Posts Tagged ‘browder’
EU Lawmakers Expand Effort to Sanction Russian Rights Abusers
As the US administration readies its first annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Magnitsky Act, the law imposing visa and financial sanctions on Russian human rights abusers, European legislators are preparing a strategy to move forward with their own sanctions package. Last week, the European Parliament hosted the first meeting of the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Inter-Parliamentary Group, which brings together lawmakers from 13 countries (11 of them from the European Union) and an advisory board that includes representatives from Russia (among them, the author of this blog). The aim of the new coalition is to coordinate between the national parliaments and the European Parliament on the best way to move forward with barring Russian officials implicated in corruption and human rights violations from visiting and stowing their assets in EU member states and Canada.
The Magnitsky Act, passed by the US Congress last year with vast bipartisan majorities (365 to 43 in the House; 92 to 4 in the Senate), was, despite Kremlin assertions to the country, the most pro-Russian law ever adopted in a foreign country. With corruption and political repression being the founding pillars of Russia’s current regime, and with no independent judiciary to protect Russian citizens from abuse, external individual sanctions on those who commit these offenses are the only way to end the impunity. According to a Levada Center poll, 44 percent of Russians support US and EU visa bans on officials who engage in human rights violations, with only 21 percent opposing, and this despite constant attempts by the Putin regime to present individual sanctions against crooks and abusers as “sanctions against Russia”—an insulting equivalence for the country. Leading Russian opposition figures and human rights activists are publicly supporting the Magnitsky sanctions; many of their testimonies have been included in a new book edited by Elena Servettaz, Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law, which was presented in European capitals and Washington DC.
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Rogue states: Cross-border policing can be political
FOUR years ago this week the whistle-blowing accountant Sergei Magnitsky died in jail from beatings and abuse, having uncovered a $230m fraud against the Russian state. His client Bill Browder, a London-based financier, has been campaigning to punish those responsible with visa bans and asset freezes. But the Russian authorities have retaliated and are trying to extradite him on fraud charges, using Interpol, the world police co-operation body.
No Western country is likely to send Mr Browder to Moscow. But his travel plans are stymied by the risk of arrest . He had to cancel a visit to Sweden last month to talk to a parliamentary committee. Only after weeks of lobbying did the country’s police remove Mr Browder from their database. Germany, France and Britain have also publicly snubbed Russia’s request.
Interpol notes that its constitution prohibits “activities of a political, military, religious or racial character”; governments are not supposed to use it to settle scores with their opponents. Nevertheless its “Red Notices”, which seek the discovery and arrest of wanted persons for extradition, are open to abuse. Once issued, a Red Notice encourages—though it does not oblige—190 countries to detain the person named. 8,136 were given out last year, an increase of 160% since 2008. Interpol insists that it is not a judicial body: “queries” concerning allegations are “a matter for the relevant national authorities to address”.
But Mr Browder’s case is just one of many arousing controversy. Three years ago Algeria issued a Red Notice against Henk Tepper, a Canadian potato farmer, in a row involving export paperwork and suspect spuds. He was released in March after a year in a Lebanese jail and wants to sue the Canadian government for not protecting his rights. Interpol took 18 months to accept that the Red Notice issued against Patricia Poleo, a Venezuelan investigative journalist, by her government was politically motivated. Indonesia pursued Benny Wenda, a West Papuan tribal leader who ended up marooned in Britain; Belarus hounded an opposition leader, Ales Michalevic, when he fled to Poland.
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Andy McSmith’s Diary: Magnitsky’s law will be the legacy he deserved
Next week will mark a grim anniversary, four years to the day since a Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died of ill treatment in prison because he refused to end his lone campaign to expose corrupt officials who had embezzled more than £140 million from Russian taxpayers.
Unfortunately for his persecutors, Magnitsky wrote everything down, including names. An act passed by the US Congress empowers the American government to refuse visas and freeze assets of the people on his list, but nothing prevents them coming to London, where one even tried to bring a libel case that was thrown out of court.
