Posts Tagged ‘freedom house’
Honoring the Memory of Sergei Magnitsky
Today, we mourn the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian lawyer who died a terrible death two years ago in pretrial detention after exposing a multimillion-dollar fraud against Russian taxpayers. Jailed on fabricated charges after alleging that officers of Russia’s Interior Ministry took part in a $230 million tax fraud against his client, Hermitage Capital Management, Magnitsky was essentially murdered in jail after being denied medical treatment despite repeated pleas for help.
His death, caused by the gross negligence of his jailers and those in the Ministry of Interior responsible for putting him in jail in the first place, was no mistake, and should serve as a call to action: Russian officials must take real steps to change the system that enables human rights abuses and hold accountable those who commit them.
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Helping Russia avoid Putin kleptocracy
Revolutions often ignite over pervasive corruption – or rather when enough people demand integrity in government. Arabs had that aha moment this year. In Russia, the moment may be soon with news that Vladimir Putin plans to take back the presidency.
Mr. Putin does not appear the greedy sort, but his harsh consolidation of power has created a political system ranked as one of the world’s most corrupt – worse than Haiti’s or Nigeria’s. Other nations might want to start planning for another Russian revolution in coming years, given what the US Embassy in Moscow has called a “virtual mafia state” centered on the Kremlin.
Polls show a declining popularity among Russians for the once highly admired Putin. And the widespread corruption – estimated at $300 billion a year in kickbacks and bribes – will only hinder necessary reforms to prevent economic troubles as Russia’s oil production declines.
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U.S. puts Russian officials on visa blacklist
The U.S. State Department has quietly put Russian officials connected to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on a visa blacklist as Moscow threatens to curtail cooperation on Iran, North Korea, Libya and the transit of supplies for Afghanistan if the Senate passes a measure imposing even tougher sanctions for human rights abuses.
The Russian government has grown ever more infuriated by a series of international reprimands over the case of the 37-year-old lawyer who died a painful death in pretrial detention, and it has complained that other countries are interfering in its domestic affairs.
The European Parliament, Canada and the Netherlands are moving toward their own visa bans for a list of 60 Russians involved in the case. The United States, however, is the first to have an active blacklist for the Russians, although senior U.S. officials say it has fewer than 60 names.
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A Year Before Elections, What About Russia’s Corruption Fight?
The highly publicized cases of Sergei Magnitsky — a 37-year-old lawyer who died in pretrial detention in November 2009 after exposing a multimillion-dollar fraud against the Russian taxpayer — and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed business magnate who was sentenced at the end of 2010 to remain in prison through 2017, have again put the international spotlight on corruption in the Russian state.
By the time of his death, the ailing Magnitsky had been complaining for weeks that he was being denied adequate medical treatment for acute stomach pain. The subsequent inquiry into his demise represented a serious miscarriage of justice. Khodorkovsky’s latest case gained notoriety for the brazenly irregular manner in which he was charged and convicted of embezzling his own company’s oil, apparently with the predetermined goal of keeping him behind bars at all costs.
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Freedom House Launch new Report: “Corruption in the Former Soviet Union and New EU Members”
Summary: This article provides an overview of a number of key issues related to corruption that confront the countries of the former Soviet Union and the new members of the European Union. Findings from Nations in Transit, Freedom House’s annual assessment of democratic development in the region, suggest that despite the passage of two decades since the collapse of the Soviet system, the non-Baltic former Soviet Union remains mired in institutionalized graft. Meanwhile, the new EU member states face their own persistent challenges as they struggle to combat political corruption.
The highly publicized cases of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who died in pretrial detention in November 2009 after exposing a multimilliondollar fraud against the Russian taxpayer, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed business magnate and regime critic who was sentenced at the end of 2010 to remain in prison through 2017, put an international spotlight on the Russian state’s contempt for the rule of law.
Red the full report:
http://www.providus.lv/upload_file/Publikacijas/2011/Corruption%20C_Nr_12_internetam.pdf hairy girl payday loan https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php займы на карту срочно
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One Year Before Russia’s Presidential Election, Systemic Corruption Subverts Reform
One year before the pivotal presidential election in March 2012, Russia confronts an immense and growing corruption problem at all levels of government and society that severely threatens chances for reform, according to a special report released today by Freedom House and the Latvian policy institute Providus.
The report, The Perpetual Battle: Corruption in the Former Soviet Union and New EU Member States, describes the extent to which Russia’s entire institutional apparatus—including the judiciary, law enforcement agencies, security services, and news media—now conspires to fuel state-led corruption. In addition, the study finds that despite the passage of two decades since the collapse of the Soviet system, most of the non-Baltic former Soviet Union remains mired in institutionalized graft.
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In Russia, seeing only repression
In Moscow Russia has set off on an ever more authoritarian path as it heads toward a presidential election next year, sending ominous signals to the already weakened opposition and confronting the United States and Europe with vexing new political challenges.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who positions himself as Prime Minister Vladmir Putin’s liberal alter ego, repeatedly assures the West that just the opposite is true. At the Davos World Economic Forum this week, he said Russia was fighting corruption, developing rule of law – if slowly – and becoming increasingly democratic. “Russian citizens believe they live in a democratic state,” he said.
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Report Says Decline In Freedom Continues Across Former Soviet Union
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
There is only one region in the world where political rights and civil liberties have been in continuous decline since 2001 — the wide swath of territory made up of countries of the former Soviet Union, with the exception of the Baltic states.
That’s according to Arch Puddington and Christopher Walker, the principal authors of the latest “Freedom in The World” report compiled annually by the U.S.-based rights watchdog Freedom House. The authors say there is no general explanation for the region’s downward trend. But Puddington, Freedom House’s director of research, lists a handful of possible factors.
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