Posts Tagged ‘congress’
Russia Ambassador warns Congress over human rights bill
By Erik Wasson – 04/23/12
Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak on Monday warned Congress that there would be “significant reaction” in Moscow if members try to attach a human rights measure to one granting permanent normal trade relations to his country.
Kislyak told reporters that passage of the bill could “impair the ability” of the U.S. and Russia to work together.
Russia wants Congress to grant it permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) and the White House is pushing Congress to do so before Russia joins the World Trade Organization this year.
At this point, Russia will join the WTO regardless of what Congress does and if Congress does not act U.S. exporters to Russia will be hurt. Kislyak made clear Russia will deny new lower tariffs to U.S. companies if Congress does not grant PNTR, as it would be entitled to do under WTO rules.
Some in Congress want to use the occasion to press Russia on human rights and democratization, however.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) have introduced a bill that specifically addresses the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a whistleblower working for a London investment firm who died in suspicious circumstances while imprisoned by Russian authorities in November 2009.
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Russian envoy warns on U.S. human rights bill
Reuters
By Doug Palmer and Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON | Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:45pm BST
Russia’s ambassador to the United States warned that proposed U.S. legislation to punish Russian officials involved in human rights abuses could a have significant negative impact on U.S.-Russian relations.
Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak said the U.S. Congress should not tie the so-called Sergei Magnitsky bill to an expected vote this year on establishing “permanent normal trade relations” between the two countries.
“If that is taken to an extreme, it’ll be a significant negative impact on Russian-Americans relations,” Kislyak told reporters. “We are a serious country and we do not want to be told what to do within the limits of Russian law.”
The 2009 death of the 37-year-old Magnitsky, who worked for equity fund Hermitage Capital and died after a year in Russian jails, spooked investors and tarnished Russia’s image.
Before his arrest, Magnitsky had testified against Russian interior ministry officials during a tax evasion case against Hermitage. The Kremlin human rights council says he was probably beaten to death.
The case has heightened concerns in Congress about human rights conditions in Russia and made it even harder for the White House to persuade lawmakers to lift a Cold War-era trade provision known as the Jackson-Vanik amendment.
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Updated Magnitsky Act Introduced in U.S. Congress
Sergei Magnitsky was a lawyer who represented Hermitage Capital Management – an UK-based investment fund company who specialised in Russian markets and prided themselves on exposing corruption and misconduct in Russian enterprises. In 2006 the CEO of the company had his visa annulled and was labelled a ‘threat to national security’ by the Russian government. Yeah, more like a threat to the pockets of corrupt businessmen and bureaucrats. Anyway, a year later, after the company refused to pay bribe money to ‘officials’, their Moscow offices were raided. As were the offices of Firestone Duncan, the law firm who represented Hermitage Capital and were Magnitsky worked. Documents and computers were seized. Hermitage had become a victim of ‘corporate raiding’ – a practice in which companies and assets are seized with the aid of corrupt law enforcement officials and judges. Well, the Hermitage case is really interesting (and quite frustrating) and you should go and look it up but we are here to talk about Magnitsky.
Sergei represented Hermitage on charges of tax evasion and fraud. Y’know, them things the government wheels out when they want to get rid of a business (or steal it) – I’m being cheeky today, excuse me. During his investigations he came to believe that tax fraud had been committed, but not by Hermitage. He discovered evidence that suggested that a group of criminals had stolen Hermitage documents and used them to illegally reclaim £140m of taxes from the Russian government – money that belonged not to Hermitage, but to the Russian people. If Magnitsky’s suspicions were true then the police, the judiciary, tax officials, bankers and the Russian mafia would’ve been implicated. His claims were initially dismissed but his main accusation, that Hermitage had not committed fraud but had in fact been victimized by it would eventually be validated.
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Bill Could Complicate U.S.-Russia Relations
Republicans and Democrats don’t agree about much on Capitol Hill these days, but there is one bill gaining bipartisan support. It’s legislation that would punish human rights violators in Russia by naming them and denying them visas to the U.S. But the Obama administration is not on board yet. U.S. diplomats worry it could complicate relations at a time when the U.S. needs Russia’s support most.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I’m Melissa Block.
Bipartisanship is rare on Capitol Hill these days but one bill is gaining support from both Republicans and Democrats. There’s a problem, though, the Obama administration is leery of it.
As NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports, the bill involves human rights abuses in Russia. And U.S. diplomats are worried it could complicate relations at a time when the U.S. needs Russia’s backing on a range of issues.
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Nocera Hits the Bulls-Eye on Magnitsky Act
Seth Mandel
04.17.2012 – 12:45 PM
President Obama has been decrying “the way Congress does its business these days” and promising to act “with or without this Congress,” so fed up is he by the lack of bipartisan solutions coming from the legislative branch. So the president, one would think, would be delighted that Congress has come together to produce a bipartisan, popular bill that would also give the president a strong foreign policy move while simultaneously beefing up his credentials on human rights and democracy.