Today, there was a ceremony in the Commons to launch a book by a young Paris based Russian journalist, Elena Servettaz, who has collected essays from more than 50 people, including 19 from Russia or Belarus, who want more governments to pass a Magnitsky Law, something neither the UK nor the EU is keen to do.
Magnitsky’s widow, Natalya Zharikova, was there. She told me: “This book shows how many people cared about Sergei.” So was William Browder, the London based investment fund manager who hired Magnitsky to represent his firm and so feels a personal responsibility for what became of him – and who is, by the way, the grandson of Earl Browder, war time head of the American Communist Party.
The Tory MP Dominic Raab is pushing for a British Magnitsky Law. “I don’t want the henchmen of despots and dictators waltzing into this country spending their money or sending their kids to school here. That offends me,” he said.
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Russia complains of ‘Cold War’ prejudice in EU visa talks
Russia’s EU ambassador has blamed Cold-War-era prejudice in some EU countries for lack of progress in visa-free talks.
Vladimir Chizhov told EUobserver that negotiations on letting Russian officials, or “service passport” holders, enter the EU without a visa are moving forward.
He said Russia agreed to limit the number of eligible people to those with passports which have electronic security features.
But he noted: “Some ‘fears’ still persist among certain EU countries, however ridiculous and reminiscent of the times of the Cold War they may seem, thus making the rest of facilitations envisaged hostage of their past and [creating] distrust unworthy of a genuine strategic partnership that we are striving for.”
He said the Russian officials in question are “mostly … engaged in further developing Russia-EU relations.”
His thinly veiled allusion to objections by former Soviet and former Communist EU member countries comes shortly before the next EU-Russia summit, expected in December.
The twice-yearly meetings have failed to yield concrete results in recent years.
One EU source said there could be a visa deal in time for December. But two other EU contacts voiced scepticism.
Russia has a few bargaining chips up its sleeve: It could drop punitive tariffs on EU car imports in return for a visa deal, or it could threaten to re-impose passenger data transfer demands on EU airlines.
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What’s Going on at Interpol?
Despite some dubious alumni, Interpol is, in theory, a good thing, but in practice it appears to be being abused by at least one of its members (clue: a very large country, name beginning with an “r” and run by a former secret policeman), and, oh yes, by the Soviet nostalgics over in Minsk too. Writing in European Voice, Edward Lucas notes:
[Western countries] should help Bill Browder, a London-based financier who is Magnitsky’s former client and champion [Sergei Magnitsky was an accountant who died in Moscow in circumstances that were murky and all too clear]. He risks arrest when he leaves the UK because Russia is shamelessly abusing the Interpol system, claiming that Browder is a wanted fraudster. EU countries should all say that they regard this as political persecution and have no intention of acting on it. That would give Browder safe passage.
Then there’s this, from Russian-untouchables.com:
When Petr Silaev, a Russian journalist, got political asylum in Finland in April 2012 after escaping a crackdown in his home country, he felt safe and began a new life. But in August the same year, he found himself handcuffed and shoved face-down on the floor of a police car on a seven-hour trip from Granada, Spain, where he went on holiday, to a detention centre in Madrid, where he risked extradition.
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Why we’re in need of our own Kremlin crusader…
The peoples of two countries own a great deal of gratitude to a man called Bill Browder. First of all, there are the citizens of Russia. And then there are the people of the UK.
Actually, I need to correct the latter sentence. It’s the people of the UK, excluding Northern Ireland. But more of that later.
As the super-wealthy boss of Hermitage Capital Management investment fund, Mr Browder is not immediately a figure you’d expect elicits much sympathy from ordinary folk.
But Bill Browder is different. He is at the centre of a long-running and dangerous feud with the government of Vladimir Putin.
It’s a complicated affair, but essentially Mr Browder, after 10 years of doing business in Russia, was blacklisted as a “threat to national security”.
