Posts Tagged ‘josh rogin’
Obama Targets Russian Mob Boss
The U.S. government has publicly added 12 Russian officials to a list of human right violators but he head of the Russian Investigative Committee may be on a still secret part of that list.
The State and Treasury Departments Tuesday sanctioned a dozen Russian officials under the Magnitsky Act, adding them to a public list of human rights violators subject to asset freezes and visa bans in the United States. But Alexander Bastrykin, the powerful head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, was not on the list, at least the version released to the public.
The twelve names publicly announced for sanctions Tuesday include Dmitry Klyuev, the alleged kingpin of a Russian organized crime group. 10 of the 12 Russians on the list were associated with the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian anti-corruption lawyer who died in prison after being severely tortured. Magnitsky was then posthumously convicted for tax fraud. The judge who convicted Magnitsky after he died, Igor Alisov, was also sanctioned Tuesday.
Bastrykin’s name was conspicuously not on the public list, but administration sources said one name was added to the classified version of the Magnitsky list. Administration officials declined to comment on whether or not that person was Bastrykin. If so, he would be the highest ranking Russian sanctioned thus far under the law.
In January, four senior senators used a provision of the law to force the administration to consider sanctions on Klyuev and Bastrykin. Both had been vetted and prepared for sanctions inside the administration last year but the White House ultimately decided not to add any names to the Magnitsky list at the time.
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Congress Presses Obama On Russia Sanctions
On Friday, key senators pressed the Obama administration to crack down on Russian human rights violators.
Four leading senators Friday called on President Obama to enforce U.S. law and sanction more Russian human right violators, despite the administration’s reluctance to rock the U.S.-Russian relationship.
Last month, the Obama administration declined to add names to a list of human rights violators in Russia created by Congress under the Magnitsky Act. The act is named in honor oof Sergei Maginitsky, a Russian anti-corruption lawyer who died in prison after being tortured after being arrested on charges widely viewed as politically motivated.
The decision not to add new names to the Magnitsky list came as a shock to lawmakers and human rights advocates, who had been told the State Department and Treasury Department were vetting several alleged Russian human rights abusers for addition to the list, an action that would subject them to visa bans and asset freezes.
Late Friday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and the ranking member, Bob Corker (R-TN) invoked a section of the Magnitsky Act that allows senior lawmakers to submit names to the administration for the list on a bipartisan basis. Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and John McCain (R-AZ), the bill’s original co-sponsors, supported the move. The Obama adminstration is ultimately responsible for accepting or rejecting these recomendations to add names to the list.
“On December 20, 2013, we received the Department of State’s first annual report. Disappointingly and contrary to repeated assurances and expectations, this report indicates that no persons have been added to the Magnitsky list since April 2013 and does not provide adequate details on the administration’s efforts to encourage other governments to impose similar targeted sanctions,” the senators wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. “We look forward to your response to our request and hope you will also clarify when we can expect additional names to be added to the Magnitsky list as well as specific administration efforts to encourage other governments to adopt legislation similar to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012.”
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Exclusive: Obama Declines to Add Names to Russian Sanction List
The administration had been preparing to beef up its list of Russian human rights violators. But at the last minute, they balked. Why?
The Obama administration has decided not to add any new names to a list of Russian human rights violators this year, an abrupt reversal that has left congressional officials and human rights advocates stunned.
For weeks, State Department officials had been signaling that they were preparing to expand a list of Russians subject to visa bans and asset freezes under a law signed by President Obama last year called the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act, named after the Russian anti-corruption lawyer who died after being tortured in a Russian prison. Magnitsky was later convicted posthumously for tax evasion in a prosecution widely viewed as politically motivated.
In April, 18 Russian officials were sanctioned as a result of the Magnitsky law, which was heavily supported by lawmakers in both parties. The sanctions caused a rift in U.S.-Russian bilateral relations, and the Russian government retaliated by announcing their own visa ban list of alleged U.S. human rights violators and instituting a ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans.
Now, one year after the initial Magnitsky law went into effect, the State Department had been preparing to add between 10 and 20 new Russian names to the list—including Alexander Bastrykin, former First Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia and former Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office—according to officials, congressional aides, and experts.
