Posts Tagged ‘obama’
FPI BULLETIN: MAGNITSKY IMPLEMENTATION A KEY TEST FOR OBAMA
By April 13, the President must submit to Congress a list of people to be sanctioned under the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, passed by Congress last December. The law is named for a Russian tax lawyer who died from abuse in jail for resisting official corruption, and it directs the denial of U.S. visas and freezing of assets against any individuals responsible for “extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” in Russia. The law’s implementation will be a critical test of America’s longstanding commitment to human rights for the Russian people.
Congressional champions of the Magnitsky Act are concerned that the Obama Administration will not faithfully implement the law. At a conference earlier this month, Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) warned the Obama administration: “If there are some bureaucrats in my own government who, for whatever reason, choose not to implement the law in the spirit that it was written and it was passed, then I assure you that Congress will strengthen that law, amend that law with even tougher language. . . . This was not just a talking point that we passed.”
McGovern is right to be concerned. Beginning his second term, President Obama has recommitted his administration to the “reset” for Russia, a policy premised on the difference between interests and values. Discrete objectives are to be approached instrumentally and without regard to the quickening pace of anti-democratic regression under Vladimir Putin that provides ample basis for a list addressing a litany of abuses beyond the case of Mr. Magnitsky. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has reported that the administration is pursuing a cramped reading of the bill.
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Tussle Brews In Washington Over Russia Sanctions List
A tussle is brewing in Washington over who will be included on a U.S. list of sanctioned Russian officials to be published next month.
Officials with the State Department are reportedly advocating steps that would shorten the politically sensitive “Magnitsky list,” while members of Congress and NGOs who support a more sweeping list are vowing to push back.
A list of sanctioned officials is required by a law Congress passed in late 2012 designed to punish Russian officials implicated in the prosecution and death of Moscow lawyer and whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky.
The 37-year-old died in jail in 2009 after he was repeatedly denied medical care and beaten. He had been arrested after implicating officials from Russian government ministries in a complex scheme to steal $230 million from state coffers. His death became an international symbol of Russia’s rule-of-law and human rights transgressions.
In addition to slapping visa bans and asset freezes on officials connected to the Magnitsky case, the law also mandates sanctions against Russian officials who have committed other perceived gross rights violations. Those sanctions could deepen the law’s impact on U.S.-Russian relations, which have sunk in the wake of its passage.
Anticipating a furious reaction from Moscow and concerned over the legislation’s potential impact on relations, the Obama administration opposed the measures.
President Barack Obama now has until April 13 to publish the list of sanctioned officials in the federal register. He has the option of keeping some names classified for “vital national security” reasons.
The White House has given no indication of who it is considering. A list endorsed by members of Congress of officials implicated in the Magnitsky case contained about 60 names.
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A Russian ‘frenemy’
The White House is trying to revive the “reset” with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It is likely to be a wasted effort. The reset is dead not because of someone’s ill will or mistakes. It is because Washington and Moscow have reached the limit of accommodation that neither could overstep without compromising the central elements and moral content of their foreign and domestic policies. The Obama administration’s effort would be far better spent on devising a more realistic strategy that at least stabilizes the relationship, albeit on a lower level of interaction.
Two sets of factors are mostly responsible for the growing disjunction between the United States and Russia: the diminution of Russia’s geo-strategic relevance for some key U.S. objectives, and the increasing prominence and role that Kremlin domestic behavior plays in U.S.-Russian relations.
In Afghanistan, the rapid drawdown of U.S. troops obviates much of the need for personnel and materiel transportation through Russia after 2014. With regard to Iran, another key U.S. concern, Russia has unambiguously signaled the end of its support for even watered-down resolutions that it previously voted for at the U.N. Security Council.
Syria has been an even starker demonstration of the diversion in guiding values and objectives. Russia thrice vetoed U.S.-supported Security Council resolutions calling for sanctions against the murderous Assad regime. The last of the vetoes was cast in July, despite President Obama’s appeal to President Putin in an hourlong telephone conversation. Throughout the conflict, Russia has continued to sell weapons and technology to Assad.
