Senate to vote on Russia Trade and Rights Bill
The Senate is set to endorse legislation that both normalizes trade with Russia and highlights the discord between the two countries over human rights issues.
The vote Thursday to establish permanent normal trade relations with Russia will bring considerable relief to U.S. exporters and investors anxious about losing shares of Russia’s growing market to European and Chinese competitors. It also could bring retaliation from Moscow over a provision that sanctions Russian officials who allegedly commit human rights violations.
The House passed the legislation last month on a 365-43 vote, and President Barack Obama’s administration has urged Congress to move quickly to get it to the president’s desk.
There’s a sense of urgency because Russia in August became the last major economic power to enter the World Trade Organization, committing it to lowering tariffs, removing other trade barriers, protecting intellectual property, opening up its service industries and submitting to the WTO’s dispute resolution process.
But unless Congress formally normalizes trade relations, U.S. exporters will be alone among the members of the 157-nation WTO unable to enjoy the increased market access. That puts them at a serious disadvantage in competing for sales in the world’s ninth-largest economy, with an estimated 140 million consumers.
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McGovern, Kerry tackle the Cold War
When this nation’s founders devised a national legislature, they created two chambers: the House and Senate. Representatives from local jurisdictions would advance more parochial needs; senators would focus on broader strategic issues. The notion of internal checks and balances within the legislative branch itself helped to seal ratification of the Constitution; the House and Senate would work together as well as at cross-purposes.
What wasn’t likely envisioned was that, hundreds of years later, one senator and one congressman from an original colony would serve as counterweights in a debate that involved the Cold War, Jewish immigration, multibillion-dollar companies, and a Russian lawyer who died in his jail cell. Just a few miles apart geographically, with motivations reflecting their conscience as well as status, Massachusetts’ Senator John Kerry and Representative Jim McGovern are key actors in an episode that is as much about constitutional architecture as it is modern day realpolitik.
A vote expected in the Senate on Thursday would grant normalized trade relations with Russia and finally end the Cold War. The bill, after last month’s similar vote in the House, would revoke the 1974 ban, known as Jackson-Vanik, that penalized US-Russian economic investments because of the Soviet Union’s prohibition on emigration for Jews. Times have changed, as have global markets, and the expected Senate approval would create a permanent normal trade relationship with Russia. All this activity is in response to Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization last August, essentially setting ground rules for foreign access to Russian industries and lowering any import tariffs; the United States doesn’t want to be left behind.
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Russia trade bill likely headed to Obama desk
A bill granting normal trade relations to Russia is likely headed to President Obama’s desk for his signature after key objections have been dropped in the Senate.
The Senate is on course to vote on granting Russian permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) on Thursday. The bill also contains human rights provisions aimed at punishing those accused of murdering lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other human rights violations.
Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said on the Senate floor that they are willing to look to other bills to try to make the Magnitsky provisions apply to all countries.
“I will not let perfection become the enemy of the good,” Kyl said.
“I hope we will make this statutorily global. We will have that debate at a later date,” Cardin said.
The House bill on the Senate floor only applies human rights provisions to Russia, and attempts to amend it could have led to a stalemate with the House. Big business lobbyists, opposed to the sanctions in the bill, have been keen to limit the Magnitsky provisions just to Russia.
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Senate to vote to normalize trade with Russia, impose human rights sanctions
The Senate is set to endorse legislation that both normalizes trade with Russia and highlights the discord between the two countries over human rights issues.
The vote Thursday to establish permanent normal trade relations with Russia will bring considerable relief to U.S. exporters and investors anxious about losing shares of Russia’s growing market to European and Chinese competitors. It also could bring retaliation from Moscow over a provision that sanctions Russian officials who allegedly commit human rights violations.
The House passed the legislation last month on a 365-43 vote, and President Barack Obama’s administration has urged Congress to move quickly to get it to the president’s desk.
There’s a sense of urgency because Russia in August became the last major economic power to enter the World Trade Organization, committing it to lowering tariffs, removing other trade barriers, protecting intellectual property, opening up its service industries and submitting to the WTO’s dispute resolution process.
But unless Congress formally normalizes trade relations, U.S. exporters will be alone among the members of the 157-nation WTO unable to enjoy the increased market access. That puts them at a serious disadvantage in competing for sales in the world’s ninth-largest economy, with an estimated 140 million consumers.
“This is no small matter,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Russia’s accession to the WTO “includes lower tariffs on aircraft and auto exports, larger quotas for beef exports and greater access to Russia’s telecommunications and banking markets.”