But Thursday, administration and congressional sources said that the Obama team had abandoned plans to expand the list, thereby avoiding a new confrontation with the Russian government during a sensitive time in the U.S.-Russian relationship, as the two countries work together on issues like Syria and Iran.
“We had multiple high-level assurances that there had been new names,” one Congressional aide told The Daily Beast. “Now we hear today that there’s not going to be a new list. There’s no explanation.”
A mandated report on the implementation of the Magnitsky act was due on Dec. 14 but has still not been sent to Congress. The new names were widely expected to be added to the list when the report was delivered.
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McCain Blasts Putin in Pravda: He’s Made Russia a ‘Friend to Tyrants’
The senator promised to respond to the Russian president’s ‘New York Times’ op-ed—and he has with a blistering piece in Pravda, calling Putin a corrupt autocrat who cozies up to tyrants like Assad.
Sen. John McCain lambasts Russian President Vladimir Putin in an op-ed published on the Russian news site Pravda on Thursday, calling him a corrupt autocrat who suppresses democracy, political dissent, and economic progress to maintain his iron grip on power.
McCain’s op-ed is a response to Putin’s September 11 op-ed in The New York Times, in which Putin argued against a U.S.-led intervention in Syria and accused the U.S. of working against the interests of international law and human rights. McCain rarely mentions Syria—or Putin’s op-ed—in his Pravda piece but uses the opportunity to lay out his case that Putin is systematically disrespecting the Russian people and abusing Russia’s wealth and power to enrich a small group of wealthy associates to the detriment of the rest of the country. At a basic level, Putin doesn’t believe in the values of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the rule of law, political openness, and social equality, McCain writes in his op-ed, which is directed at the Russian people.
“President Putin and his associates do not believe in these values,” McCain writes in Pravda, a Web site founded in 1999 that is not connected to the official newspaper of the Russian Communist Party. “They don’t respect your dignity or accept your authority over them. They punish dissent and imprison opponents. They rig your elections. They control your media. They harass, threaten, and banish organizations that defend your right to self-governance. To perpetuate their power they foster rampant corruption in your courts and your economy and terrorize and even assassinate journalists who try to expose their corruption.”
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Will Putin’s friends be on the Magnitsky list?
Next week, the State Department is expected to release a list of Russian human rights violators who could be subject to visa bans and asset freezes in the United States, but Congress is worried that State will avoid naming senior Russian officials in an effort to placate the Kremlin.
The list is required to be sent to Congress by April 13, according to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, which was passed by both chambers of Congress and signed by President Barack Obama last December. Lawmakers and NGOs working on the Magnitsky list want the State Department to include top Russian officials and several close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The State Department is using a narrow interpretation of the law, arguing that a higher standard of evidence is required for legal reasons. But some lawmakers involved in the issue believe the narrower scope is meant to placate Moscow.
“We want to ensure that the administration carries out the law in the same spirit that Congress passed it. We didn’t do this for a press release; we did this because of the deteriorating human rights situation in Russia,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), an original sponsor of the bill, in an interview.
McGovern sent the administration his own list of 280 Russian officials (PDF) he believes should be included in the State Department’s Magnitsky list. Many of them are directly related to the case of Magnitsky, the anti-corruption lawyer who died in Russian prison after allegedly being tortured, and some are close personal associates of Putin.
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Russia denies visa for leading congressional human-rights advocate
The Russian government has denied a visa for a prominent congressman in what that the lawmaker believes is clear retaliation for U.S. efforts to punish Russian human rights violators.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on human rights, has been traveling to Russia and before that the Soviet Union for decades. But this month, the Russian government denied him a visa for the first time, despite a personal intervention from the U.S. ambassador in Moscow.
In an interview Wednesday with The Cable, Smith said the Russians were already retaliating for a recent U.S. law that seeks to call out and punish Russian human rights violators. That bill, the Sergei Magnitsky Accountability and Rule of Law Act of 2012, was named after the Russian anti-corruption lawyer who died in prison, allegedly after being tortured by Russian officials.
Smith was an original sponsor of the bill.
