Posts Tagged ‘new york times’
Navalny Presses for Inquiry Into Putin Deputy
Aleksei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent anticorruption activist, added to the pressure on the Russian government to investigate allegations of what he called corrupt financial practices by a senior deputy to Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.
The accusations against the deputy, Igor I. Shuvalov, were initially brought to the attention of Russian prosecutors months ago, but on Friday, Mr. Navalny publicly posted the documents that form the basis of the allegations on his Web site.
At issue in the case is not their authenticity – a Moscow law firm has already confirmed they are real – but whether what is described violated laws or might be considered unacceptable, even in Russia’s political system.
Mr. Navalny said he still did not expect law enforcement to act against such a senior official. He said the publication was intended to reinforce the opposition’s message that corruption is pervasive in the Russian government.
“This is not a case of somebody in Siberia stealing pipes,” Mr. Navalny said. “It occurred within the oligarchy that lives abroad and with a Western-oriented official. It will be remembered. Now, every time the fight against corruption comes up, so will Shuvalov’s name.”
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Trade Sanctions as a Test of U.S.-Russian Relations
To the Editor:
Re “Russian Opposition Urges U.S. to End Cold War Trade Sanctions” (news article, March 13):
Rewarding President-elect Vladimir V. Putin with the revocation of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which for almost 40 years has linked the Kremlin’s human rights performance to United States trade benefits, would add insult to the injury of President Obama’s congratulating Mr. Putin for his “victory” in last week’s “election.”
If anything, the link should be strengthened by having Congress enact the “Magnitsky bill,” which restricts travel to the United States by corrupt officials of Mr. Putin’s regime.
But the administration strives to abandon the whole notion of linkage. Initiated by Senator Henry M. Jackson and the Soviet Nobel laureate Andrei D. Sakharov, American legislative pressure is as important today as at the time of Soviet repression. Appeasement of Mr. Putin would be a betrayal of this legacy.
VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY
ALEX GOLDFARB
TATIANA YANKELEVICH
London, March 13, 2012
The writers are, respectively, a former Soviet political prisoner; a former assistant to Andrei D. Sakharov; and a former director of the Andrei Sakharov Program on Human Rights at Harvard. займ на карту срочно без отказа микрозайм онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php unshaven girl
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U.S.-Russian Trade Ties Face Some Political Snags
With relations between Russia and the United States on edge over Syrian policy and strident anti-American statements by the Russian government in response to political protests here, the Obama administration and its Democratic allies in Congress have begun an aggressive push to end cold-war-era trade restrictions and make Russia a full trade partner.
The seemingly incongruous and politically fraught campaign to persuade Congress to grant permanent, normal trade status reflects a stark flip in circumstances: suddenly, after more than 35 years of tussling over trade, Russia has the upper hand.
In December, Russia became the last major economy to win admission to the World Trade Organization — a bid that was supported by the Obama administration because it required Russia to bring numerous laws into conformity with international standards, including tighter safeguards for intellectual property. It was also part of the so-called reset in relations with the Kremlin.
But if Congress does not repeal the restrictions, adopted in 1974 to pressure the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration and now largely irrelevant, the United States will soon be in violation of W.T.O. rules. American corporations could be put at a serious disadvantage — paying higher tariffs, for instance, than European and Asian competitors, which would immediately enjoy the benefits of Russia’s new status.
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Russia Plans to Retry Dead Lawyer in Tax Case
The police in Russia plan to resubmit for trial a tax evasion case in which the primary defendant died in detention more than two years ago, his former employer said Tuesday.
The trial of the defendant, Sergei L. Magnitsky, would be the first posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history, according to a statement by the former employer, Hermitage Capital.
The death of Mr. Magnitsky, a lawyer, in November 2009 drew international criticism over Russia’s human rights record, especially after accusations arose that he had been denied proper medical care. The State Department has barred officials linked to Mr. Magnitsky’s prosecutions from entering the United States. Parliaments in nine European countries are considering similar bans.
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After Russian Vote, U.S. Pledges to Raise Concerns ‘Forcefully’
The Obama administration plans to continue speaking out “forcefully” about human rights violations in Russia, even after Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin responded angrily to criticism of his country’s elections by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a top State Department official said Wednesday.
The official, Phil Gordon, assistant secretary of state for Europe, welcomed a call from President Dmitri A. Medvedev for an investigation of the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections but said the United States would not hesitate to keep pressing Moscow for greater accountability and respect for human rights.
But any action in Russia is unlikely before Dec. 21, when a new parliament is seated.
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As Russia arrests its richest, money takes flight
Nikolai Maksimov, one of the richest men in Russia, was sitting in a grimy jail cell in the Ural Mountains.
Through the murk, Mr. Maksimov saw his cellmate — a man, he says, who appeared ill with tuberculosis, a scourge in Russian prisons.
‘‘I had the feeling that I was put in this cell on purpose,’’ Mr. Maksimov, now free on bail, recalled recently.
Mr. Maksimov, who was arrested in February on suspicion of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars, is hardly the only Russian tycoon who has run into trouble. Among the six men who have topped the Forbes rich list here in the last decade, one, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, is in prison, and another, Boris A. Berezovsky, is in exile. They, like Mr. Maksimov, maintain their innocence.
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Berlin Exhibit Explores Magnitsky Case
A permanent exhibition at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum (Friedrichstrasse 43-45; mauermuseum.de) in Berlin exposes a modern-day saga of governmental corruption, coercion and torture. The Sergei Magnitsky case revealed egregious abuses of power that continue to plague Putin’s Russia and which ultimately led to the tragic demise of the 37-year-old tax attorney Magnitsky, while he was held captive in a maximum security Russian prison.
His crime? Uncovering a vast conspiracy that sought to rob the Russian state and its citizens of millions of dollars in fraudulent tax refunds, allegedly executed by police officers and governmental officials.
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Russia Says It Will Try Jail Doctors in ’09 Case
New York Times
Twenty months after a 37-year-old lawyer died in pretrial detention after repeatedly requesting medical care, the authorities on Monday announced that criminal cases have been opened against two former prison doctors in connection with his death.
The announcement came as lawmakers in several countries threatened to impose sanctions on officials linked to the prosecution of the lawyer, Sergei L. Magnitsky, who had been drawn into a feud between Russian officials and his employer, Hermitage Capital, an investment fund based in London.
Russia’s top investigative body said the two suspects in Mr. Magnitsky’s death were Dr. Larisa Litvinova, who oversaw Mr. Magnitsky’s treatment during the last weeks of his life; and Dr. Dmitri Kratov, formerly the chief medical officer of Butyrskaya Prison.
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Musicians Sound Out for Russian Prisoners
Members of the Kremerata Baltica string orchestra emerged on stage first, all dressed in black. Their leader, the violinist Gidon Kremer, took his place in front, wearing a white shirt and a long black vest, with his bespectacled profile to the audience, his knees slightly bent, looking like a forlorn fiddler.
They played something impossibly plaintive, a piece of music in which the sadness built interminably, it seemed. The orchestra took halting breaks followed by a note of even greater sadness. There would be no relief: The musicians seemed simply to stop at one point and take a bow.
“V & V,” for voice and violin, by the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, where the taped voice belonged to a long-dead singer, was the opening piece in an unusual concert on Tuesday night that was organized in the geographical center of Europe, a few blocks from the European Court of Human Rights, to draw attention to the continuing struggle of two former oil magnates, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky and Platon A. Lebedev, and, organizers said, other Russian political prisoners.
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