have been buying up Europe for years. They have mansions and luxury flats from London’s West End to France’s Cote d’Azure. Their children are safe at British boarding and Swiss finishing schools. And their money is squirrelled away in Austrian banks and British tax havens.
Putin’s inner circle no longer fear the European establishment. They once imagined them all in MI6. Now they know better. They have seen firsthand how obsequious Western aristocrats and corporate tycoons suddenly turn when their billions come into play. They now view them as hypocrites—the same European elites who help them hide their fortunes.
Once Russia’s powerful listened when European embassies issued statements denouncing the baroque corruption of Russian state companies. But no more. Because they know full well it is European bankers, businessmen and lawyers who do the dirty work for them placing the proceeds of corruption in hideouts from the Dutch Antilles to the British Virgin Islands.
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Ukraine crisis: Russia is in no position to fight a new cold war
Putin and his allies have talked tough while enjoying the comforts of globalisation.
When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Moscow stock market did not crash. That is because there was no Moscow stock market. By contrast, the news that Russian troops have taken effective control of Crimea was greeted, on Monday, by a 10 per cent collapse in shares on the Russian market.
This contrast between 1968 and now underlines why talk of a new cold war is misleading. The economic and political context of Crimea in 2014 is entirely different from Czechoslovakia in 1968. Russia no longer has an empire extending all the way to Berlin. The pain of that territorial loss is part of the reason why President Vladimir Putin is fighting so hard to keep Ukraine in Moscow’s much-diminished sphere of influence.
Just as important, the world is no longer divided into two mutually exclusive, and hostile, political and economic systems – a capitalist west and a communist east. After the collapse of the Soviet system, Russia joined the global, capitalist order. The financial, business and social systems of Russia and the west are now deeply intertwined. A new east-west struggle is certainly under way today but it is being fought on entirely different terrain from the cold war – and under different rules.
The Kremlin may assume that the west’s business dealings with Russia work in its favour. President Putin, the former KGB agent, probably still believes the old Soviet maxim that western foreign policy is dictated by capitalists – who will not allow their financial interests in Russia to be endangered. The west’s supine reaction to the Russian military intervention in Georgia in 2008 may have strengthened this impression. Ben Judah, author of a recent book on Russia, argues that the eagerness of western business people and former politicians to do business with Russia has made Mr Putin “very confident that European elites are more concerned about making money than standing up to him”.
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Exiled Fund Chief: U.S. Should Sanction Russians With ‘Magnitsky List’
The U.S. should sanction Russian officials involved in the Ukraine military campaign by using a 2012 U.S. human-rights law named for a dead Russian whistleblower, according to one of his former colleagues.
The Magnitsky Act lets the U.S. freeze the accounts of Russian citizens placed on a list of suspected human-rights abusers and fine companies that do business with anyone on the list.
The law was named after Sergei Magnitsky, a tax lawyer for an international investment fund in Russia who earned the ire of Russian officials after he accused police and tax officials of stealing $230 million. His death in prison in 2009 at the age of 37, under suspicious circumstances, stirred an international uproar.
The Obama administration, which was seeking to “reset” relations with Moscow, initially opposed the law but signed it in December 2012 in conjunction with a measure giving Russia permanent normal trade relations after the country joined the World Trade Organization.
The U.S. administration put 18 Russians on the list last year, many with direct links to Mr. Magnitsky’s death, but hasn’t added any new names this year, disappointing Russia’s critics. The Kremlin responded to the law by preventing Americans from adopting Russian children.
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The man behind the Magnitsky Act explains why now is the time to go after the Russian elite’s assets
As much as everyone is very mad at Russia right now for its actions against Ukraine, it still isn’t exactly clear what will happen next. Might the United States and Western Europe send troops into battle against Russia? Even if Russia weren’t a nuclear power, that seems incredibly dangerous.
Instead, the discussion is moving to economic measures, with the Obama administration saying it is “highly likely” they will use sanctions against Russia.
However, at least one person is arguing that there may be another option, one that could zero in on the interests of the Russian elite more accurately without hurting the Russian public in general: a 2012 human rights law known as the Magnitsky Act.
“This is exactly what the Magnitsky Act was created for,” Bill Browder, founder of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management explained in a phone call from his London base Monday morning. For Browder, his link to the act isn’t just political — it’s also personal. The man for whom “the Magnitsky Act” is named worked for him.
The story of the Magnitsky Act began in 2008, when Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow-based lawyer working for the Hermitage Fund, testified in a Russian court that he had uncovered a huge scam by top police officials. According to Magnitsky, the officials had embezzled $230 million in taxes from money that Hermitage Fund companies had paid in 2006, with corrupt police officers using stolen corporate seals and documents seized in a 2007 raid on Hermitage’s Moscow offices to set up fake companies under the same names, and then used these fake companies to get a tax rebate.
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US considers sanctions on Russian banks
The Obama administration is considering placing Iran-style banking sanctions on selected Russian financial institutions if Moscow were to send troops into eastern Ukraine.
The banking sanctions are one of a series of measures that the administration has been discussing with Congress in recent days as it seeks to find ways to isolate Moscow diplomatically and economically, according to congressional aides and officials.
Banking sanctions are a powerful tool which take advantage of the US’s central role in the international financial system and which have helped place considerable pressure on the Iranian economy over the past two years. If a Russian bank were targeted, then any bank in the world that continues to do business with it can be cut off from the US financial system.
The banking sanctions are being examined as secondary series of measures, which are aimed more at deterring Russia from taking military action in eastern Ukraine. In response to the immediate crisis in Crimea, the administration is considering placing senior Russian officials on a visa ban and asset freeze list. The idea of broader trade and investment sanctions, which secretary of state John Kerry alluded to at the weekend, is only being analysed as a much more distant prospect.
The debate in Washington over what sort of economic tools to use against Russia comes amid some signs of friction between the US and Europe over how quickly – and how aggressively – to apply economic pressure.
European diplomats have expressed frustration that they are portrayed as dithering while the US is seen as decisive, when the stakes are far higher on their side.
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Why Ukraine matters
Hermitage Capital Management CEO William Browder breaks down why the Ukraine-Russian crisis matters to the global economy.
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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
