Posts Tagged ‘jackson-vanik’
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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Pass the Magnitsky Bill
I don’t often agree with Elliott Abrams against the Obama Administration — but the Magnitsky bill creates strange bedfellows.
The bill is named after a young Russian lawyer, who was tortured and died in prison for trying to blow the whistle on government fraud. It would impose travel bans to the U.S. and financial sanctions on anyone responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture or other gross violations of human-rights against individuals trying to defend human rights or who are seeking to expose illegal activity carried out by officials of the Russian government.
Sounds pretty important in a country that has become one of the leading murderers of journalists, and that is trail blazing the 21st century version of authoritarianism at home, and support for noxious regimes like Syria abroad. And by pinpointing sanctions against those carrying out abuse, it takes a page out of the smart sanctions book that has improved our leverage against countries by letting us target the real wrongdoers, not the general public.
But the Magnitsky bill is even more vital. The Administration wants Russia to join the World Trade Organization. To do that, we need to drop the Cold War Jackson-Vanik legislation that tied trade to allowing Jews and those persecuted by the former Soviet Union to emigrate — since linking issues that way is against WTO rules. This bill lets us get at human rights in Russia another way.
The Administration isn’t supportive — and that’s a real missed opportunity. Research on organizations like the WTO show that they allow outside countries to exercise immense leverage on domestic issues — but only during the negotiation stage. In other words, we can use the WTO to push Russia for some real reforms in its rule of law — but as soon as they are in, we lose that leverage.
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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 moves forward in the House
The House Foreign Affairs Committee marked up a bill today to punish Russian human rights violators, moving that bill closer to passage in conjunction with another bill to grant Russia privileged trade with the United States.
Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) convened her committee on Thursday morning to approve the House version of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, legislation meant to promote human rights in Russia that is named for the anti-corruption lawyer who died in a Russian prison, after allegedly being tortured, two years ago. She and her committee counterpart Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) said during the markup they both support joining the Magnitsky bill with a coming bill to grant Russia Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status, which would include a repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, established to punish Russia for not allowing Jews to emigrate during the Soviet period.
“The entire world knows that the state of democracy and human rights in Russia, already bad, is getting worse,” Ros-Lehtinen said at the markup. “Moscow devotes enormous resources and attention to persecuting political opponents and human rights activists, including forcibly breaking up rallies and jailing and beating those who dare to defy it. Instead of the rule of law, Russia is ruled by the lawless.”
The Obama administration is publicly opposed to the Magnitsky bill, especially the effort to connect it to Jackson-Vanik repeal, and has been working behind the scenes with bill sponsors such as Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) to alter the legislation. “From our point of view this legislation is redundant to what we’re already doing,” U.S. Ambassador Russia Mike McFaul said in March.
One of the administration ideas is to expand the Magnitsky bill to deal with human rights violators from all countries, but doing so wouldn’t eliminate strong Russian objections to the bill. A short amendment added to the House version today by Ros-Lehtinen makes clear that the bill is directed only at Russia.Cardin even came up with a new draft version of the legislation in April. The Cable obtained an internal document showing exactly what changed in the bill. For example, the new version makes it more difficult to add names to the list of human rights violators that the bill would create, potentially softening the bill’s impact on Russian officials.
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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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US official urges repeal of Russia trade law
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk says a top priority for his office this year is repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment that can be used to put trade restrictions on Russia.
The Cold War-era amendment allows denial of most-favored-nation status to non-market countries that restrict emigration. Although the United States has granted Russia annual waivers since 1994, the law remains an irritant to investors and Russian politicians.
Some U.S. lawmakers have indicated they would support repeal of Jackson-Vanik in exchange for passage of the so-called Magnitsky bill that would bar Russian officials accused of human rights abuses from the United States.
Kirk said the two measures should not be linked. срочный займ на карту онлайн hairy girl https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php https://zp-pdl.com займы на карту срочно
US trade representative to talk in Moscow on Jackson-Vanik repeal
ITAR TASS
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk will discuss in Moscow this week issues of US-Russia bilateral trade and economic cooperation in the context of the forthcoming Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), as well as the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment. He will meet with Russian officials, as well as representatives of the business community, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) reported on Sunday.
Kirk will begin his trip to Russia with a visit to Kazan, where a two-day meeting of trade ministers of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is opening on Monday. They will discuss issues of the development of regional economic integration, trade and investment liberalisation. In addition, the agenda of the meeting includes issues of improving transport and logistical chains, food security and intensive interaction for the strengthening of innovation-based growth.
After the forum, Ambassador Kirk will go to Moscow where on Wednesday he “will hold bilateral meetings with the Russian government” officials. The USTR Office has not specified with whom. The main issues under discussion are likely to be the forthcoming Russia’s accession to the WTO and the repeal by the US Congress of the notorious Jackson-Vanik amendment. Earlier, the US Congress began debate on the final normalisation of trade and economic relations with Russia in light of its WTO accession. For the full normalisation of trade relations with Russia, the US Congress should repeal the discriminatory Jackson-Vanik amendment – a relic of the Cold War that once linked trade-related issues with freedom of emigration from the USSR.
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RF to take tit-for-tat action to US new anti-Russia law
If the United States adopts a new anti-Russian law, Moscow would be forced to take retaliatory measures, warned RF presidential aide Yuri Ushakov.
“If the new anti-Russian law (Magnitsky Act) is passed, certainly, this law should be met with our tit-for-tat response,” the Kremlin official told reporters.
At the same time Ushakov stressed: “We would like to avoid it. We would like to hope very much that the anti-Soviet amendment (Jackson-Vanik) will not be changed to an anti-Russian law.”
The Russian presidential aide believes that the Jackson-Vanik amendment that is still in effect in America’s current legislation “would be more disadvantageous for the Americans, as their companies may find themselves in a losing situation on the Russian market, compared with the competitors from Europe and Asia.” “We have become accustomed to the Jackson-Vanik amendment, we know how to deal with it,” Ushakov said.
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To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
