Posts Tagged ‘obama’
The Sergei Magnitsky Case: An Admission of Guilt
On July 5 the Russian Human Rights Council published its report on the now infamous—and mysterious—death of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. An attorney for the Moscow-based American law firm Firestone Duncan, he represented Hermitage Capital, which was at the time the largest Western hedge fund in Russia.
Magnitsky died while in custody awaiting trial for a fabricated tax evasion charge. He was jailed after he accused Russian officials of fraudulently obtaining $230 million in tax rebates from the Russian Treasury using a sophisticated swindle. These were the same officials who prosecuted Hermitage and barred its owner, Bill Browder, from returning to Russia for reasons the state refused to reveal.
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Trade and consequences
Washington Post
The next stage of President Obama’s “reset” with Russia will include trade favors, if the administration has its way. The president has promised the regime of Vladimir Putin that he will support Russia’s long-delayed accession to the World Trade Organization this year. For that to happen, Georgia, a U.S. ally subjected to a Russian invasion in 2008, must still sign off. Also, Congress must grant Russia fully normalized trade relations to avoid a conflict under WTO rules once Moscow is admitted. That means exempting Russia from a 1974 law conditioning trade on Russia’s emigration policies.
The law, known as Jackson-Vanik, is outdated; it was passed to try to force the Soviet Union to allow Jews to emigrate. But granting Russia trade privileges now rightly seems to many in Congress to be an unwarranted concession to a regime that, under Mr. Putin and partner Dmitry Medvedev, continues to engage in massive human rights violations — not to mention epic corruption.
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Reset on the Ropes?
Earlier today, Republican Rep. Peter Roskam, deputy whip in the House, put out a statement signaling his support for the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act.
“As the Obama administration continues its efforts to ‘reset’ relations with Russia, the United States Congress can and must press for progress on democracy and rule of law in Russia,” said Congressman Peter Roskam. “Congress is considering legislation with bipartisan support that would impose targeted sanctions on Russian officials complicit in human rights and rule of law violations like the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer working to uncover official corruption, and businessmen like Khodorkovsky. I plan to support such legislation and hope to see it become law.”
The Magnitsky Act, which has been introduced in the Senate by Democratic senator Ben Cardin with broad bipartisan support, including cosponsorship by leadership in both parties (Kyl and Durbin), has support from some of the usual suspects (Lieberman and McCain), and even some of the newest members (Blumenthal and Rubio). The bill would require the Obama administration to compile a list of officials and individuals in Russia who have been complicit in human rights and rule of law violations. Those who make the list would be blacklisted from entering the United States, and their assets and bank accounts in the United States would be frozen.
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Congress goes after Russian officials for human rights violations
President Barack Obama is set to meet with Russian President Dmitri Medvdev on May 26 in France on the sidelines of the G-8 meetings. In advance of that meeting, Congress has unveiled a new bill to force the administration to sanction Russian officials for human rights violations.
“One of the core foreign policy objectives when we came into office was the Russia reset,” Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call on Friday. “It has been one of the most productive relationships for the United States in terms of the signing and ratification of the New START treaty, cooperation on nuclear security, cooperation with regard to Iran sanctions and nonproliferation generally, the northern distribution network into Afghanistan that supports our effort there, and our discussions with Russia about expanding trade ties and their interest in joining the WTO, as well as Russia’s increased cooperation with NATO that was manifested by the NATO-Russia meetings in Lisbon.”
But Rhodes didn’t mention what most in Congress see as Russia’s backsliding on issues of democracy, freedom of the press, and human rights. A large group of senators introduced a bill on Thursday afternoon that they hope will force the administration to address this issue. Called the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011, it is named after the anti-corruption lawyer who was tortured and died in a Russian prison in 2009. The bill targets his captors as well as any other Russian officials “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of human rights.”
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Obama, Russia, and Trust
For years now, those who would defend the neo-Soviet regime of Vladimir Putin have been telling us that, come hell or high water, it was impossible for Russia to go back to the bad old days of the USSR. We just needed to give Russia time, we were told, and we would see progress.
That lie was laid in its coffin last weekend when Luke Harding of UK’s The Guardian newspaper, one of the world’s leading Russia correspondents, was barred entry to the country because of his reporting. In a scathing editorial, the paper condemned Russia, run by a proud KGB spy and having re-adopted the national anthem of the USSR, as well on the way back to the USSR.
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White House Cowardice: Not a Word Spoken in Defense of Boris Nemtsov
The Russian opposition journalist — whom Obama has personally met — did not receive a word of support after his recent jailing for speaking against Putin. A remarkable statement appeared in the New York Times recently. It read: “The White House issued a statement condemning Mr. Nemtsov’s arrest.”
The statement was remarkable because it compressed so much dishonesty and inaccuracy into less than a dozen words. The link the paper posted was not to any page of the White House website but — of all things — a page from state-controlled Russian wire service ITAR-TASS.
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Mr. Putin’s show trial
SOMETIME IN the next two weeks, a Moscow judge is expected to announce the conviction of and new prison sentences for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, whose oil company, Yukos, was the largest private company in Russia before it was crushed and confiscated by the regime of Vladimir Putin. If that occurs, the notion that Russia might be moving toward the rule of law under Mr. Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev will no longer deserve serious consideration.
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