Posts Tagged ‘Cardin’
Trade and consequences
Washington Post
The next stage of President Obama’s “reset” with Russia will include trade favors, if the administration has its way. The president has promised the regime of Vladimir Putin that he will support Russia’s long-delayed accession to the World Trade Organization this year. For that to happen, Georgia, a U.S. ally subjected to a Russian invasion in 2008, must still sign off. Also, Congress must grant Russia fully normalized trade relations to avoid a conflict under WTO rules once Moscow is admitted. That means exempting Russia from a 1974 law conditioning trade on Russia’s emigration policies.
The law, known as Jackson-Vanik, is outdated; it was passed to try to force the Soviet Union to allow Jews to emigrate. But granting Russia trade privileges now rightly seems to many in Congress to be an unwarranted concession to a regime that, under Mr. Putin and partner Dmitry Medvedev, continues to engage in massive human rights violations — not to mention epic corruption.
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Reset on the Ropes?
Earlier today, Republican Rep. Peter Roskam, deputy whip in the House, put out a statement signaling his support for the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act.
“As the Obama administration continues its efforts to ‘reset’ relations with Russia, the United States Congress can and must press for progress on democracy and rule of law in Russia,” said Congressman Peter Roskam. “Congress is considering legislation with bipartisan support that would impose targeted sanctions on Russian officials complicit in human rights and rule of law violations like the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer working to uncover official corruption, and businessmen like Khodorkovsky. I plan to support such legislation and hope to see it become law.”
The Magnitsky Act, which has been introduced in the Senate by Democratic senator Ben Cardin with broad bipartisan support, including cosponsorship by leadership in both parties (Kyl and Durbin), has support from some of the usual suspects (Lieberman and McCain), and even some of the newest members (Blumenthal and Rubio). The bill would require the Obama administration to compile a list of officials and individuals in Russia who have been complicit in human rights and rule of law violations. Those who make the list would be blacklisted from entering the United States, and their assets and bank accounts in the United States would be frozen.
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Surkov, McFaul talk corruption
First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, Vladislav Surkov, traveled to Washington D.C. to discuss child protection, migration and anti-corruption and prison reform efforts as part of the U.S. – Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Civil Society Working Group – while discussion of the ongoing controversy over the death of Sergei Magnitsky was apparently left off the table.
The Russian delegation, comrpised of officials and human rights activists, arrived in Washington on Tuesday, June 6. The participants were divided into subgroups, each of which dealt with one specific issue. “Some visited prisons, some focused on child abuse,” said Yana Yakovleva, a representative of Business-Solidarnost, a participating community organization aimed at protecting entrepreneurs. “Basically, it was a sharing experience and an exchange of views.”
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Congress goes after Russian officials for human rights violations
President Barack Obama is set to meet with Russian President Dmitri Medvdev on May 26 in France on the sidelines of the G-8 meetings. In advance of that meeting, Congress has unveiled a new bill to force the administration to sanction Russian officials for human rights violations.
“One of the core foreign policy objectives when we came into office was the Russia reset,” Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call on Friday. “It has been one of the most productive relationships for the United States in terms of the signing and ratification of the New START treaty, cooperation on nuclear security, cooperation with regard to Iran sanctions and nonproliferation generally, the northern distribution network into Afghanistan that supports our effort there, and our discussions with Russia about expanding trade ties and their interest in joining the WTO, as well as Russia’s increased cooperation with NATO that was manifested by the NATO-Russia meetings in Lisbon.”
But Rhodes didn’t mention what most in Congress see as Russia’s backsliding on issues of democracy, freedom of the press, and human rights. A large group of senators introduced a bill on Thursday afternoon that they hope will force the administration to address this issue. Called the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011, it is named after the anti-corruption lawyer who was tortured and died in a Russian prison in 2009. The bill targets his captors as well as any other Russian officials “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of human rights.”
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Sergei Magnitsky Act entered into Congressional Records
Official transcipt of the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011” as submitted by Senator Benjamin Cardin.
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Senators Cardin and McCain Discussion on Magnitsky Act & Rule of Law in Russia
US Senate
Senators Benjamin Cardin and John McCain colloquy on the Senate Floor – Discussion on the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Acountability Act of 2011” and the Rule of Law in Russia – May 26, 2011
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Lawmakers introduce Russian “reset”; Russian political prisoners’ appeal denied
Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former oil tycoon, lost an appeal of his second conviction for fraud Tuesday, but his sentence was cut by a year and now will end in 2016.
Khodorkovsky and his business partner and fellow defendant, Platon Lebedev, had been convicted in December of embezzling nearly $30 billion from Yukos, the oil company they ran. Khodorkovsky had antagonized Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and the charges were widely considered not only politically motivated but also legally dubious.
Khodorkovsky, to the applause of the courtroom crowd, had this stem-winder statement on the court’s ruling:
In what dusty cellar did they dig up that poisonous Stalinist spider who wrote this drivel?
What kind of long-term investments can one talk about with such justice?
No modernization will succeed without a purging of these cellars.
The authors of the verdict have shown both themselves and the judicial system of Russia in an idiotic light, having declared in a high-profile, public trial that in Russia injured parties from a theft receive a profit, that the aspiration to increase it is a crime, that the “right” prices for oil in Siberia must be equal to the prices in Western Europe, transportation, customs duties and restrictedness of export notwithstanding.
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Swapping Jackson-Vanik for Magnitsky
Relations between Cold War-era foes Moscow and Washington have long been distrustful, hypocritical, peppered with mutual insinuations and patched together with the most tenuous of threads. But now, on the eve of State Duma and presidential elections, an inevitable crisis in relations is nearing that threatens to tear them apart at the seams.
Last week, a group of 15 U.S. senators formally introduced a bill targeting Russians for human rights violations and corruption, including 60 officials connected to the jail death of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The bill would ban them from entering the United States and freeze any U.S.-based assets.
Chances are high that the bill will be passed. The sanctions against corrupt officials and criminals-cum-politicians could serve as a replacement for the Jackson-Vanik amendment that has long been in need of repeal. When U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met with Russian opposition leaders during his visit to Moscow in March, he told us that support was growing on Capitol Hill for new sanctions against Russian crooks and thieves that could replace the old Cold War-era law.
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U.S. Senators Seek Magnitsky Sanctions
Fourteen U.S. senators have submitted a bipartisan bill that would sanction Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail and others guilty of human rights violations.
“While this bill bears Sergei Magnitsky’s name in honor of his sacrifice, the language addresses the overall issue of the erosion of the rule of law and human rights in Russia,” Senator Benjamin Cardin, a Democrat, said Thursday when he introduced the legislation in Washington, according to a transcript of his remarks.
The U.S. legislation, whose sponsors include Republican John McCain and independent Joseph Lieberman, would impose a visa ban and asset freeze on the 60 officials implicated in the Magnitsky case. They are from the Federal Security Service, the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Prison Service.
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