Posts Tagged ‘andrew rettman’
Moldova takes action on EU-Russia money laundering
Moldova has launched criminal proceedings in a money laundering case involving its biggest bank, the Russian mafia and six EU countries.
The move comes after a UK-based investment firm, Hermitage Capital, filed a complaint with the Moldovan prosecutor in June.
Documents obtained by Hermitage indicate that a Russian organised crime group – dubbed the Kluyev Group – in 2008 wired $53 million of stolen money from an account in Russia’s Bank Krainiy Sever to two accounts in Moldova’s Banca de Economii.
They also indicate that Banca de Economii later wired the money to multiple accounts in Austria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Switzerland and Hong Kong.
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EU: Magnitsky acquittal will harm Russia’s reputation
Russia’s acquittal of the only man charged over the death of Sergei Magnitsky will harm its international reputation, the EU has said.
Magnitsky, an accountant who in 2007 exposed the fact that Russian officials and the mafia were stealing hundreds of millions of euros of tax money, later died in jail after being refused medical treatment for pancreatitis and after being beaten by his guards.
His case became a cause celebre when the US last year passed a law in his name that will see up to 60 Russian officials banned from getting US visas.
But in what amounts to an extraordinary u-turn for the Russian legal system, a Moscow judge on 28 December said there is no evidence that Dmitry Kratov – the former medical chief at the Butyrka jail, where Magnitsky died – helped caused his death by negligence.
A few days earlier the prosecutor himself called for the acquittal despite previously building a case against Kratov.
The sudden change came after Russian leader Vladimir Putin claimed on TV that Magnitsky died of natural causes.
For Magnitsky’s former employer, the UK-based investment fund, Hermitage Capital, the developments show that his killers enjoy protection at the highest level of the Russian state.
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Visas, human rights on EU-Russia agenda this WEEK
The signature of a small-time visa deal is likely to form the centrepiece of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s visit to Brussels.
The so-called upgraded visa facilitation agreement (VFA) is designed to reduce paperwork and delays for some classes of Russian citizens, such as officials, academics and businessmen.
The EU foreign service told this website the pact has been “held back” by Russia’s last minute request to allow visa-free travel for its officials “which we have not been able to agree.” But it added: “We should sign the upgraded VFA as it stands now.”
What Russia really wants is visa-free travel for everybody.
The EU recently sent two delegations to Russia to see what it is doing to meet technical standards on issues such as border control. But the foreign service noted that “information gathering will need to be followed by reforms” and that the EU is not yet ready to start negotiations on a visa-free pact.
In one way, the real centrepiece will be Putin’s presence in the EU capital.
He will attend a dinner with top EU officials Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso on Thursday (20 December) and a working meeting on Friday.
The last time he came, in February 2011, he created a celebrity buzz in the European Commission, with lots of EU officials who do not work on Russia crowding into the commission’s press room to see him up close.
Putin and Barroso at the time clashed on EU laws designed to limit the power of Russian energy champion Gazprom.
In the meantime, Barroso has opened a competition probe into alleged Gazprom price-fixing which could see it fined billions of euros and forced to renegotiate contracts.
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Artists, dissidents look to EU after US human rights law
Artists, exiles and rights campaigners say the EU can help Russia by closing its door to regime officials with blood on their hands.
Vladimir Bukovsky knows what it is like to be inside a Russian jail. He spent 12 years in and out of them in the 1960s and 1970s for trying to expose the Soviet Union’s use of psychiatric institutions to torture dissidents.
The 69-year-old scientist now lives in the UK, but travels to Russia from time to time.
Speaking in London on Tuesday (20 November) after the staging of a play on Sergei Magnitsky – a Russian accountant who was killed in prison in 2009 for trying to expose high-level corruption – Bukovsky said today’s Kremlin reminds him of the old one.
“Russia is going around like a blind donkey … They used to write plays about psychological abuse and now we are here to talk about this play,” he noted.
He added: “Magnitsky was a political prisoner because corruption is at the heart of Russia’s political system and this is exactly what he went against.”
