Posts Tagged ‘jackson-vanik’
Russian Experts Say Moscow Should Not ‘Overreact’ To Usa’s Magnitskiy Bill
The so-called Magnitskiy Bill, approved by the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on 26 June, is designed to replace the Jackson-Vanik amendment as an instrument of influence on Russia, Russian political experts told Interfax, RIA Novosti and One Russia (United Russia) official website on 27 June.
The president of the Institute of Strategic Evaluations, Aleksandr Konovalov, said the adoption of Magnitskiy Bill would go hand in hand with the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik (JV) amendment that remains an obstacle for the US business in Russia.
“Everyone in the USA realizes that the (JV) amendment is getting too outdated, harming US economic interests. The Magnitskiy Bill is a replacement of some sort. Losing one instrument of influence, the (US) Congress aims to have a new one,” he was quoted on One Russia website on 27 June.
The political scientist and Russian MP Vyacheslav Nikonov commented that the bill would most probably be adopted simultaneously with repealing the Jackson-Vanik amendment. Though “the adoption of a harsh sanction such as Magnitskiy Bill would be an unprecedented measure that had not been taken even in the most difficult period of the Cold War”, One Russia website quoted Nikonov as saying.
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Magnitsky showdown nears
The Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate backed on Tuesday the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which, if passed by Congress and the U.S. president, will impose sanctions on some 60 Russian officials.
The bill will deny entry to the United States and freeze the accounts of those allegedly responsible for the persecution and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was allegedly killed in jail in 2009 after exposing a graft scheme for a tax refund of $230 million set up by a group of Russian law enforcers, tax officers and judges.
Supported unanimously by the Senate’s panel, the bill has fairly good chances of being adopted. “The White House has never indicated an inclination to veto this legislation,” the office of the bill’s sponsor, Senator Ben Cardin, told The Moscow News.
The only way the bill can be withdrawn is if Russia starts a murder investigation into the death of Magnitsky and the crime he exposed, U.S. lawmakers say.
“If Russia was to prosecute those responsible for Sergei Magnitsky’s death, there would no longer be a need to include those individuals on the public list,” Cardin’s office said.
However, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office started a criminal case against Magnitsky himself last August, charging him with embezzlement of the same $230 million in tax refunds.
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OJULAND: “MAGNITSKY ACT” IS A SURGICAL STRIKE ON CORRUPTION”
“I am extremely pleased with this visit, as it allows Americans to get acquainted in-depth with the EU policy towards Russia which is our strategic partner – said Ambassador Vale del Almeida greeting MEP Kristiina Ojuland – reporter on ‘Magnitsky Law’ in premises of the EU delegation.
On the one hand, none of the serious problems of international agenda as the conflict in Syria, or Iran’s nuclear program can be solved without Russia’s participation, on the other hand, we can’t practice “real-politics” turning a blind eye to human rights problems in Russia. Genuine partnership requires an open exchange of views, including criticism. “, – continued del Almeida.
Arriving of the MEP Kristiina Ojuland to Washngton at the voting day for “Magnitsky Act” in the Senat is not a mere coincidence. More recently Ojulnad, appointed as a reporter on the case of Magnitsky in the European Parliament, – will participate in the conference “Towards Democratic Russia” with Senators Benjamin Cardin and Kelly Ayotte – which will be held on June 27 at the Congress.
Further Ojuland planned the meetings with representatives of different political forces, in particular, with Senator McCain. “We live in times of an individual, not collective responsibility, so the replacement of “Jackson-Vanik amendment’ to the “Magnitsky Law” is a fair and modern solution for fighting corruption – said Ojuland. – ‘Magnitsky Law” – is a surgical strike on corruption, it is not directed against the Russian people. ” Despite the approval of the Senate to become law, “bill Magnitsky” should get the green light in the U.S. House of Representatives that will not happen before the autumn of this year.
However, the opinion of senators has significantly advanced the struggle for justice for the deceased Sergei Magnitsky and against corruption in Russia in general. “In the European Parliament there is a growing interest for the idea of” ‘Magnitsky law” among representatives of different political forces.
