Posts Tagged ‘congress’
Cardin stands up for rights
Maryland’s junior senator shows leadership by demanding Russian accountability for a politically linked death.
This month’s passage of a new U.S.-Russia trade law has done more than showcase Senator Ben Cardin’s dedication to international human rights.
By sending the shock to the Kremlin — that the U.S. values prosecuting rights abusers as much as it values profits for businesses — the Maryland Democrat has catapulted human rights atop the international agenda and brought new attention to the U.S. Helsinki Commission that he chairs.
The Helsinki Commission — founded amid the Cold War, just like the legislation the new trade bill replaces — once helped secure freedom for Soviet refuseniks unable to emigrate from under the thumb of Communism. Thirty years later, Mr. Cardin and the 21-member, bipartisan, congressional-executive body put the spotlight back on the Soviet region broadly and Moscow specifically.
I remember the June day in 2009 when Senator Cardin first heard about Sergei Magnitsky. Hermitage Capital Management CEO Bill Browder spoke of the raid on his office in Moscow and how Mr. Magnitsky, his 37-year-old lawyer, refused to lie about the trumped-up charges his client faced in Russia’s largest-ever tax fraud scheme, and how he suffered in prison for it. Mr. Cardin sat wide-eyed, imagining the story worthy of a movie.
What no one knew in the hearing room that day was that Mr. Magnitsky would die within five months, a tragic victim of either repeated medical inaction in prison or torture. (Is there a difference?)
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Squeezing the sleazy
Global anti-corruption efforts are growing in scope and clout. This year is set to be the best yet.
Impunity and euphemism used to be daunting obstacles for graft-busters. Not any more. International efforts are bearing fruit. New laws have raised the cost of wrongdoing. Financial markets are punishing corrupt companies. Most encouraging, activists have growing clout not only in high-profile cases but at grassroots level, where the internet helps to highlight instances of “quiet” (low-level) corruption.
The big international bodies dealing with corruption are making progress. A working group set up in 2010 by the G20 (the world’s largest economies) has done more than many observers expected, particularly in drawing up rules on seizure of corrupt assets and denial of visas to corrupt officials. Unlike the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the G20 is not so far split between keen sleazebusters and countries like Russia and China. Another body, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, will start a fourth round of monitoring member states next year, chiefly for effectiveness in implementing anti-money-laundering laws.
Such efforts are “steady, slow boring stuff”, but still important, says Robert Palmer of Global Witness, a campaigning group. He notes that international discussions no longer tiptoe round the word “corruption”. A culture of denial has given way to at least lip-service to the cause.
The anti-graft laws of national governments are making progress too. America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Britain’s Bribery Act impose potentially savage penalties on firms that do business by sleazy means. That includes having weak in-house anti-corruption policies. The results are mixed. At a conference earlier this month in Prague organised by the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank, Thomas Firestone of the Moscow office of Baker & McKenzie, a law firm, said foreign managers trying to penalise bribery with dismissal face tough Russian laws that hamper such firings. Perversely, the most corrupt employees can thus gain hefty severance payments. Such clashes between local and international laws abound.
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U.S. legislation infuriates Russia
Washington Post
The U.S. Senate on Thursday repealed a trade sanction imposed 38 years ago to force the Soviet Union to allow Jews and other religious minorities to emigrate, replacing it with a modern-day punishment for human rights abuse that has enraged Russian officials.
The old law, one of the last vestiges of the Cold War, was called the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, named after a U.S. senator and a representative. The new law, passed 92 to 4, grants Russia and Moldova permanent normal trade relations, but it is coupled with the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which honors a dead Russian. The law blacklists Russians connected to the death of Magnitsky in police custody and to other gross human rights violations, prohibiting entrance to the United States and use of its banking system.
“Today, we close a chapter in U.S. history,” Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), one of the prime movers of the Magnitsky bill, said during the debate on Jackson-Vanik. “It served its purpose. Today, we open a new chapter in U.S. leadership for human rights.”
How the United States can best promote democracy and human rights in Russia – and elsewhere – became a matter of agonizing and often bitter debate as pressure grew to repeal Jackson-Vanik. Not only was it widely considered a relic with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and freedom to emigrate from Russia, but, under the regulations of the World Trade Organization, which Russia joined this year, it also penalized American exporters.
