Posts Tagged ‘Magnitsky’

03
January 2014

Latvia Adopts Euro, Dirty Money an Issue

Epoch Times

When Latvia adopts the euro on Jan. 1, it will bring with it a banking sector that is swelling with suspicious money from Russia and the East—just as the currency bloc is clamping down on money laundering and other illicit banking activities.

It was just nine months ago that the eurozone had to rescue Cyprus, a similarly tiny member state that also specialized in attracting huge deposits from Russia and former Soviet states. Since then, eurozone leaders have vowed to crack down on financial sanctuaries and improve transparency.

But as the 18th member of the eurozone, Latvia is likely to see a greater—not smaller—influx of dirty money as the country will be viewed as safer than its eastern neighbors while financial oversight remains loose.

“Immediately after Latvia joins the eurozone, I imagine we’re going to see an actual spike in dubious money flowing in,” said Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University who researches organized crime in the former Soviet Union.

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03
January 2014

A Good Week for Some Political Prisoners in Russia… a Bad One for Russian Democracy

Huffington Post

Last week was a good week for some political prisoners in Russia: Mikhail Kodhorkovsky and Pussy Rioters Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are free. It was a terrible week for Russian democracy, a proof that prison terms are handed out and cancelled not as a result of fair and open trials, as a result of the ruling by independent courts, but as a decision by its president, who rules as he feels fit. The timing of the amnesty smacks of old school: a major international event coming up [the Sochi Olympics], open the jails, suggest that there is humanism, disarm critics. Just like during Soviet times, before major talks. But have no doubt, Putin’s message is that its all happening because “I took the decision”, because ” I want it to happen”, and I could decide otherwise as I please.

Putin seemingly feels invulnerable. He did pull off some big stunts this year : Snowden (not his natural ally), Syria (by default). He is for sure proud of how he used the liberal New York Times to chastise the West. He looks down on Western leaders as weaklings. Mr.Putin mistakenly thinks that a temporary lack of strong leadership in the West is a sign of decline. He has no idea about the resilience of our societies, that our weak moment will pass, like the flu. He sells anti-western sentiments in Russia and the world, not admitting to himself that this rhetoric is way past its “sell by date”, and like relabeled, but bad perishable food perhaps quells hunger, but soon causes severe stomach ache. He surely knows, (it used to be his job to figure it out) that the west is no military threat to Russia. Of course he also knows, that the real threat to his everlasting position as president are the decaying economy, the spread of values of democracy and freedom, transparency and the rule of law, the apparent suffocating of creativity, freedom of speech and organization.

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03
January 2014

Philips looks into Russia sales after U.S. fund complaint

MSN Money

Philips said it is looking into allegations that its medical equipment sales to Russia – one of the emerging markets where it is experiencing strong growth – ran afoul of the U.S. Magnitsky Act.

The act was passed in the United States with a view to sanctioning several Russian officials thought to be responsible for the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who worked for Hermitage Capital, an American fund which invested in Russia.

The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that a complaint had been filed by William Browder, the co-founder of Hermitage Capital, against Philips.

The newspaper said Browder alleged that Philips appeared to have violated U.S. sanctions laws by selling its ultrasound machines and CAT scanners to RT-Medintegrator, which it said had been headed by one of the Russian officials named in the Magnitsky Act.

“Philips is aware of Hermitage Capital’s allegations. We are looking into the matter, but at this point we cannot provide any further comments,” the company said in an emailed statement. займ на карту займ онлайн на карту без отказа https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php срочный займ на карту онлайн

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20
December 2013

International pressure works on Putin

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20
December 2013

Exclusive: Obama Declines to Add Names to Russian Sanction List

Daily Beast

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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13
December 2013

Yanukovych Must Go: Ukrainians Will Protest as Long as His Corrupt Regime Exists

Foreign Affairs

For the second time in nine years, anti-regime protesters have filled the streets of Ukraine. But now, the stakes for the European Union and the United States have risen. Ukraine’s latest political upheaval, which pro-European protesters have dubbed the Euro-Revolution, began in late November when President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a long-awaited agreement to boost political and trade ties with the EU. Demonstrations exploded after riot police brutally attacked protesters camped out in Independence Square, the site of the 2004 Orange Revolution, on November 30. Within a week, mass protests demanding Yanukovych’s resignation spread across the country. Several hundred thousand marched in Kiev, while mostly young activists set up barricades around government buildings and knocked down a statue of Lenin.

Mykola Azarov, Ukraine’s prime minister, called the peaceful demonstrators in Kiev “Nazis” and compared the statue’s toppling to the Taliban’s destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 2001. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, meanwhile, praised the “young people in Ukraine’s streets” for “writing a new history of Europe.” The demonstrators’ slogan (“Ukraine is Europe!”) signifies much more than a desire to join the EU. For them, as for most Ukrainians, Europe is a symbol of democracy, national dignity, human rights, and freedom — everything they believe, correctly, the Yanukovych regime opposes.