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THE MAGNITSKY CASE
June 28, 2012
Posted by Steve Coll
William Browder’s grandfather, Earl, led the American chapter of the Communist Party for more than a decade during the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt; he admired Joseph Stalin, and in his final years, after retirement, he offered anti-capitalist shibboleths around the family table. Young William rebelled by earning a M.B.A. at Stanford University and entering business. In 1996, he co-founded a London-based hedge fund, Hermitage Capital, which invested in the Russian stock market in the era of the great thefts of state assets masquerading as privatizations, during the time of President Boris Yeltsin.
Hermitage did very well, but Browder became an increasingly vocal shareholder activist. He denounced the corruption and criminality rampant in Russian industry. Initially, he welcomed the rise of President Vladimir Putin, but by 2005, as it became evident that Putin’s henchmen had not come to clean up Russia but to build a criminal enterprise of their own, Browder became an irritant. Russia barred him from the country, but Hermitage managed to sell its holdings at a profit and get the money out to the West. The profits were so large that Hermitage made a two-hundred-and-thirty-million-dollar tax payment in one year to the Russian treasury.
In 2007, officers from Russia’s Interior Ministry raided the hedge fund’s Moscow office and hauled away corporate records. When they saw records about the tax payment, raiders allegedly conceived of what Browder and others have described as a brilliant fraud. A group of Interior Ministry and tax-department officials and professional criminals conspired to forge documents, create dummy companies, and invent contracts that showed that the two hundred and thirty million paid as tax should be refunded. Russian tax officials approved the request, but the refund seems not to have been sent to Hermitage—instead, the money was allegedly divided up among the conspirators.
Around this time, Sergei Magnitsky, then a thirty-five-year-old Russian lawyer for Hermitage who worked for an American firm, opened an investigation. In 2008, he testified to a Russian commission about the evidence of the conspiracy he had uncovered. He was thereafter arrested and accused of committing the massive fraud himself. In prison, he was kept in appalling conditions, fell ill, and was allegedly beaten with rubber truncheons. He died in custody on November 16, 2009.
On Tuesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously passed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. William Browder is among those who have been lobbying for the bill; Magnitsky’s supporters yesterday posted an eighteen-minute video presenting new evidence in the case. The Magnitsky Act would require the State Department to identify and sanction Russian individuals that it judges responsible for Magnitsky’s death, as well as other Russians “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” Those listed by State would be denied visas to the United States and could be subjected to asset freezes and banking bans in the West.
The Obama Administration has lobbied against the bill, arguing that it already tracks and denies visas to the Russians it judges responsible for Magnitsky’s death. The State Department does this without publicity or transparency, however. The current approach also does not impose any financial sanctions; there is evidence that some of those accused have purchased expensive real estate and cars and opened fat bank accounts in Dubai, Cyprus, Switzerland, and Moscow.
There are other, unspoken, reasons for the Administration’s reluctance: it needs Russian coöperation on pressing problems—Syria’s civil war, Iran’s nuclear program, and U.S. supply lines to Afghanistan. If Obama is reëlected, the President may also push for a new nuclear-arms treaty to enact cuts well beyond those already agreed to in the New START treaty.
The Administration’s effort to hold the bill off seems likely to fail, for complicated reasons. Next week, Russia’s parliament will approve the country’s entry into the World Trade Organization, marking its arrival within the rule-bound global free-trade regime. For American businesses to benefit through greater trade in Russia, however, Congress must repeal an outdated Cold War-era sanctions law, known as Jackson-Vanik. But the congressional coalition that has come together around the Magnitsky Act (first introduced by Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, a Democrat, but now supported by many Republicans) wants Obama to accept passage of that bill in exchange for Jackson-Vanik’s repeal.
The naïveté about Putin prevalent within the Bush Administration during its first term is long gone. Yet the question is whether the benefits of the Magnitsky Act–emotional satisfaction, a modicum of justice for some of Magnitsky’s persecutors, and other limited sanctions against Triple-A-level bad guys–justify the costs, including certain Russian retaliation of some type and a possible break in coöperation on Iran or Afghanistan.
The answer is yes. It is not a great idea for Congress to make foreign policy one emotionally charged bill at a time. Yet the virtue of the Magnitsky Act is that it rejects the fiction, so often presented at the theater of G-8 and other summits, that Russia is a normalizing country. Russia’s government remains, in substantial part, an oil-and-gas-bloated criminal enterprise. The country’s politics look brittle; thousands continue with remarkable resiliency to protest Putin’s legitimacy.
