Magnitsky List Extension Plea Gains Steam
An online petition to make Russian lawmakers, who voted in favor of the US adoptions ban, accountable under the Magnitsky Act, has gained the required number of signatures to be considered by the US administration, the US White House announced on Sunday.
The petition was posted on the White House website on December 21 and has gained the required 25,000 signatures within just two days. By Sunday afternoon, 26,750 people have signed it.
The petition says lawmakers of the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, who approved the ban in the third and final reading on Friday, have “breached all imaginable boundaries of humanity, responsibility, or common sense and chose to jeopardize lives and well-being of thousands of Russian orphans.”
A total of 420 lawmakers voted in favor of the bill, written as a retaliatory response to the US Magnitsky Act, which imposes sanctions on Russian officials accused of human rights violations. The Russian bill is nearly identical. It imposes sanctions on Americans accused of human rights violations, but it also imposes a ban on Americans adopting Russian children.
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Duma Bill To Clamp Down on NGOs
Amid the public furor over the State Duma’s proposed ban on U.S. adoptions, many seem to have overlooked the fact that the so-called “anti-Magnitsky act,” which passed the lower house of parliament on Friday, would also place harsh new restrictions on non-governmental organizations.
Unlike the adoptions ban, the new restrictions on U.S. funding for certain groups haven’t sparked pickets outside the Duma, and tens of thousands haven’t signed online petitions opposing them.
But human rights leaders say the rules are a further tightening of the screws on civil society organizations, which have been pressed in recent months by new laws that expanded the definition of treason and required certain groups to classify themselves as “foreign agents,” which all major NGOs boycotted.
“It feels like war has been declared,” said Alexander Cherkasov, head of the Memorial human rights organization. “Nobody sewed on the yellow star. The new law, to extend the metaphor, says: ‘We’ll shoot you even if you’re not wearing a yellow star.'”
The proposed rules would make it illegal for NGOs that receive funding from U.S. citizens or organizations to participate in “political activities” or otherwise threaten Russia’s national interests.
They would also ban Russian citizens who hold American passports from being members or leaders of “political” NGOs, including local branches of international groups, which could see their assets seized for breaking the law.
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Russia seeks to drop charges over Magnitsky death
Russian prosecutors said on Monday the man on trial for causing the death of a whistle-blowing attorney should be freed without charge, in a surprising development in a case that has triggered a major row between Moscow and Washington.
Dmitry Kratov is the only official remaining as a defendant in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died of untreated illnesses in 2009 while under pre-trial arrest at a Moscow jail.
Magnitsky had claimed to have uncovered a $235 million state embezzlement scheme, before being arrested by the very officials he implicated in the crime.
His case caused international outrage and led to the passage of a US law that blacklists Russian officials allegedly involved in the death.
Moscow retaliated by introducing legislation banning adoptions of Russian children to American citizens in the biggest diplomatic scandal in years between the two powers.
In Monday’s development, prosecutor Dmitry Bokov said that Kratov, deputy head of the prison where Magnitsky died, should be acquitted of a charge of carelessness, because he acted according to the rules and did not receive any complaints from the lawyer.
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A milestone in the battle against corruption
From Mr Alexander Lebedev.
Sir, The signing of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act by President Barack Obama last week marked a milestone in the fight against global corruption (“Russia moves to ban US adoptions”, December 20). Yet the “Magnitsky case” is just one of many involving national, international and Russian fraudsters and corrupt officials.
Crooked businessmen in collusion with public officials with business interests have embezzled and siphoned off at least $700bn from Russia over the past 15 years, according to the Tax Justice Network. In the face of theft on such a scale, US efforts against global corruption appear limited. To tackle this problem, there must be joint efforts by the leading powers, some of which have turned themselves into a promised land for corrupt officials and fraudsters from all over the world. It is necessary to stop the practice of granting asylum to dirty capital and to clean up the offshore Augean stables, outlawing the practice of nominee ownership.
Gordon Brown talked about this at the Group of Eight summit in 2009. Isn’t this what the Group of 20’s Anti-Corruption Working Group should be dealing with? Why isn’t the 2010 US law on “illegal proceeds” working? What have the UN efforts resulted in? Why hasn’t the relevant EU directive been ratified yet?
At an international level, it is necessary to establish an organisation with the broadest authority to investigate crimes of corruption and fraud linked to the cross-border movement of suspects and capital.
In September, the next G20 summit will be held in St Petersburg. The inclusion of these proposals on the agenda would send a clear message to the fraudsters who participated in the embezzlement of billions of roubles from public coffers that they will no longer be allowed to get away with it.
Alexander Lebedev, Publisher of Novaya Gazeta and Independent newspapers, Moscow and London unshaven girl быстрые займы онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php zp-pdl.com займ на карту онлайн
On the Line “Human Rights in Russia”
The US and Russia are sparring over human rights. Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, a new law that bars Russians guilty of human rights abuses from traveling to the United States. The measure was named the Magnitsky Act, after the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian jail. Russia’s Foreign Ministry denounced the law as “dangerous” and called it “interference into our internal affairs.” Russian President Vladimir
Putin called the passage of the law an “unfriendly act.” What will the Magnitsky Act do for human rights? And what will it do to US-Russia relations?
GUESTS:
Carroll Colley: Director-Russia, Eurasia Group.
David Satter: Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute.
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Russian lawmakers back adoption ban in row with U.S.