I’m talking, of course, about the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011,” a bill that would sanction Russian human rights offenders. It is named after the Russian attorney who was detained without trial for investigating Russian corruption and then beaten and left to die in prison. It is intended to replace the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik amendment, aimed at getting the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration, but which is outdated and will likely be repealed now that Russia is joining the World Trade Organization. The bill was introduced by Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and has broad bipartisan support. But Obama staunchly opposes the bill. Today, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera adds his voice to the growing chorus of commentators, both liberal and conservative, who support the bill:
I have to confess that when I first began receiving press releases about this effort, which has gained traction in Europe as well as the U.S., I didn’t take it very seriously. Visa restrictions didn’t seem like much of a price for allowing an innocent lawyer to die in prison. But after watching the reaction of the Russian government, which has repeatedly and vehemently denounced the bill — and which is now, out of pure spite, prosecuting Magnitsky posthumously — I’ve come to see that it really does hit these officials where it hurts them most.
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US Congress tries to replace Jackson-Vanik with anti-Russian legislation – FM
Russia is strongly against U.S. Congress’ attempts to replace the Jackson-Vanik amendment with new “anti-Russian legislation” in the form of the so-called Magnitsky Act that claims to protect human rights and democracy in Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
He warned that the approval by the U.S. Congress of unilateral punitive measures against the persons purportedly responsible for Sergei Magnitsky’s death “will cause serious damage to bilateral relations”.
Lavrov stressed that the Russian leadership pays the closest attention to the investigation of Magnitsky’s death.
“This issue must not be politicised,” he added.
An informed source in Congress told Itar-Tass that the congressmen are not very eager to cancel the Jackson-Vanik amendment because of disagreements with Moscow over Syria and other issues, including human rights.
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Why Kremlin Kleptocracy Affects U.S. Interests
Over the past year, Washington readily threw its support behind opposition movements in Libya and Syria. That was an easy decision since neither Libya nor Syria was a U.S. ally. When it came to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who was a U.S. ally, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama eventually did withdraw its support from him, but only when his position turned uncertain.
President-elect Vladimir Putin is not “our son of a bitch,” to use President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s expression. He is no friend of the West, and few people around the world admire his authoritarian kleptocracy. Yet Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are committed to a “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations. Moreover, despite mass protests of the past few months demanding systemic change, Putin is not wobbling. Moreover, the protests might even make Putin more accommodating on Syria, Iran, supply routes to U.S. troops in Afghanistan and other issues where Washington seeks Russia’s cooperation.
Leading Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney was recently critical of Obama’s reset policy toward Russia. But aside from resuscitating outdated, Reaganite Cold War rhetoric, Romney had nothing to offer on U.S.-Russian relations. It’s a pity because unlike during the Cold War era, the United States — and Romney, the business executive, in particular — could put effective pressure on Russian officials to help combat the country’s largest kleptocrats.
To begin with, the United States could take the lead in imposing worldwide sanctions on the so-called Magnitsky list, a gang of Russian government officials who have been implicated in the wrongful imprisonment and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital.
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The Limits of Cheeseburger Diplomacy
President Obama’s “hot mike” comments to Dmitry Medvedev represented a classic Kinsley gaffe. Unaware he was being recorded, Obama assured the Russian leader that he would “have more flexibility” on missile defense after his reelection. Medvedev, in turn, promised to “transmit this information to Vladimir,” a reference to the once and future President Putin.
If anyone was still wondering why Republicans remain skeptical of Obama’s commitment to missile defense, now they understand. Yet the significance of the hot-mike incident goes beyond that one issue. In a broader sense, the president has indicated that he is doubling down on his “reset” policy toward Moscow, despite a mountain of evidence that the policy has largely failed.
The most recent evidence of its failure was Russia’s March 4 presidential election, which restored Putin to the top job — his former job — in the Kremlin. That election was sullied by “procedural irregularities,” not to mention a political and media environment that forestalled genuine democratic competition. The same could be said of Russia’s December 4 parliamentary elections, in which the government’s mischief was even worse. As the New York Times reported, OECD election observers said they “had observed blatant fraud, including the brazen stuffing of ballot boxes” — which makes it all the more remarkable that Putin’s United Russia Party suffered such major losses.
In short, the country is sliding deeper into lawless autocracy. Meanwhile, Moscow continues to resist imposing tougher sanctions on Iran and Syria, and it continues to supply Damascus with all sorts of weaponry that is being used to massacre innocent civilians. When Russia and China vetoed a recent U.N. resolution on Syria, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called their actions “despicable.”
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Kerry Backs Pairing Magnitsky Bill With Jackson-Vanik Repeal
U.S. Senator John Kerry, the influential head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he supports a measure to sanction Russian officials for human rights violations as a complement to granting Russia normalized trade status.
According to “Foreign Policy” magazine, which quotes the transcript of a March 27 business meeting of the committee, Kerry (D-Massachusetts) said that pursuing the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act in conjunction with repealing the Jackson-Vanik Amendment is “the way to move forward.”
The Magnitsky bill would financially sanction and deny U.S. visas to Russian officials connected to the 2009 prison death of anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
While the Obama administration has concern that passing the bill would harm relations with Moscow, many senators favor it as a trade-off for repealing the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a move the administration advocates.
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