Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

A real hero of Russia

The Hawk Eye

Supposedly nobody likes a snitch. Presumably nobody who’s honest likes crooks either. That poses a moral conundrum. Not for the corrupt and the crooked infecting society. They’re incorrigible. But it does raise a problem for decent whistle blowers who too often pay a bigger price than the bad people they out.

That sticky moral dilemma can have negative effects in democracies where honesty and integrity are supposed to be valued above all else, and also in corrupt autocracies where they are not.

In many places, being honest will get you not just shunned and fired, but killed. That’s particularly true in Russia, where the government and the businesses it controls under President Vladimir Putin have become dens of thieves, and some say murderers too.

Putin recently won a new term in a rigged election. He was in China this week commiserating with the masters of Russia’s old Cold War ally about how the world – and the United States in particular – gives neither of them sufficient respect and keeps telling them what to do: Like stop behaving like a mafia, and stop beating, terrorizing and jailing political dissidents and their families.

Putin is particularly upset because the U.S. Congress is threatening to punish some really rich Russian officials for stealing a foreign-run investment fund and allegedly murdering the tax lawyer who uncovered the crime.