Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Last-ditch effort backfires on Magnitsky

Russia Beyond the Headlines

Russian lawmakers urged Congress last week to reconsider the Magnitsky bill, but so far have gotten the opposite result. If passed, the Magnitsky bill could derail US-Russian relations for years Russian Senators said.

Several members of Russia’s Senate, called the Federation Council, made a rare appearance in Washington, D.C., this past week in a last-ditch effort to convince their American peers to reconsider the controversial Magnitsky Bill—a piece of legislation that Moscow considers to be explicit interference in the internal affairs of the country.

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign affairs has repeatedly warned Washington about the consequences of this legislation. The Magnitsky Bill sanctions a number of the Russian officials that the U.S. Congress has deemed responsible for or are connected to the case.

In 2008, Sergei Magnitsky said that he had uncovered a scheme that top officials from Russia’s Interior Ministry and other agencies had created a plan to defraud the Russian government. Two of the officials turned around and implicated him for tax evasion on behalf of his client, the investment firm Hermitage Capital headed by William Browder, then a longtime cheerleader for President Vladimir Putin.

Magnitsky died after a year in pre-trial detention, during which his health deteriorated dramatically; Russian investigators found he had been beaten while in prison. While the Russian government has stressed that any human rights investigations should be conducted internally, Browder has headed an international investigation of his own and become one of Putin’s fiercest critics.