Parliament expected to back demands for crackdown on human rights violations in Russia
MEPs are this week expected to back a resolution which calls on the Russian authorities to “put an end to impunity” in the country.
Parliament’s non-binding resolution on the next EU-Russia agreement will be voted upon by members in Strasbourg on Thursday.
It contains several references to human rights and the rule of law, and “stresses the need for the Russian authorities to put an end to impunity in the country, as well as to politically motivated persecutions, arrests and detentions”.
The paper also “emphasises the need to cease using repressive measures against the political opposition”.
It seeks to ensure that “full light is shed on the many violations of human rights that have occurred” in Russia.
These, it says, include the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the deaths of Sergei Magnitsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Anna Politkovskaya, Natalya Estemirova and others.
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Investor presses Ottawa to take up case of whistleblower who died in Russian jail
Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was working for Bill Browder’s investment company when he uncovered the largest tax fraud in Russian history and exposed the misdeeds of senior functionaries in six ministries.
Mr. Magnitsky was also working for Mr. Browder, the American-born co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, when he was thrown into a Moscow prison in November, 2008, by those same officials after testifying against them in the tax case.
So when the 37-year-old lawyer was refused treatment in prison for a pancreatic condition, subjected to repeated torture, and, according to his supporters, beaten to death by guards in the fall of 2009, Mr. Browder decided to devote much of his time to publicizing the case and securing justice for the man who had worked doggedly to bring the Russian corruption to light.
His efforts are starting to pay off. Last week, the U.S. Senate passed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which denies visas and freezes the assets of Russians accused of human-rights violations. Now Mr. Browder is asking for a similar response from Canadian authorities.
“The case of Sergei Magnitsky really lays bare the criminality at the top of the Russian government,” he told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday. “The Russian government has refused to prosecute anybody involved. And so I have spent the last three years looking for other means of justice.”
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Russia’s Victory in Congress
The Magnitsky Act, passed this week by the U.S. Congress, imposes visa and financial restrictions on Russian officials implicated in corruption and human rights violations, thus giving Russian citizens a tool for defending themselves against the authoritarian system. According to IMR Senior Policy Advisor Vladimir Kara-Murza, this is the most pro-Russian law ever adopted in a Western country.
Politicians are often accused of indifference, cynicism, a lack of principles and an adherence to realpolitik. These accusations, alas, are often accurate. But sometimes this “system” can be breached.
On December 6th, the U.S. Senate adopted H.R. 6156, previously passed by the House of Representatives, on a vote of 92–4. The bill simultaneously repeals the cold war-era trade-restricting Jackson-Vanik Amendment and introduces targeted visa and financial sanctions on corrupt officials and human rights violators from Russia. This law is dedicated to the memory of Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow attorney who died in police custody in 2009 after being denied medical care and, according to members of the Presidential Human Rights Council, beaten by rubber truncheons. His “guilt” consisted of uncovering a $230 million tax fraud that involved law enforcement officials (it was the same officials who subsequently placed him under arrest.)
In accordance with the ruling group’s “one hand washing the other” principle, those implicated in the “Magnitsky affair” were not only spared punishment, but were actually rewarded; Interior Ministry officials linked to the attorney’s persecution and death received awards and career promotions. As for the prosecutors, they continue with the posthumous investigation of Magnitsky himself, in an attempt to “transfer” the accusations onto him.
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Why This Russian Criminal Case Matters to Canada
On Tuesday, the Canadian Parliament will hear testimony concerning the torture and tragic death in detention of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered the largest corporate tax fraud in Russian history, identified the senior Russian perpetrators, and paid for it with his life. His story is one of great moral courage and heroism, and his saga shines a spotlight on the pervasive culture of repression, corruption and impunity implicating senior government officials in Russia today.
Working as a tax attorney for Hermitage Capital Management in Moscow, an international investment fund founded by CEO William Browder — who will be the main witness at Parliamentary hearings today — Magnitsky blew the whistle on widespread Russian government corruption, involving officials from six senior Russian ministries.
The officials he testified against then arranged for his arrest and detention — and for the subsequent cover-up of their criminality — beginning a nightmare in which he was thrown into a prison cell without bail or trial, and systematically tortured for one year in an attempt to force him to retract his testimony.
Despite the intense physical and psychological pain Sergei Magnitsky endured at the hands of his captors, he refused to perjure himself, even as his health deteriorated. Denied medical care for the last six months of his detention, he died in excruciating circumstances at the age of 37, having developed a severe pancreatic condition while being held in the Butyrka prison, a notorious Czarist-era jail that also that also held Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Raoul Wallenberg.
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‘I made a vow to his memory’: Bill Browder wins fight to ban corrupt Russian business in memory of dead friend
Sergei Magnitsky was a lawyer in Russia exposing large-scale corruption by government officials when he was beaten to death by guards in a Moscow prison in 2009; Alexander Perepilichnyy, a Russian businessman, had fled to Britain and was a whistleblower over the same fraud when he mysteriously collapsed and died last month.
These two dramatic deaths bookend the remarkable crusade of Bill Browder, the American-born investor for whom Mr. Magnitsky worked and to whom Mr. Perepilichnyy was spilling his secrets.
