Posts Tagged ‘house’
House panel backs “Magnitsky” sanctions on Russia
A congressional committee unanimously approved on Thursday a measure to penalize Russian officials for human rights abuses, adding to tensions with Moscow and complicating White House efforts to pass Russian trade legislation in the coming months.
The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved on a voice vote the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act,” named for a 37-year-old anti-corruption lawyer who worked for the equity fund Hermitage Capital. His 2009 death after a year in Russian jails spooked investors and blackened Russia’s image abroad.
The measure has bipartisan support among lawmakers but its prospects for passage in Congress remain uncertain.
The measure would require the United States to deny visas and freeze the assets of Russians linked to Magnitsky’s death. The Obama administration already has imposed visa restrictions on some Russians believed to have been involved in Magnitsky’s death, but kept their names quiet.
The bill would make public the list of alleged offenders, broaden it to include other abusers of human rights in Russia and prohibit them from doing their banking in U.S. institutions.
Russian officials have warned that the bill would harm American-Russian relations, and U.S. business groups say it could hurt their interests in Russia.
The White House worries the bill will get embroiled in President Barack Obama’s efforts to reap the trade benefits of Russia’s looming entry into the World Trade Organization, a key achievement of the “reset” in U.S.-Russia ties of recent years.
Approval by the panel was just the first step in advancing the Magnitsky bill by Democratic Representative Jim McGovern through the Republican-controlled House. Before it can get a vote of the full House, two more committees must approve it or waive jurisdiction. The Democratic-controlled Senate has not acted on a similar bill by Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat.
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Congress advances bill to pressure Russia on human rights
A bill that would impose sanctions on Russians who commit human rights violations moved ahead in the U.S. Congress on Thursday despite resistance from the Obama administration and angry denunciations from Kremlin officials.
The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, named in memory of a corruption-fighting Russian who worked for an American law firm and died in police custody, was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two more committees must weigh in before a vote of the entire House, and the Senate has yet to act on its version.
Magnitsky, a tax adviser for the Hermitage Capital investment company, was 37 when he died here in pretrial detention in 2009. After discovering that stolen Hermitage documents were being used to plunder $230 million from the Russian treasury through a fraudulent tax return, Magnitsky accused tax and police officials of the crime. They charged him instead, and nearly a year later he died in custody, his body marked by signs of beating.
Since then the affair has become deeply entangled in ever complicated U.S.-Russian relations. Human rights advocates have lobbied hard for the bill, which requires publicly naming those Russians connected to the case, denying them visas and freezing their assets. The State Department would have to deliver yearly reports on enforcement.
The Obama administration has been deeply critical of Russia’s refusal to hold anyone accountable for Magnitsky’s ill treatment and death, but it has argued that a secret visa blacklist it drew up last summer is more effective and avoids publicly challenging Moscow.
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U.S.–Russia Trade and the Magnitsky Act
Today, the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act (H.R. 4405), a measure designed to promote human rights in Russia. The committee’s vote has important implications for both human rights and international trade.
In a few months, Russia will become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). U.S. businesses will not be able to benefit from the concessions Russia made to join the WTO unless Congress first repeals the Jackson–Vanik Amendment, a powerful tool that the U.S. successfully used to promote human rights in Soviet Russia and other countries that restricted emigration during the Cold War. Failure to repeal Jackson–Vanik could place U.S. companies at a disadvantage while other WTO members benefit from significantly increased access to the Russian economy.
Regrettably, the Obama Administration did not work with Congress to resolve these issues before agreeing to Russia’s accession to the WTO. Now, Russian accession will put U.S. businesses at a disadvantage in Russia until Congress repeals Jackson–Vanik.
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Magnitsky Bill Clears First Hurdle in US Congress
On Thursday morning, by a unanimous voice vote, the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved a bill that offers a rare example of congressional bipartisanship. The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, cosponsored by leading Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress, deals with an issue that the current and previous administrations were too timid (or too calculating) to address seriously: human rights violations in Russia. The bill drew the Kremlin’s attention as no other US congressional initiative has in years—perhaps not since the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which linked US-Soviet trade to the freedom of emigration. Hours after his inauguration on May 7th, Russia’s reinstated president, Vladimir Putin, signed a decree tasking his diplomats with “preventing the introduction of unilateral extraterritorial sanctions by the United States of America against Russian legal entities and individuals”—a thinly veiled reference to the Magnitsky Act.
Sergei Magnitsky was a Moscow lawyer who died in custody in 2009 after reportedly being tortured and denied access to medical care. A year earlier, he uncovered a $230 million tax fraud scheme—the largest known in Russian history—which involved the previously seized assets of Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund he was representing. Magnitsky’s testimony implicated several law enforcement officials. The result was his own arrest. Almost three years after Magnitsky’s death, not one of the perpetrators has been punished: on the contrary, a number of interior ministry officials involved in his case have received awards and promotions. Indeed, the most prominent criminal investigation in Russia involving Magnitsky has been, astonishingly, the ongoing posthumous case against him.
The Magnitsky Act, which now advances to the House floor, proposes a targeted visa ban and asset freeze against individuals “responsible for the detention, abuse, or death of Sergei Magnitsky,” as well as for any “extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” in Russia. It is in defense of these fine citizens that Putin has mobilized the full force of his diplomacy. Both Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Kremlin’s top foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, have called the bill “anti-Russian,” and threatened unspecified retaliation. Presumably, all those US officials with retirement savings in Russian banks have been put on notice.