Obama’s willingness to swallow his own voice on human-rights issues, for the sake of foreign-policy pragmatism, has been a disappointment of his Presidency. Here is a way for Congress to speak for him. It should.
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Senate panel OKs bill on Russian human rights Eds
A Senate panel moved ahead Tuesday on legislation that would impose tough sanctions on Russian human rights violators, a bill certain to be linked to congressional efforts to lift Cold War-era restrictions on trade with Russia.
By voice vote, the Foreign Relations Committee approved the measure that would impose visa bans and freeze the assets of those held responsible for gross human rights violations in Russia as well as other human rights abusers. Specifically, it targets those allegedly involved in the imprisonment, torture and death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian jail in 2009.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Ben Cardin, enjoys strong bipartisan support in the Senate. The Maryland Democrat said he was optimistic that the House would accept his more far-reaching version. The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a similar bill earlier this month.
“This bill is universal,” Cardin told reporters shortly after the vote. “It’s absolutely motivated by Sergei Magnitsky, but it’s universal in its application.”
The Russian government has expressed strong objections to the bill and suggested that there would be retaliatory measures if it becomes law. The Obama administration has been noncommittal in its public statements about the measure.
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Magnitsky documentary suggests fraud, collusion between Russian officials, police detectives
In April the Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported that unusually large rebates were issued in 2009 and 2010 by the same tax offices involved in the Hermitage case, amounting to an additional $370 million or more, suggesting the refund scheme persisted beyond the Hermitage case.
On Tuesday, McCain wrote to President Obama, asking him to designate the circle of officials, dubbed the Klyuev group, as a criminal organization abusing global financial systems through extortion, money laundering and theft. Such a designation would result in the freezing of their assets and making it impossible for them to conduct business in dollars anywhere in the world.
According to the documentary and the documents, the key players knew each other from previous tax-refund cases, and from vacations in Cyprus, Dubai, Istanbul, Switzerland and London.
In late 2006, for instance, a company called Rengaz Holdings obtained a $107 million tax refund and deposited the money in Dmitry Klyuev’s Universal Savings Bank. That deal was handled by Klyuev’s lawyer, Andrei Pavlov, and approved by Olga Stepanova, the tax official in charge of Tax Office No. 28, according to documents unearthed by Magnitsky and provided by the Hermitage investigation. All three would later be involved in the Hermitage case.
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U.S. could feel effects of amendment meant to hurt Russia
Almost four decades ago, as the Cold War raged, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment to the Trade Act of 1974 aimed squarely at the Soviet Union’s policy preventing Jews from emigrating from the USSR.
The Jackson-Vanik amendment, which denied favorable trade relations to the Soviet Union, worked. In 1991, Russia stopped slapping exit fees on Jews who wished to emigrate and they have been free to leave ever since.
But the amendment has stayed on the books even though it has outlived its purpose, a Cold War relic that infuriated the Kremlin. In reality, it was only symbolic; since 1994, presidents, Republicans and Democrats have certified annually that Russia complies with the amendment. In fact, the U.S. maintains normal trade relations with Russia.
As part of its “reset” with Moscow, the Obama administration urged Congress to abolish the amendment, to “graduate” Russia from Jackson-Vanik. Now, there’s an economic reason to do it.
Last December, after 18 years of trying, Russia was given the green light to join the World Trade Organization. Russia’s Parliament is expected to ratify and approve entry, and President Vladimir Putin to sign it by the end of July. Once that happens, the Jackson-Vanik amendment could end up hurting the U.S. instead of Russia.
Having it on the books means the U.S. is in violation of WTO rules requiring all members to grant other members “immediate and unconditional free trade.” The U.S. would not be able to take advantage of all the concessions Russia will make as a WTO member – including market liberalization, transparency, committing to intellectual property protection, eliminating nontariff barriers and other provisions – and that would mean higher tariffs for American businesses seeking access to Russian markets.
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Boss of slain Russian whistleblower to Haaretz: Obama administration trying to appease Putin
Ahead of the Russian President’s visit to Israel, the founder of a company that invested in Russia, and was kicked out, says the U.S. is appeasing Putin for the sake of bilateral trade ties.