According to The Economist, this was because he interfered with the flow of money “to corrupt bureaucrats and their businessmen accomplices”.
Corruption allegations in Russia aren’t new, but the Bill Browder affair degenerated into a spectacular morass of claim and counter-claim.
Infamously, his colleague Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian auditor and accountant, died on remand in a Russian jail after a life-threatening medical condition was not treated in spite of warnings.
Equally infamously, in July this year, Magnitsky was convicted of tax evasion, believed to be first trial in Russian history involving a dead defendant. It was state revenge of a most bizarre kind.
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Lifting England’s Libel Chill
Tourists will always flock to London to shop and see Big Ben. But they’re less likely to keep coming to settle legal scores after two High Court rulings Monday set clear limits against libel tourism in England and Wales. Along with new legislation from Parliament, the rulings might finally lift the chill on free speech and the free press under England’s plaintiff-friendly defamation laws.
The dispute at the center of Karpov v. Browder began with Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s prison death in Moscow in 2009. Magnitsky had been investigating a multimillion-dollar tax fraud by Russian officials against his client, Hermitage Capital. Pavel Karpov, a retired Moscow policeman, claimed that Hermitage CEO William Browder defamed him in a 2011 BBC interview, a 2012 article in Foreign Policy magazine, and in online videos about Magnitsky’s case.
Russian courts dismissed Mr. Karpov’s civil and criminal suits, so he took his case to London. Mr. Browder lives in Britain and is a U.K. citizen, but he argued before the High Court that Mr. Karpov has no reputation in England and Wales for Mr. Browder to have besmirched. Mr. Karpov rebutted that he has former schoolmates and an ex-girlfriend who live in England, and that he had previously traveled there “on five or so occasions.”
Justice Peregrine Simon threw the case out. Mr. Karpov’s “connection with this country is exiguous,” Justice Simon concluded, “and, although he can point to the [videos’] continuing publication in this country, there is ‘a degree of artificiality’ about his seeking to protect his reputation in this country.”
Mr. Karpov’s real intent—as he admitted in his libel claim—is to fight the sanctions against him imposed by America’s Magnitsky Act, for which Mr. Browder campaigned vigorously. The 2012 law prevents Mr. Karpov from entering and making financial transactions in the U.S. Justice Simon declared that the English justice system was hardly an appropriate forum to pursue that fight, especially considering that Russian courts had already rejected Mr. Karpov’s complaints.
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Dr Andrew Foxall on BBC Newsnight about libel tourism
Director of the Russia Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society, Dr Andrew Foxall, spoke to BBC Newsnight about the High Court’s decision to throw out a libel case against Bill Browder, the former client of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
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‘Libel tourism’ knocked back by UK court
Two rulings Monday from the U.K. High Court will make it harder for foreign litigants to use libel tourism — a practice known to pose a serious threat to press freedom and free speech far beyond Britain.
The High Court dismissed a libel suit against William Browder and his company brought by a former Russian police officer. Browder, left, a U.K. citizen who lives in London, had accused Pavel Karpov of being one of several corrupt officials complicit in the detention and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who worked in Moscow for Browder and his company, Hermitage Capital Management.
Judge Peregrine Simon said Karpov had insufficient links to the U.K. ‘There is a degree of artificiality about his seeking to protect his reputation in this country,’ the judge said.
A second libel case unrelated to Browder’s was also thrown out by the High Court Monday. Serbian tobacco tycoon Stanko Subotic had sued banker Ratko Knezevic for libel. Knezevic had accused Subotic of murder, drug smuggling, and undergoing plastic surgery to hide his identify. Only one copy of the newspaper that carried the allegations, Politika, was found in Britain.
The court ruled that Subotic had suffered no damage in England even though there had been ‘minimal’ internet publication.
Libel tourism became widely known and feared after American writer Rachel Ehrenfeld was ordered to pay damages of £30,000 to a Saudi businessman she accused of funding terrorism. Only 23 copies of her offending book were sold in Britian, all through internet sales.
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