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US House Panel Approves Magnitsky Bill
A U.S. House committee approved legislation — without debate — that would punish Russian human-rights violators.
The legislation was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management who has been lionized around the world as a martyr and a whistleblower after he made allegations of a huge fraud scandal in Russia and died while in the hands of Russian authorities.
The scandal involved the alleged theft of hundreds of millions of dollars from Hermitage by Russian police, tax officials and others. Magnitsky had testified to Russian prosecutors in October 2008 but he was arrested and remanded to the very officials he accused in his testimony.
As the scandal unfolded, the U.S. created a secret visa blacklist of those it said were involved in the case. Moscow responded with its own list. The bill would make the U.S. list public, broaden it to include other human-rights abusers and ban those on the list from banking at U.S. financial institutions.
Russia has vowed to retaliate if the legislation becomes law, though it faces an uncertain future in an election year, according to a Dow Jones Newswires report.
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U.S. House Panel Approves ‘Magnitsky’ Bill
A U.S. House of Representatives panel has approved a bill that seeks to deny visas to more than 60 Russian officials implicated in the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The draft legislation also aims to freeze the officials’ U.S. assets.
The House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved on a voice vote the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act” despite opposition by the Obama administration and Russian warnings that the legislation could threaten bilateral relations.
Magnitsky was arrested in 2008 after implicating top officials in a scheme to defraud the Russian government.
He died after nearly a year in pretrial detention where he was reportedly tortured.
Many in the U.S. Congress favor the bill as a trade-off for lifting trade restrictions on Russia.
The legislation still faces a battle before it can become law, however, as the Senate has delayed considering its version of the bill. займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно срочный займ female wrestling zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php unshaven girl
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Hermitage Capital hopes U.S. Magnitsky bill will fuel similar moves in other countries
A spokesman for British investment fund Hermitage Capital expressed confidence that Thursday’s preliminary approval in the U.S. Congress of a planned law to slap visa and financial sanctions on Russian officials blamed for Sergei Magnitsky’s death would be an impulse to similar legislative measures in other countries.
The Justice for Sergei Magnitsky bill was endorsed by the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The serious support for the Magnitsky draft law by the American lawmakers will undoubtedly give a new impulse to similar legislative initiatives that are under consideration today in other countries, including European Union countries,” the Hermitage spokesman told Interfax.
“The passage of the Magnitsky bill will be a catalyst in Russia’s further movement toward democracy and will seriously curb lawlessness on the part of officials and corruption,” he said.
“Officials will no longer be able to keep abroad what they have stolen, they will be unable to get their children enrolled in prestigious foreign universities,” the spokesman said. The Justice for Magnitsky Act “will also support those who today take to the streets to protest lawlessness on the part of law enforcement and judicial bodies.” hairy girl займы на карту срочно https://zp-pdl.com/apply-for-payday-loan-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php buy viagra online
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U.S. Won’t Oppose Russia Sanctions That Risk Putin Reprisal
The U.S. administration will no longer seek to prevent Congress from passing a bill targeting human-rights offenders in Russia, a step that President Vladimir Putin has warned would spark retaliation and damage ties.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee will today consider legislation that would impose U.S. travel and financial curbs on any official abusing human rights in Russia, including 60 people suspected of involvement in the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail in 2009. This will be followed at a later date by a vote in Congress on the measure.
“You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would bet against Congress expressing their concerns on the Magnitsky matter in some way,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said today in Moscow. “It’s important to work with Congress on an appropriate mandatory response to that.”
President Barack Obama’s administration is seeking to repeal trade restrictions with Russia to prevent U.S. companies from being penalized once Russian membership of the World Trade Organization takes effect later this year. A bipartisan group of senators has made a repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment conditional on imposing sanctions on Russian officials for human-rights violations.
Such a law would be “a gross interference in Russian internal affairs and, of course, it won’t have any positive effect on U.S.-Russian ties, to put it mildly,” Konstantin Dolgov, the Foreign Ministry’s human-rights representative, told reporters in Moscow on May 15. Russia in April warned it would retaliate with unspecified measures against the law.
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A bill that cracks down on Russian corruption
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled today to take up the most consequential piece of legislation in years related to Russia: the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. With strong bipartisan support, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), the Magnitsky bill is the most serious U.S. effort to address human rights and the rule of law in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The legislation is named after the 37-year-old lawyer who was jailed unjustly in 2008 after exposing a massive tax fraud by officials of Russia’s Interior Ministry. While in jail for almost a year, Magnitsky became ill but was denied medical treatment. In the end he was brutally beaten and left to die.
The proposed legislation is not about one man, however. It is about a Russian system choking on corruption, illegality and abuse. The new law would impose a visa ban and asset freeze against theofficials responsible not only for Magnitsky’s murder but also for other human rights abuses, including against individuals who “expose illegal activity” carried out by Russian officials or who seek to “defend or promote internationally recognized human rights and freedoms.” This includes journalists who have been murdered when they have dug too close to powerful officials or oligarchs. It includes human rights activists who have been beaten and crippled or killed for exposing the mistreatment of their fellow Russians.
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