While President Vladimir Putin will be heading next week to Israel for a short visit that will include unveiling the Second World War Red Army memorial in Netanya, and meeting with Israeli top officials, – in Capitol Hill, businessman Bill Browder will be lobbying hard to convince Congressmen that Russia under Putin’s third presidential term is not a country that deserves “restart” of relations, not to mention what he calls the “appeasement” of Putin’s regime.
Bill Browder, co-founder and CEO of the British Hermitage Capital Management company, invested in Russia only to be pushed out of the country. In 2009, His Moscow lawyer, 37-year-old Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested after he exposed government corruption. While in prison Magnitsky was apparently beaten to death in his cell.
Congress is currently in the process of replacing the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which linked trade relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union with the USSR’s treatment of its Jewish population, with a new law, named after Sergei Magnitsky. The Magnitsky Act is supposed to deny visas to Russian officials accused of human rights violations, and is being harshly criticized by the Kremlin, which warned that its passage would hurt relations between the two countries and could even lead to possible retaliatory steps.
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Kremlin calm about possible endorsement of Magnitsky Act
The Kremlin is calm about the possible endorsement of the Magnitsky Act, but warns Washington about possible counter measures.
Judging by the June 18 meeting of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama in Mexico, “the act will be passed this way or another,” Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters on Friday. “It seems the U.S. Administration has put up with that and seeks cosmetic changes.”
“Bearing in mind this reality, our president said calmly that the Russian reaction would be imminent. We are practically forced to react,” the aide said.
“We will react, and our reaction will be calm,” Ushakov said, without going into details. He said everything would depend on the final edition of the bill: there had been three editions so far. “We do not want to react at all, but we will have to,” he said.
In the words of Ushakov, Putin does not take this bill as a key question of Russia-U.S. relations. He thinks though that such problems may be solved in a calmer atmosphere. “It is possible to block travelling of particular persons in a quiet way, not in such a demonstrative form,” Ushakov said, adding that Putin conveyed that opinion to Obama. “That is a demonstrative anti-Russian step of the U.S.,” he said.
He also noted that the Kremlin had no illusions about the Magnitsky Act. “We knew from the start on which bill the Congress was working and which efforts the Administration was taking. We knew what it could do and what it could not, so it did not spring a surprise on us. The situation mirrors the heat of political structure ahead of the U.S. presidential election of November. Alas, it also mirrors the remaining anti-Russian feelings on the Capitol Hill,” he said.
Another confirmation of the use of the anti-Russian card in the election campaign, was the statement of Obama’s election rival, Republican Party candidate Mitt Romney, who said that Russia was a geopolitical rival of the U.S., he said. “We do not react to such statements; we take them absolutely calmly, because we understand that the election campaign is on and passions fly high,” he said. “Let us see whether such statements may help Romney win the election and whether he uses the same words after the election or understands that a balanced and pragmatic attitude to Russia meets U.S. national interests.”
Putin also commented on the possible adoption of the Magnitsky Act. “So be it,” he responded to an Itar-Tass question. “If any restrictions are imposed on U.S. trips of Russian citizens, then there will be appropriate restrictions on Russian trips of a certain number of Americans. I do not know who may need that, but if they do it, let it be. This is not our choice,” he said.
The bill known as the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act provides for visa and economic sanctions against a number of Russian citizens suspected by Washington with implication in the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky during his imprisonment.
The vote was due originally in April, but active lobbying of the U.S. President Barack Obama Administration delayed it. Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry explained the delay with the need to overcome disagreements over certain provisions of the bill.
Senator Benjamin Cardin (a Democrat) is the main sponsor of the bill, which will bar the aforesaid Russians and their families from visiting the United States and freeze their accounts in U.S. banks. The Cardin draft compelled the U.S. state secretary and treasury secretary to publish the Magnitsky list within 90 days since the adoption of the bill, together with the list of persons responsible for torture and other serious abuse of human rights.
Many Congress members view the Magnitsky Act as a mandatory condition of the cancellation of the discriminative Jackson-Vanik Amendment and the granting of a normal trade partner status to Russia. The Obama administration had been opposing that link until recently. hairy women unshaven girl https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php займы на карту срочно
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