The play – One Hour and 18 Minutes, by Elena Gremina – tries to show the human side of what happened.
It uses home videos of Magnitsky – a portly, jovial 37-year-old – at family parties.
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Russia: EU action on Magnitsky would ‘poison’ relations
Russia’s EU ambassador has said ties would suffer if member states follow the US in putting sanctions on suspected Russian killers and fraudsters.
“It would poison relations, definitely,” Vladimir Chizhov told EUobserver in an interview.
He added: “Well, I am sure that reason will prevail in the European Union. I have more confidence in the EU than I have in the US Congress.”
The Congress’ international committee in June approved the so-called Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act.
If it becomes law, the US will impose visa bans and asset freezes on 60-or-so Russian officials suspected of conspiracy to murder Sergei Magnitsky – an auditor who exposed tax fraud in the Kremlin and who was found beaten to death in prison in 2009.
Chizhov said that he is “not threatening anybody.”
But he noted that Russia might impose counter-sanctions on US officials if the Magnitsky bill gets through.
“The Russian Duma could launch a piece of legislation called the Guantanamo act or the Abu Ghraib act,” he said, referring to US human rights violations in Cuba and Iraq.
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EU president: ‘Magnitsky case is emblematic for Russia’
EUobserver
20 April 2012, BY ANDREW RETTMAN
BRUSSELS – EU Council chief Herman Van Rompuy has said in a letter to outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that Russia’s internatioinal reputation is at stake over the murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The one-page note, dated 18 April and seen by EUobserver, says: “The case of Mr Magnitsky has come to symbolise the state of the rule of law and judiciary in the Russian Federation for Russia’s friends and observers abroad. Bringing this emblematic case to credible and thorough conclusion before the end of your term would be of symbolic relevance and send a very important signal for the future of Russia.”
It comes one week before Russian investigators on 24 April are to say if a prison doctor caused Magnitsky’s death in custody in 2009 by “negligence.”
It also comes before Medvedev steps down in early May, five years after taking up office and promising to end “legal nihilism” in the country.
Magnitsky was jailed, starved of pancreatic medication and beaten to death when he exposed a tax-embezzling mafia involving top people in the interior ministry and the state security service, the FSB. Prosecutors have so far postponed the outcome of the probe 11 times. Last year – in a legal first – they launched a new case against the dead man himself.
Nobody in Brussels believes that a prison doctor is responsible.
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MEPs: protests show Putin has lost respect
EU Observer
Prominent MEPs from Russia’s big neighbours have said the mass anti-Putin protests in Moscow are a wake-up call for EU foreign policy.
Looking ahead to the EU-Russia summit in Brussels on Thursday (15 December), Elmar Brok, a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU party, said EU officials should urge the Kremlin to hold proper presidential elections in March.
“It should be made clear they have to look for real elections – to give a fair chance to opposition politicians, to let them run and to make sure they have the means to run, and to let the international community monitor the campaign.”
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Germany considering EU visa ban on Russian officials
The German government is considering the merits of an EU visa ban on Russian officials implicated in the murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Markus Loning, the German foreign ministry’s commissioner for human rights, told EUobserver on the margins of a conference on Russia in Helsinki on Thursday (10 November): “We’re discussing it. It is an option that my office is bringing to the table, into the debate. I can’t say I have completely convinced the rest of the government, but it is something I am putting on the table again and again.”
One option is to seek agreement by all 27 EU countries to blacklist the officials. Germany could also unilaterally red-flag the names in the passport-free Schengen system, forcing all 25 Schengen members to keep them out.
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Dutch minister pledges EU action on murdered Russian lawyer
Dutch foreign minister Uri Rosenthal has promised to “raise the possibility” of EU sanctions against Russian officials suspected of murdering lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Rosenthal in a formal letter to parliament dated 12 September said: “The investigation into the Magnitsky case is ongoing and Russian judicial procedure must be followed. I want to wait for the outcome of the procedure. But if there is good reason in light of the outcome, then I intend to raise the possibility of further EU-level steps.”
The letter comes in response to a Dutch parliament resolution in July calling for The Hague to penalise the officials.
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