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The Last Days of an Honest Man
In hour into “One Hour Eighteen Minutes,” a play recounting the death of the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in Moscow’s Sailor’s Silence prison, the woman seated next to me started to laugh. She was about 20, wearing a beret and an expensive blue coat.
Danny Scheinmann, an actor who at turns plays a journalist, a policeman and a medical orderly in Magnitsky’s story, was demonstrating how to find one’s pancreas, the source of much of Magnitsky’s pain. He lay on a tabletop, hitched up his shirt and pointed to a red outline sketching out the organ on his skin. The gesture released the tension in the audience. The woman laughed.
Scheinmann then impersonated the agony of Magnitsky as his diseased pancreas spewed out enzymes and digested his body from within while prison orderlies failed to help him. The laughter curdled in the woman’s throat.
The real Magnitsky was arrested in Moscow in 2008 while he was investigating a massive tax fraud committed against the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management. Russian Interior Ministry officials had been masterminding a scam under which they stole Hermitage documents and employed criminals to claim taxes the investment fund had already paid.
The same officials then arrested Magnitsky, accusing him of evading taxes himself. Held without trial for almost a year in increasingly squalid conditions, he died in detention, his illness untreated, in November 2009.
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US Senate Puts Magnitsky Act on Wednesday Agenda
The US Senate will consider on Wednesday a bill which links normalized trade relations with Russia to the so-called “Magnitsky Act,” introducing sanctions for Russian officials deemed to have violated human rights, according to the Senate’s official schedule.
According to the December 5 schedule, the Senate will gather to debate the bill at 23:00 Moscow time [19:00 GMT]. The session is due to end on Wednesday evening [early on Thursday in Moscow].
The legislation simultaneously repeals the Jackson-Vanik restrictions on trade with Russia dating back to 1974 and introduces the Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act imposing visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials allegedly involved in the torture and death of a 37-year-old Russian anti-corruption lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, as well as in other gross human rights abuses in Russia.
The bill was passed by the House of Representatives on November 16 and is expected to be approved by the Senate. It will then be sent to President Barack Obama for signing.
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Cardin Statement On The Status Of The Magnitsky Act
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and author of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, made the following statement regarding his legislation:
“I am pleased that the Senate finally will be voting on passage of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. In the memory of one courageous Russian, we are setting a precedent for future trade agreements that tells the world that gross violators of human rights cannot escape the consequences of their actions even when their home country fails to act. Visiting the United States and having access to our financial system, including U.S. dollars, are privileges that should not be extended to those who violate basic human rights and the rule of law.
“This bill may only apply to Russia, but it sets a standard that should be applied globally. I encourage other nations to follow our lead. I will continue to work with my bipartisan cosponsors towards passage of the Magnitsky sanctions for other countries so that human rights violators in all corners of the world understand that the United States is still committed to the universal cause of liberty and human dignity for those who stand up against oppression.” buy viagra online hairy girl https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php займ онлайн на карту без отказа
Shuvalov Says Magnitsky Response Won’t Affect Trade
First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov assured investors in New York on Tuesday that Russia’s response to the Magnitsky bill would not affect trade.
Although Russia is preparing measures in response to the U.S. list of suspected human rights abusers in Russia, these measures only concern political relations between the two countries, Shuvalov told a group of international investors during a visit to the New York Stock Exchange, Interfax reported.
“I hope that this will mean absolutely nothing for businessmen,” he said. “Maybe this will affect officials, but it won’t affect businesspeople engaged in mutual trade.”
The U.S. Senate is considering the Magnitsky bill after it was passed by the House of Representatives in November, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law by the end of the year.
The bill would implement a visa ban and asset freeze on a list of Russians involved in human rights violations such as the prison death of Hermitage Capital lawyer and whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky, while also establishing permanent normal trade relations with Russia.
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Magnitsky fund boss says staff received death threats
Agence France Presse
The head of the investment fund at the centre of the Magnitsky fraud scandal said Friday staff had received death threats, as British police probed the unexplained death of a Russian involved in the case.
The chief executive of investment fund Hermitage Capital, William Browder, would not say whether he believed that Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, who died on November 10 near his home in Surrey outside London, had been murdered.
But he confirmed the Russian businessman had since 2010 been passing evidence to Hermitage of the involvement of Russian officials in a scheme to embezzle $230 million (177 million euros) by obtaining false tax returns on payments made by the fund.
Hermitage’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian jail in 2009 after he went public with allegations about the conspiracy and was in turn taken into custody accused of tax violations.
Browder said Perepilichnyy was the fourth person linked to the Magnitsky affair to have died in unexplained circumstances.
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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
