Posts Tagged ‘dominic raab’
As Russia Counterattacks, Magnitsky-List Supporters Remain Optimistic
Proponents of internationally blacklisting Russian officials implicated in the 2009 death of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky know they face a determined foe in Moscow.
They hope to persuade other countries to follow Washington’s example in creating a “Magnitsky list,” which refuses entry to 16 officials implicated in the attorney’s prosecution and death and freezes their assets. Activists in Britain and elsewhere are urging their governments to adopt a larger list of 60 names published by the U.S. Helsinki Commission.
How much Russia wants to push back against these initiatives was on ample display on July 11 as a Russian court sought to discredit the efforts by finding Sergei Magnitsky guilty, posthumously, of tax evasion.
Similarly, the court sought to discredit the main international campaigner for Magnitsky sanctions, William Browder, by convicting him, too, of tax evasion and sentencing him in absentia to nine years in prison.
But if Moscow is again underlining its readiness to fight the list, those seeking to get more countries to adopt it say they are undeterred.
What progress the Magnitsky list proponents are making — and how high the stakes are — were equally on display this week ahead of the Russian court decision.
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No notification regarding Magnitsky list from London – Russian FM
Russia has not received an official notification from the UK authorities on banning Russian officials on the US Magnitsky List from entering the UK, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
“We have not received any official notifications to this effect from the UK authorities,” he said at a joint news conference following his talks with Romanian Foreign Minister Titus Corlatean.
Lavrov added that “the UK authorities have said more than once that they do not intend to compile similar lists.”
“A provocation cannot be ruled out, because there are many high-profile issues in the European and global media space from which some people would like to create a diversion,” the Russian Foreign Minister said.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the UK Home Office has banned 60 Russian officials allegedly involved in the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009 from entering the UK.
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Russians linked to Sergei Magnitsky case banned from entering UK
The Home Office has barred 60 Russian nationals linked to the Sergei Magnitsky whistleblower case from travelling to the UK.
Mr Magnitsky, a lawyer who worked for London-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management, died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after accusing senior Russian police officers of organising a $230m (£153m) fraud in league with tax officials. He died after being beaten and denied medical treatment for pancreatitis.
The Home Office issued the bans after the Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe published a list of the 60 officials in June last year, Telegraph.co.uk has learned.
The move is likely to prompt retaliation from the Kremlin, which banned American parents from adopting Russian children in reprisal agaisnt the US issuing visa bans and freezing the assets of some of the officials implicated in the case.
The Home Office’s barring of the Russian was contained in a previously unreported Parliamentary response in April to a written question from Dominic Raab.
Mr Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher & Walton, asked the Home Office if any of the 60 Russians had visited the UK in the last year.
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Britain Bans Entry to Russian Officials Linked to Magnitsky Case
Britain has banned entry to 60 Russian officials implicated in the Sergei Magnitsky case, The Daily Telegraph reported.
A list drafted by the U.S. Helsinki Commission, chaired by Senator Benjamin Cardin, contained the names of officials suspected of being involved in a $230 million tax fraud uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for investment fund Hermitage Capital, or in Magnitsky’s death in prison in 2009.
The Magnitsky law was passed by the Senate in December and requires the White House to publish the names of those suspected of human rights violations, including those linked to the fraud uncovered by Magnitsky or to his death.
In April, the U.S. Treasury Department published a list 18 officials who are subject to visa bans and asset freezes in the United States.
The Home Office’s ban was contained in a previously unreported Parliamentary response in April to a written question from Dominic Raab.
Mr Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher & Walton, asked the Home Office if any of the 60 Russians named on the draft list had visited the UK in the last year.
In response, immigration minister Mark Harper said: “The Home Office Special Cases Directorate is already aware of the individuals on the list and has taken the necessary measures to prevent them being issued visas for travel to the UK.”
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Is Russian crime arriving on UK shores?
Russian money has poured into London, but it is feared organised crime is accompanying it. Panorama investigates a death in a Russian prison that has brought the threat of violence to the UK. Could a whistleblower found dead on the streets of Surrey be the latest victim of the Russian crime wars?
When you investigate organised crime in Russia, strange things happen.
We had almost finished filming when one of our team received an email in Russian from a man calling himself “H”. He said he was a hacker and had been approached by an agent of the Russian state to hack into BBC emails. He had apparently decided to warn us instead.
We had been looking into one of the most notorious organised crime cases in Russia – the theft of $220m from the Russian Treasury in 2007.
The case has become an international scandal and London is at its centre because the man who blew the lid on it is a UK citizen living in the capital.
Bill Browder used to manage billions of dollars of investments in Russia through his company Hermitage Capital. But in 2007, the offices of Hermitage and its lawyers were raided by the Russian Interior Ministry.
