Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

“Not Even Stalin Did That”

Congressman Ed Royce Blog

The House Foreign Affairs Committee met yesterday on the heels of the tainted Russian election that put Vladimir Putin back in power. (He never left.)

A top observer characterized Russia’s leadership as “corrupt, rotten and rotting.” A quarter to a third of the economy is lost to corruption, it’s believed. $84 billion in capital flight last year alone.

Human rights abuses abound. The head of an investment fund told the story of Sergei Magnitsky, his Moscow lawyer. In 2008, Magnitsky uncovered evidence of police corruption and embezzlement. He was dead eleven months later – imprisoned, beaten and denied critical medical treatment. One Committee member called this testimony “one of the most powerful the Committee has ever heard.” Magnitsky’s case has become a cause célèbre in Russia, an example of the systemic corruption and abuse of power that has driven tens of thousands of protesters to Moscow’s streets recently.