Although much of the world has focused on the demonstrations in Kiev, anti-regime discontent is hardly limited to the capital. Opposition channels, Web sites, and social media have broadcast continuously from Independence Square or the Euromaidan (“Eurosquare” in Ukrainian), providing accurate information and countering the slanted reporting of regime-controlled and Russian sources. Several journalists have even resigned from Ukraine’s First National TV station in protest. Up to 50,000 Ukrainians have marched repeatedly in Lviv, where the elite Berkut police units pointedly refused to intervene. In the west, the Europe-leaning officials who run the Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil, and Volyn provinces have effectively escaped the regime’s control.

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13
December 2013

Corrupt money hides in Dubai, officials turn blind eye – Eva Joly

Thomson Reuters

Money allegedly stolen by Russian officials in a major scandal and funds looted from Afghanistan’s Kabul Bank are sitting in Dubai but international authorities have failed to hold the United Arab Emirates to account, a leading French politician said this week.

Eva Joly, a former magistrate known for exposing high-level political and business corruption in France, said officials should demand that Dubai give back the money stolen in Russia’s Magnitsky case and from Kabul Bank.

Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in jail, had been investigating an alleged large-scale theft by Russian officials while Kabul Bank nearly collapsed over corruption in 2010.

Joly called on the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to place the UAE on its black list of countries failing to enforce money-laundering laws.

“This is a shame, and we cannot live with it,” said Joly, a member of the European Parliament who was named to the anti-graft body backed by the United Nations to monitor corruption in Afghanistan.

“I cannot understand why the OECD blacklist is empty. Kabul Bank is the most important bank scandal ever, affecting 13 percent of the GDP of the country… and half of it is in Dubai,” she said at a roundtable discussion on the impact of the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention.

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13
December 2013

Gays Are the New Jews

National Interest

How should the West respond to the Russian government’s homophobic crusade? It is a question that has bedeviled activists and legislators in Europe and America since the Duma passed a law forbidding so-called “propaganda” of same-sex relationships to minors last summer. While the law is criticized as an assault on gay citizens, it is actually something much more pernicious: by forbidding speech that portrays homosexuality in a positive, never mind neutral, light, it is a fundamental abridgement of the freedoms of speech and conscience of all Russian citizens, gay and straight alike. Worse, it has given a green light to vigilantes who have unleashed an unprecedented wave of violence against Russian gays.

In a recent paper co-authored with Ambassador Andras Simonyi of the Center for Transatlantic Relations, I argue that the United States ought to apply the Magnitsky Act against those Russians who have committed human rights violations under cover of this law.

The Magnitsky Act compels the US government to impose visa bans and asset freezes against Russians, whether they be private individuals or officials, implicated in human rights abuses. We name names, ranging from the Duma deputy who authored the law to the leader of a Russian vigilante group, as potential additions to the Magnitsky list. This tactic, we believe, would be far more effective at curbing the Russian government’s abysmal behavior than boycotting Stolichnaya vodka or the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics, as some activists have proposed.

John Allen Gay takes issue with our proposal, arguing that gay rights should not be a central focus of American foreign policy vis a vis relations with Russia as, say, the reduction of nuclear weapons. Furthermore, and more practically, he believes that taking a harder line against Moscow’s anti-gay policies would do nothing to help Russia’s gays; in fact, he argues, it might hurt them.

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13
December 2013

Former prosecutor feels heat over Russia involvement

New York Post

A prominent Manhattan white-collar criminal defense lawyer is the subject of a federal court grievance complaint, The Post has learned.

John Moscow, a former prosecutor now working at BakerHostetler, shouldn’t be allowed to represent several companies accused of funneling dirty Russian cash into the US to buy pricey Manhattan real estate, according to the complaint.

Moscow was hired in November 2008 by a hedge fund mogul to investigate the Russian money trail.
That conflict of interest should bar him from his current role as defense counsel to the allegedly dirty companies, William Browder, the feisty hedge fund manager who hired him, claims.

Browder says he gave Moscow confidential information that led to federal charges against Prevezon Holdings, part of the allegedly shady real estate scheme.

Moscow represents Prevezon and a slew of other defendants in a civil forfeiture case brought by US Attorney Preet Bharara.

“The same guy I was baring my soul to is now turning to the other side,” Browder told The Post.
“It’s the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen in the legal profession.”

Browder hired Moscow to help him win the freedom of his hedge fund’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested in Russia.

Browder said following the money trail through subpoenas was one of the tactics Moscow had suggested to locate the persons behind the lawyer’s imprisonment.

The lawyer had been looking into an identity theft ring that hit Browder’s Hermitage hedge fund — at the time a large investor in Russia.

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