A few months later, Hermitage discovered that three of its companies had been stolen. The three companies were then used to commit a massive tax fraud in Russia totalling $220m.
Silenced
In Moscow, a legal adviser called Sergei Magnitsky had begun to investigate for Browder, but within months Magnitsky was arrested on suspicion of tax offences.
For nearly a year, Magnitsky was held in pre-trial confinement. During that time he developed pancreatitis, and on 16 November 2009, he died.
The Russian authorities said he died of heart failure, but a report by the Kremlin’s own Human Rights Council concluded he had been denied medical treatment and his right to life had been violated.
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UK companies accused of money laundering in Magnitsky probe
British companies laundered millions of pounds stolen from the Russian Treasury in a $230m (£150m) tax fraud that has triggered a major diplomatic battle between the Kremlin and the US, it has been alleged.
At least £35m passed through the foreign bank accounts of about 10 UK registered front companies to “clean” the money, an investigation has found. The alleged 2007 fraud at the heart of the case has been linked with five deaths, including that of Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose story has been turned into a play and documentary.
Evidence that the UK system has been abused prompted one MP to demand the Government follow the US’s lead and ban the 60 Russians implicated in the fraud and Mr Magnitsky’s death, including a number of state officials, from entering the country.
Dominic Raab MP said: “We don’t want Britain to become a playground for these gangsters, let alone a battleground for the violence that tends to follow.”
Among the UK companies named is Nomirex, a shell company owned in Cyprus than names a Cypriot yoga teacher as its director. Between 2007 and 2009, its accounts stated it was “inactive”. However, an investigation by the BBC’s Panorama found that $365m was transferred through its Latvian bank account in that time.
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The £1 Million Visa
‘This is like the Cold War,’ a Russian foreign ministry spokesman said in December after President Obama signed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. ‘We will retaliate.’ The act allows for the public naming of Russian officials involved in ‘extrajudicial killings, torture or other gross violations of internationally recognised human rights’. It also allows for their US assets to be suspended and for them to be barred entry into the States.
Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian corporate lawyer who was tortured and died in Butyrka Prison in Moscow in 2009 after accusing various Russian bureaucrats of perpetrating a $230 million tax fraud. The law named after him is targeted at the many corrupt Russian officials who act with impunity at home and then spend their ill-gotten gains in the West. But of course the US isn’t the favoured destination of rich Russians. Most prefer to keep their property, wives, mistresses, football teams, newspapers and children in the UK. What would really hurt corrupt Russian officials is a Magnitsky Act here. But will it happen?
A cross-party motion calling on the government to institute a UK version of the Magnistky Act was approved by the Commons last March. Sponsored by the Tory MP Dominic Raab, who calls Magntisky ‘the new Solzhenitsyn’, the British act would apply not just to Russians but internationally: it would allow for the naming, shaming and banning of corrupt officials from any country. The government responded by saying that a devotion to human rights was ‘at the heart of our DNA’, then argued that it already had a mechanism for excluding undesirables by denying them visas. It would not, however, commit to listing publicly the names of those excluded.
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Death threats in fraud case ‘ignored’
The Times. The British authorities were accused last night of ignoring evidence about death threats and intimidation linked to a multimillion-pound Russian fraud, months before a “whistleblower” in the case was found dead outside his Surrey home.
10 December 2012
Fiona Hamilton Crime Correspondent
Alexander Perepilichny, 44, whose cause of death is described as “unexplained”, had passed documents to campaigners fighting to expose the huge tax fraud in Russia that had led to the death of an anti-corruption lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
The alleged fraudsters are said to have stolen three companies from a British-based investment firm, Hermitage Capital, and used them to perpetrate the fraud.
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Ban suspected Russian gangsters from the UK Dominic Raab
The body of the whistleblower Alexander Perepilichny was discovered near his Surrey home only months after he gave evidence to a Swiss investigation into money laundering. It is understood that he fingered the husband of an official implicated in Russia’s biggest tax fraud. His death is “unexplained” — the fourth unexplained death linked to the case.
Sergei Magnitsky was the first to pay with his life in 2009. Having exposed the $230 million scam, the dissident lawyer was persecuted by the officials he named. Magnitsky is the Solzhenitsyn of his age — except that Solzhenitsyn was sent to the gulag, whereas Magnitsky was tortured to death and is now being prosecuted posthumously for the crime he uncovered. Only in Putin’s Russia.
Toxicology tests are being carried out on Mr Perepilichny. Meanwhile we need to know whether any of the 60 named suspects in the Magnitsky case have been allowed to enter the UK. Government policy is not to routinely reveal the names of those subject to visa bans, but the Foreign Affairs Select Committee recommended disclosure in the public interest. In this kind of case it is vital.
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