Posts Tagged ‘miliband’
Revealed: Ed Miliband’s dinner with George and Amal Clooney
Ed Miliband shared an intimate dinner with George Clooney and his wife Amal, a human rights lawyer, to discuss fresh sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s regime, The Telegraph can disclose.
Mr Miliband is now considering plans to block a ring of Russian judges and tax officials from entering Britain after discussing the proposals at a dinner with the Clooneys at the London mansion of a leading barrister.
The Labour leader was briefed on proposals to implement a “Magnitsky law” over a private meal with the Hollywood actor and his wife, Amal, the human rights lawyer.
Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian accountant who died after months of brutal beatings in prison after blowing the whistle on a vast fraud perpetrated by corrupt state officials against a Guernsey-based investment fund.
Under measures adopted by the United States, 34 police chiefs, judges and tax officials involved in Mr Magnitsky’s prosecution and death are banned from entering the country.
Campaigners now want to see similar measures imposed in Britain, which could be brought into law as an amendment to Theresa May’s Serious Crime Bill. The proposals are backed by a group of Labour and Tory backbench MPs.
Any amendment would have a far greater chance of success with the Labour leader’s support.
Mr Miliband was briefed on the campaign over dinner at the London home of Geoffrey Robertson QC, the human rights barrister who is campaigning for a Magnitsky Law in Britain.
Mrs Clooney is a barrister at Mr Robertson’s chambers, Doughty Street, and has represented clients at the International Criminal Court.
Bill Browder, whose firm Hermitage Capital Management was the victim of the £150 million fraud after being raided by Russian police, explained the details of the case to the Labour leader.
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MPs push for Russian sanctions over lawyer death
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iKqajWCd9tALa9ONbqsofn-DWzYg?docId=CNG.ea5ac78be4756c25b0f5c61782c49ad4.201
British lawmakers on Wednesday urged the government to impose sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the death of a lawyer for a British firm who claimed to have uncovered corruption in Moscow.
MPs in Britain’s lower House of Commons backed Conservative Dominic Raab’s motion to push the government into implementing asset freezes and travel bans on those suspected of involvement in the killing of Sergei Magnitsky in Russia.
Magnitsky was working for London-based Hermitage Capital Management when he alleged that he had found evidence of corruption among senior Moscow officials.
On tabling the motion, Raab said: “Between 2007 and 2008, working for Hermitage Capital, he exposed the biggest tax fraud in Russian history, worth $230 million (175 million euros).
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Sergei Magnitsky: The British Can Do Something
This afternoon, MPs have the chance to debate a motion to introduce visa restrictions and other sanctions against around 60 named Russian officials who are alleged to have been involved in the killing of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in November 2009, as well as the criminal scam that inspired this, and the cover-up which followed.
Magnitsky was a young lawyer who discovered the following. The official documents of a firm he represented were stolen during a police raid, and then used to fraudulently re-register the company, which then illicitly claimed a $230 million tax rebate. This was paid out in a record 12 hours one Christmas Eve. The proceeds disappeared through a maze of phoney companies operating in international tax havens.
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Visas and dirty money
SERGEI MAGNITSKY was a Russian lawyer who uncovered a $230m fraud perpetrated by officials against taxpayers, and paid with his life. Since his death in prison in 2009 (he was denied medical treatment as part of an attempt to make him switch sides), campaigners, including his client, the American-born British investor Bill Browder, have been trying to get Western governments to withhold visas from the 60-odd officials involved in the fraud and his persecution.
In Britain, the former Europe minister Denis MacShane has pursued this issue hard, most recently in a debate on January 11th in which he named many of the officials concerned (something that libel-shy British media have so far been reluctant to do). Now the ball is getting another hefty kick thanks to Dominic Raab, the MP for Esher & Walton. With the support of his backbench Tory colleagues, he has instigated a “Backbench Business Debate” on the Magnitsky list on March 7. The motion is as follows:
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MPs mount campaign to ban Russian visas over Sergei Magnitsky death
Backbench MPs will on Wednesday pile pressure on the Government to ban a number of senior Russian officials from entering the UK by demanding action against those allegedly linked to the death of an anti-corruption lawyer working for a British hedge fund in Moscow.
Dominic Raab, Conservative MP for Esher & Walton, has tabled a motion for a backbench debate in the Chamber of the House of Commons, after Prime Minister’s Questions, to vote for legislation to bar visas for 60 Russians connected to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, who worked for Hermitage Capital, and to seize their assets.
The motion has the support of five former foreign ministers, including David Miliband, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Others backing it include former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis and former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell. In total, 26 MPs have signed the motion.
The law would be based on similar arrangements as in the US, which has barred entry to the 60 individuals, including the Russian deputy solicitor general, the deputy interior minister, and the head of the economic espionage unit at the Federal Security Service – the successor to the KGB.
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UK MPs to stage debate over Russia’s human rights record
Three former foreign secretaries are backing a Commons debate and vote on Russia’s human rights record which will take place next week.
It is widely expected that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will return as President in this weekend’s election.
The Commons debate will focus on the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer investigating tax fraud who was found dead in Moscow in 2009.
MPs claim it illustrates deeper and wider human rights problems in Russia.
The debate was granted after a request by Conservative Dominic Raab and former Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband to the Commons Backbench Business Committee.
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Ministers in joint attack on Russian corruption
Three former foreign secretaries will join forces this week to condemn “corruption and impunity” in Russia ahead of the presidential election on Sunday.
David Miliband, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind will urge the Commons to introduce travel bans and asset freezes against officials implicated in the death of a young lawyer fighting government corruption in 2009.
Mr Miliband will press the case of Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison after investigating the country’s biggest tax fraud, and make clear that he believes the episode “has rightly become a cause célèbre for what is wrong in Russia” .
In a warning shot at Vladimir Putin, days before he is expected to be returned as president, Mr Miliband will point out that “democratic spirit [in Russia is] stronger than many people thought”. The motion, put together by Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP and former Foreign Office lawyer, is backed by MPs from across the political spectrum.
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Russia warns Cameron to ‘get over’ the Litvinenko poisoning
The Kremlin has told David Cameron to abandon Britain’s “ideological obsessions” over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the dissident spy, if he wants relations with Russia to improve.
Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, issued the thinly veiled warning as Mr Cameron prepared to fly to Moscow today for the first visit by a British Prime Minister since Mr Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 in London almost five years ago.
Mr Lavrov made clear that the Kremlin expected him to abandon the stance of the previous Labour Government, which imposed sanctions after Russia refused to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, the former KGB officer accused of killing Mr Litvinenko in November 2006. Mr Lugovoy, now a member of Russia’s parliament, has denied any involvement in the crime.
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David Cameron urged to challenge Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev
David Cameron has been urged by four former foreign secretaries to challenge the Russian government on a number of issues during his visit to Moscow.
They want President Dmitry Medvedev to be confronted over a perceived failure to protect business against corruption.
In a Sunday Times letter, they also call for the PM to raise the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. The call is from Labour’s Margaret Beckett, David Miliband, Jack Straw and Conservative Sir Malcolm Rifkind.
The letter says hundreds of thousands of Russian businessmen are detained in jails after falling victim to corruption sanctioned by the authorities. They refer to these people as “victims of an increasingly potent mix of corruption and lawlessness”.
In their letter, the former foreign secretaries state: “The dangers of this corruption do not stop at Russia’s borders and Alexander Litvinenko’s murder shows the consequences of such lawlessness hitting British shores.
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