Russia’s lower house of parliament approved a law banning Americans from adopting Russian children on Friday, in retaliation for U.S. human rights legislation which Vladimir Putin says is poisoning relations.
The State Duma overwhelmingly backed a bill which also outlaws U.S.-funded “non-profit organizations that engage in political activity”, extending what critics say is a clampdown on Putin’s opponents since he returned to the presidency in May.
The law responds to U.S. legislation known as the Magnitsky Act, passed by the U.S. Congress to impose visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials accused of involvement in the death in custody of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
Washington’s ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, said the Russian bill unfairly “linked the fate of orphaned children to unrelated political issues”.
Putin hinted at a news conference on Thursday that he would sign it into law once the Senate votes on it next week, describing it as an emotional but appropriate response to an unfriendly move by the United States.
“It is a myth that all children who land in American families are happy and surrounded by love,” Olga Batalina, a deputy with Putin’s ruling United Russia party, said in defense of the new measures.
In a pointed echo of the Magnitsky Act, the Russian legislation has become known as the Dima Yakovlev law, after a Russian-born toddler who died after his American adoptive father left him in locked in a sweltering car.
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Russia: Putin Parries on U.S. Adoption Ban
President Vladimir Putin was evasive about whether he would sign a controversial bill banning Americans from adopting Russian children.
Speaking at his annual news conference on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin sharply rebuked the American government, saying that U.S. officials had no right to lecture Russia about human rights and democracy. “They are up to their necks in a certain substance themselves,” Putin said of the Americans, returning to the subject over and over again during his lengthy press conference.
Putin defended his stance against military intervention in Syria and criticized the U.S.’s role in helping to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. But for all his anti-American invective, Putin was evasive about whether he would definitively back legislation passed by the Russian parliament that would prohibit American citizens from adopting Russian children. After being repeatedly questioned by journalists about the bill, Putin said he would have to read the text, reportedly adding that most Americans looking to adopt Russian children are “honest” and “decent.”
The legislation will become law if Putin signs it. It was passed in Russia in response to the Magnitsky Act, a bill that U.S. President Barack Obama signed last week, which imposes financial and travel restrictions on Russian human-rights abusers.
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Why Has Moscow Passed a Bill to Ban U.S. Adoption of Russian Orphans?
Passing a new bill in Russia has never presented much of a problem for President Vladimir Putin. With perpetual control of both houses of parliament and a couple of loyalist “opposition” parties to boot, legislation backed by Putin generally amounts to a Kremlin fiat. The hard part this week was in explaining his newest initiative to the public. Intended as a political strike against Washington, the bill does some shocking collateral damage. In effect, it will doom the chances of thousands of Russian orphans, many of them handicapped and emotionally scarred, from being adopted by families in the U.S. How do you justify that?
On Thursday, Putin tried to explain himself in front of a hall full of Russian and foreign journalists, many of whom were clearly outraged by the adoption bill passed the previous day. The first question asked Putin why he had made “the most destitute and helpless children into instruments of political battle.” The second was even more blunt, calling the bill “cannibalistic.” Live on Russian television, Putin mounted a strange defense: How could the journalists stand idly by while the U.S. “humiliates” Russia? “You think that’s normal?” Putin demanded. “What’s normal about being humiliated? You like that? What are you, a sadomasochist? The country will not be humiliated.”
The humiliation Putin had in mind was the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which was passed this month by a huge bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate. The act seeks to punish a group of Russian officials who have been implicated in the torture and death of a Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky. In 2008, Magnitsky discovered that a group of Russian officials had stolen $230 million from the Russian treasury. When he blew the whistle on their scheme, some of those same officials allegedly conspired to get him arrested, and he died in a prison cell a year later, having been reportedly beaten and denied medical treatment.
Three years since his death, all of his alleged tormentors are still free. Nearly all of them have either kept their government jobs or been promoted. As a last resort, Magnitsky’s friends and colleagues took their pleas for justice to Western capitals, and Washington has now banned the implicated officials from traveling to the U.S., owning property in the U.S., or holding U.S. bank accounts. Putin called the act “unfriendly” and pledged that it would get an “adequate” response from Russian lawmakers.
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Putin’s Russia: back to the bad old days
Vladimir Putin’s unwillingness to undertake democratic reform has led to a cooling of relations with the US and Europe.
We can all sleep more safely. The end of the world will not happen on December 20 2012 , or even for another 4.5bn years, because Vladimir Putin has assured us that it won’t. Collective jitters produced by the end of the Mayan calendar have been good business for the suppliers of candles, matches, salt and torches in some parts of Russia, even though, as one psychiatrist noted, what happens every day can be a lot scarier than Armageddon.
Take, for instance, Mr Putin’s support for a ban on Americans adopting Russian children. This was a measure named after the horrific case of a Russian toddler who died of heatstroke in Virginia after his adoptive American father left him in a car for nine hours. The ban, however, was not born out of any wish to protect orphans. It was written out of anger. It was one of the responses to a law signed by Barack Obama named after Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who died in prison after trying to expose a government tax fraud. The Magnitsky law requires the US administration to compile a list of Russian citizens accused of human rights abuses, including those involved in Magnitsky’s case, and bar them from travelling to the US. The measure is designed to hit officials personally and where it hurts them most – to prevent them travelling to and from their luxury pads in New Jersey and accessing their copious bank accounts there. Many say, with some justice, that the same measure should apply to that greatest money-laundering centre of all – London.
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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