On Thursday, Mr. Browder saw the U.S. Senate pass the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act by a wide margin, a law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers.
It was a triumphant moment for Mr. Browder, who has relentlessly lobbied for such sanctions, but it hardly ends his quest for justice over Mr. Magnitsky’s gruesome demise.
His next stop is Canada.
On Monday, Mr. Browder arrives here with his remarkable story of international intrigue — state corruption, massive theft, organized crime — in a bid to see Canada pass a similar law against corrupt Russian officials.
Parliamentarians and government ministers will be hard pressed to hear a more compelling story, both his own and the one swirling around him.
Mr. Browder’s grandfather was the well-known leader of the U.S. Communist Party from the 1920s to 1940s, twice running under the red banner for president. Communism was a Browder family value.
“There is all this family history and connection to Communism, so when I was going through my teenage rebellion I became a capitalist. I figured there was nothing I could do to irritate my family more than that,” Mr. Browder, 48, told the National Post.
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Magnitsky Bill Likely to Reopen Old Wounds
Historical mistrust and relatively weak trade links could amplify the Magnitsky Act’s damage to U.S.-Russian relations, although Washington will likely use caution in applying sanctions to Russians suspected of human rights violations, analysts said.
“In the absence of a solid background of trust and partnership, even relatively insignificant episodes can sour relations and leave a trace for a long time,” said Masha Lipman, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Over the weekend, Russian condemnations escalated over the U.S. Senate’s nearly unanimous passage of the so-called Magnitsky Act, which normalizes trade relations with Russia and authorizes sanctions on Russians suspected of human rights violations.
“The Magnitsky Act is an attempt to interfere in our internal affairs,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a group of allies of President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, adding that parliament’s reaction should be “collective and multi-partisan,” RBC reported.
Passage of the Magnitsky bill, which U.S. President Barack Obama said he would sign, appeared to mark a low point in the U.S.-Russian relationship under Obama, who has pursued improved relations under the “reset” policy, resulting in Russia’s joining the World Trade Organization and bilateral agreements on visas and nuclear weapons.
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Magnitsky affair row grows as Russia threatens to reveal banned US officials
Russia has threatened to unveil a list of American officials who are banned for alleged human rights abuses in the latest in a tit-for-tat row between the two powers.
Moscow is furious that American legislators approved a new law which forbids any Russian officials known to be involved in corruption or criminality of travelling to the United States or holding assets there.
The law, which was passed on Thursday night, is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow based lawyer who was hired by the British investment fund Hermitage Capital to investigate a multimillion-pound scam and died in prison after he was arrested by the same Russian officials he had accused of being behind the scam.
Alexei Pushkov, one of Russia’s top foreign policy officials, said yesterday that Russia already had a list of US citizens implicated in human rights abuses of Russian citizens banned from entering Russia. Up to now, this list has been secret rather than official policy, in response to the American informal visa ban for those on the “Magnitsky list”. Now that the Magnitsky Act is official policy, however, Russia could well respond in kind.
The passage of an American banned list is a victory for Hermitage’s CEO, William Browder, who has lobbied extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe for such legislation.
“In a world where partisan politics can be so divisive, the moral outrage over what happened to Sergei Magnitsky has caused everybody in Washington to lay down their arms and do something truly historic to honour his sacrifice,” he told The Independent yesterday. “The obvious next step is to implement the same kind of ban across Europe and the UK.”
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What Magnitsky Means to Me
This week, Congress voted to roll back a host of Cold War-era trade restrictions, granting Russia permanent, normal trade relations with the United States. Integral to that legislative package — which still has to be signed into law by President Obama — is the Magnitsky Act, a bill that would impose sanctions on a list of Russian officials who stand accused of human rights abuses.
The bill is named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian auditor who in 2008 exposed the massive defrauding of a British investment fund by officials in the Russian Interior Ministry, but was later arrested and tortured to death by the same officers that he had testified against. On Capitol Hill, Magnitsky’s death has become a cause célèbre, and the new legislation the bitter pill Moscow must swallow in exchange for the normalization of trade relations.
But for one family — my family — its passage comes just a moment too late.
On Nov. 28, Russian news outlets reported that police in Makhachkala, the capital of the restive northern region of Dagestan, attempted to arrest a man named Shamil Gasanov at his home. They allegedly sought Gasanov on suspicion of involvement in the 2010 murder of Makhachkala police chief Akhmed Magomedov — a crime that was reportedly carried out by Islamists — though the real reason for his arrest remains very much a mystery. According to the initial press accounts, Gasanov, who is by all accounts secular, resisted arrest and fired a gun at the officers, who returned fire, killing him.
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Death threats in fraud case ‘ignored’
The Times. The British authorities were accused last night of ignoring evidence about death threats and intimidation linked to a multimillion-pound Russian fraud, months before a “whistleblower” in the case was found dead outside his Surrey home.
10 December 2012
Fiona Hamilton Crime Correspondent
Alexander Perepilichny, 44, whose cause of death is described as “unexplained”, had passed documents to campaigners fighting to expose the huge tax fraud in Russia that had led to the death of an anti-corruption lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
The alleged fraudsters are said to have stolen three companies from a British-based investment firm, Hermitage Capital, and used them to perpetrate the fraud.
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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