“The Magnitsky bill is the reason I didn’t get the visa. This is the first time,” Smith said. “I was shocked. During the worst days of the Soviet Union I went there repeatedly.”
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Romney camp doubles down on Russia as “geopolitical foe”
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was right when he called Russia America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe” and a Romney administration would confront Moscow on its poor record on democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, two top foreign-policy advisors to the GOP candidate said Tuesday.
“Russia is a significant geopolitical foe. Governor Romney recognizes that,” Romney advisor Rich Williamson said at a Tuesday afternoon event hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative. “That’s not to say they are the same sort of direct military threat as they were.”
Williamson, joined on the panel by top advisor Pierre-Richard Prosper, said that the Russian government under Vladimir Putin has made strategic opposition to the West and the United States in particular a premier plank of its agenda. A Romney administration would end the Russian “reset” and confront Russia on Syria, Georgia, Iran, and several other issues, he said.
“They are our foe. They have chosen a path of confrontation, not cooperation, and I think the governor was correct in that even though there are some voices in Washington that find that uncomfortable,” he said. “So those who say, ‘Oh gosh, oh golly, Romney said they’re our geopolitical foe’ don’t understand human history. And those who think liberal ideas of engagement will bend actions also don’t understand history. We’re better to be frank and honest.”
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Russia trade and human rights legislation advances, but time running short
The Senate Finance Committee unanimously approved today a bill to grant Russia Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status as well as a bill to punish Russian human rights violators, but time is running out to pass the legislation through the full House and Senate.
Committee Chairman Max Baucus (R-MT) called on Congress to quickly pass the bills before lawmakers leave town at the end of this month for the long August recess. Russia’s accession to the WTO is imminent, and unless the United States grants Russia PNTR status, U.S. businesses won’t be able to take advantage, he argued.
“There is no time to waste; America risks being left behind,” Baucus said. “If we miss that deadline [of Russia’s WTO accession], American farmers, ranchers, workers and businesses will lose out to the other 154 members of the WTO that already have PNTR with Russia. American workers will lose the jobs created to China, Canada and Europe when Russia, the world’s seventh largest economy, joins the WTO and opens its market to the world.”
Baucus also trumpeted the fact that the PNTR bill is now officially joined with the Senate version of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Act of 2012, which passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously in June. The bill imposes restrictions on the financial activities and travel of foreign officials found to have been connected to various human rights violations in any country. The House version of the bill, approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this month, targets only Russian human rights violators.
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Magnitsky Act will be linked with Russian trade bill in Senate
The bill to grant Russia Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) was introduced in the Senate Tuesday and the head of the Senate Finance Committee promised he will combine it with a bill to sanction Russian human rights violators.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who is the main sponsor of the PNTR bill and who will shepherd the legislation through his Finance Committee and then on the floor, has agreed to link it to the Magnitsky bill and pledged to pass them both this year. In doing so, Baucus secured the support of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for the PNTR bill, which includes a repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik law that was set in place to punish the Soviet Union for refuses to let Jews emigrate.
“It is clear the Magnitsky Act has overwhelming support in the Senate and growing support in the House,” Baucus wrote in a letter today to McCain, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS). “It is equally clear that many of our colleagues are rallying around the position you have advanced — that the repeal of Jackson-Vanik for Russia must be accompanied by passage of the Magnitsky Act. I am fully committed to ensuring that the Senate can act on both items this year.”
After receiving that letter, McCain joined with Baucus, International Trade Subcommittee Ranking Member John Thune (R-SD), and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) in unveiling the PNTR legislation, which they said allows U.S. business to take full advantage of the Russian market when Russia officially joins the WTO later this summer.
“This is an opportunity to double our exports to Russia and create thousands of jobs across every sector of the U.S. economy, all at no cost to the U.S. whatsoever. We give up nothing as part of this process — not one single tariff reduction — so it’s truly a one-sided benefit for the U.S.,” Baucus said in a press release. “Jackson-Vanik served its purpose during the Cold War, but it’s a relic of another era that now stands in the way of our farmers, ranchers and businesses pursuing opportunities to grow and create jobs… The clock is ticking for us to move, so we need to act now.”
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