The House approved the measure last month. President Obama said he looked forward to signing the law because of the WTO benefits for American workers, although originally the administration had argued that the Magnitsky bill was unnecessary because the president could – and would – create the desired blacklist by executive order.
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Sergei Magnitsky: symbol of prison abuse in Russia
Sergei Magnitsky, whose case triggered a US-Russia row on Thursday, was a lawyer working for a Western firm who died in pre-trial jail at 37 in Moscow in 2009 after claiming to have discovered a major tax fraud covered up by government officials.
He died after spending almost a year under pre-trial arrest that his mother said had exposed him to “torture conditions” and which his employer called retribution for his testimony against interior ministry officers.
Prosecutors said that Magnitsky died from acute heart and pancreatic failure and fluid in the brain in combination with other conditions, including diabetes.
Human rights campaigners, including the Kremlin’s human rights council, said that the lawyer was ill-treated deliberately and even tortured, handcuffed one hour before his death despite suffering from acute pain.
Magnitsky’s firm Firestone Duncan was providing legal support to what was once Russia’s largest investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, whose head William Browder fell out of favour with the Kremlin and was denied a visa in 2005.
Prior to his arrest, Sergei Magnitsky claimed to have uncovered a scheme used by police officials to reclaim about $235 million in taxes paid by his client.
However instead of looking into the claims Russia charged the lawyer with fraud and locked him up in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina jail, later transferring him to Moscow’s infamous Butyrka prison.
His death caused an international outrage, whose ripple effects are still felt today.
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Senate Passes Russian Trade Bill, With Conditions
The Senate voted on Thursday to finally eliminate cold war-era trade restrictions on Russia, but at the same time it condemned Moscow for human rights abuses, threatening to further strain an already fraught relationship with the Kremlin.
The Senate bill, which passed the House of Representatives last month, now goes to President Obama, who has opposed turning a trade bill into a statement on the Russian government’s treatment of its people.
But with such overwhelming support in Congress – the measure passed the Senate 92 to 4 and the House 365 to 43 – the White House has had little leverage to press its case.
And President Obama has shown little desire to pick a fight in which he would appear to be siding with the Russians on such a delicate issue.
Speaking to reporters shortly after the Senate vote, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said the president was committed to signing the bill.
The most immediate effect of the bill will be to formally normalize trade relations with Russia after nearly 40 years. Since the 1970s, commerce between Russia and the United States has been subject to restrictions that were designed to punish Communist nations that refused to allow their citizens to leave freely.
While presidents have waived the restrictions since the cold war ended — allowing them to remain on the books as a symbolic sore point with the Russians — the issue took on new urgency this summer after Russia joined the World Trade Organization. American businesses can take advantage of lower trade tariffs only with nations that enjoy normalized trade status
By some estimates, trade with Russia is expected to double after the limits are lifted.
But another effect of the bill – and one that has Russian officials furious with Washington – will be to require that the federal government freeze the assets of Russians implicated in human rights abuses and to deny them visas.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were inspired to attach those provisions to the trade legislation because of the case of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was tortured and died in prison in 2009 after he exposed a government tax fraud scheme.
During the Senate debate, it was Mr. Magnitsky’s case, and not Russia’s trade status, that occupied most of the time.
One by one, Democratic and Republican senators alike rose to denounce Russian officials for their disregard for basic freedoms.
“This culture of impunity in Russia has been growing worse and worse,” said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. “There are still many people who look at the Magnitsky Act as anti-Russia. I disagree,” he added. “Ultimately passing this legislation will place the United States squarely on the side of the Russian people and the right side of Russian history, which appears to be approaching a crossroads.”
Russian officials denounced the Senate vote.
“This initiative is intended to restrict the rights of Russian citizens, which we consider completely unjust and baseless,” said Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian foreign ministry’s human rights envoy, in comments to the Interfax news agency in Brussels. “This is an attempt to interfere in our internal affairs, in the authority of Russia’s investigative and judicial organs, which continue to investigate the Magnitsky case.”
Initially there was pressure on the Senate to pass a bill that punished human rights violators from all nations, not just those who are Russian. But the House bill applied only to Russia. And the Senate followed suit, as supporters of the bill wanted something that could pass quickly and not require a complicated back-and-forth with the House.
Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow. микрозайм онлайн займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php payday loan
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U.S. Senate Lifts Russia, Moldova Trade Barriers; Passes Magnitsky Sanctions
The U.S. Senate has voted to permanently lift Cold War-era barriers to trade with Russia, a move long sought by Moscow that could increase commerce between the countries by billions of dollars.
In the same vote, senators also voted to sanction Russian officials implicated in the death of anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and in other perceived gross rights violations in Russia.
Moscow has railed against that move, which has overshadowed the trade benefits to come.
The Senate’s 92-4 vote follows the passing of the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives in November. U.S. President Barack Obama is now expected to sign it into law.
When he does, Moscow will be exempted from the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which imposed trade restrictions on the Soviet Union for its policy of limiting Jewish emigration. The restrictions have been waived for nearly two decades, but remained on the books as a symbol of U.S. objections to Russia’s human rights record.
Citing the weak U.S. economy, the White House had pushed Congress to lift the restrictions and grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status to Russia, the world’s seventh largest economy.
The move allows the United States to take full advantage of Moscow’s August entry into the World Trade Organization, which China and Europe have already benefited from.
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Freedom House Applauds the U.S. Senate’s Passage of the Magnitsky Act
Freedom House strongly supports the U.S. Senate’s passage of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, passed today by a vote of 92-4, which places a visa ban on corrupt Russian officials and prevents them from accessing U.S. banking systems. The House version of the bill, which also had strong bipartisan support, was passed on November 16th as part of a trade normalization relations (PNTR) package with Russia and Moldova.
“This is a historic day for the cause of promoting human rights in Russia,” said David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House. “Huge credit goes to the House and Senate leaderships for getting this done, to Congressman Jim McGovern and Senator Ben Cardin for their invaluable shepherding of the legislation, to the other Senate and House sponsors of the bill on both sides of the aisle, and to all those have been seeking justice for Sergei Magnitsky and for other cases of gross human rights abuses like his. Next year, the Congress should apply this model to human rights abusers in other countries where there is impunity for such violations.”
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US Senate Passes Magnitsky Act & Russian Trade Bill
The US Senate on Thursday passed the Magnitsky Act, which targets Russian officials deemed by Washington to have violated human rights, along with a landmark trade bill with Russia.
The Senate voted 92 to 4 to approve the legislation, which would simultaneously repeal the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanick restrictions on trade with Russia, establish normalized bilateral trade relations with Moscow, and introduce visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials considered by the White House to be guilty of human rights violations.
The decision to link the rights legislation to the trade bill has angered Russia, which has promised retaliatory measures aimed at the United States.
There was little suspense to the fate of the bill in the Senate. It was widely expected to pass, and it will now go to US President Barack Obama to be signed into law.
In the lead-up to Thursday’s vote, however, there was a question about whether provisions targeting Russian officials would be extended to every country in the world. The US House of Representatives’ version of the bill focused exclusively on Russia, while the Senate version called for purportedly corrupt officials in other countries to be punished as well.
The Senate ultimately agreed to the language in the House bill and focus just on Russia.
“This bill may only apply to Russia, but it sets a standard that should be applied globally,” Sen. Benjamin Cardin, the author of the Magnitsky Act, said in a statement ahead of the vote. “I encourage other nations to follow our lead.”
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Magnitsky Bill in US Senate Targets Only Russia
The US Senate on Wednesday is set to consider a version of the “Magnitsky Act” that targets only Russian officials deemed by Washington to be complicit in human rights abuses.
The earlier version of the proposed Senate bill extended the US visa bans and asset freezes mandated in the legislation to other countries as well.
“This bill may only apply to Russia, but it sets a standard that should be applied globally,” Sen. Benjamin Cardin, the author of the “Magnitsky Act,” said in a statement Tuesday evening. “I encourage other nations to follow our lead.”
The bill before the Senate on Wednesday would simultaneously repeal the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik restrictions on trade with Russia, establish normalized bilateral trade relations with Moscow, and introduce visa bans and asset freezes targeting Russian officials considered by the White House to be involved in the death of Russian whistleblower lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, as well as other purported violators of human rights in Russia.
The language of the bill mirrors that of a version passed by the US House of Representatives last month. It is widely expected to pass in the Senate and be signed into law by US President Barack Obama.
The decision to link the rights legislation to the trade bill has angered Russia, which has promised retaliatory measures aimed at the United States. быстрые займы на карту займы на карту https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php займ онлайн на карту без отказа
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