On Russia’s domestic front, following Putin’s reelection in March 2012, the Kremlin has undertaken a concerted and consistent effort to repress, intimidate, marginalize and stigmatize not just the political opposition but also citizens participating in peaceful protests and members of nonpolitical, independent civil movements and groups. Since the run-up to the Duma election in the second half of 2011, from Putin on down, the regime has been using alleged subversion by external enemies to justify the crackdown.
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Sergei Magnitsky: How a dead man was put on trial
THE court calls Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. He’s a bit slow to take the stand. He’s a bit quiet. This is because Sergei Magnitsky is dead. He died in a Russian prison from pancreatitis. He’s buried at Moscow’s Preobrazhensky cemetery.
Mr Magnitsky was first arrested in 2008. The lawyer with US firm Firestone Duncan had been working for London-based Hermitage Capital Management. He claimed to have uncovered a massive fraud worth £125m. He told all to officials. He was then arrested for alleged tax evasion and sent to prison, where he was beaten and denied medical help. He was had been held for a year without charge. Well, just under a year. In Russia, you can be held for anything up a year without charge. That time would have lapsed on November 24. He died on Monday, November 16. Such was his misfortune.
He was kept in squalor. In his affidavit, Magnitsky noted:
“…sewage started to rise from the drain under the sink [the] floor was covered with sewage several centimetres thick … for the 10 months I have been under arrest, the investigator has not let me meet with my wife, mother or any other relative”. “Isolation from the outside world exceeds all reasonable limits …
In July 2009, Magnitsky was diagnosed with “gall bladder stones, pancreatitis and calculous cholecystitis“. He blamed that on his confinement:
“Prior to confinement, I didn’t have these illnesses or at least there were no symptoms.”
Irina Dudukina, spokesman for the prosecutors’ investigative committee, said in November 2009:
“He was a key witness and his evidence was very important. The tragic news about his death came as a complete surprise. He had complained about the conditions of his detention but never his health.”
Spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee Irina Dudukina speaks at a news conference on the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in Moscow, Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2009.
Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital said Sergei Magnitsky, had in effect been “held hostage and they killed their hostage”. He had hired Magnitsky to search for fraud against his company. The Russian elite were not willing to play fair:
In 2005, Mr Browder was banned from Russia as a threat to national security after allegations that his firms had evaded tax, but Mr Browder says his company was targeted by criminals trying to seize millions of pounds worth of his assets. Mr Browder says he was punished for being a threat to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. Since then, a number of Mr Browder’s associates in Russia – as well as lawyers acting for his company – have been detained, beaten or robbed.
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Russian whistle-blower’s mother thanks Obama for law named after her dead son
The mother of a whistle-blowing Russian lawyer who died in prison is thanking President Barack Obama for a U.S. law targeting Russian officials deemed to be human rights violators involved in her son’s death.
Sergei Magnitsky died in jail of untreated pancreatitis in 2009 after accusing Russian officials of stealing $230 million from the state. The case has angered both Russian activists and the West, and in December, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in Magnitsky’s name, calling for sanctions against officials deemed to be connected with human rights abuses.
Natalya Magnitskaya said Thursday she is grateful to Obama for facilitating the adoption of the bill saying that it “will somehow keep my son’s memory.”
She also criticized Moscow’s decision to bar Americans from adopting Russian children in retaliation. быстрые займы онлайн займы на карту без отказа https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно
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Putin’s Russia: back to the bad old days
Vladimir Putin’s unwillingness to undertake democratic reform has led to a cooling of relations with the US and Europe.
We can all sleep more safely. The end of the world will not happen on December 20 2012 , or even for another 4.5bn years, because Vladimir Putin has assured us that it won’t. Collective jitters produced by the end of the Mayan calendar have been good business for the suppliers of candles, matches, salt and torches in some parts of Russia, even though, as one psychiatrist noted, what happens every day can be a lot scarier than Armageddon.
Take, for instance, Mr Putin’s support for a ban on Americans adopting Russian children. This was a measure named after the horrific case of a Russian toddler who died of heatstroke in Virginia after his adoptive American father left him in a car for nine hours. The ban, however, was not born out of any wish to protect orphans. It was written out of anger. It was one of the responses to a law signed by Barack Obama named after Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who died in prison after trying to expose a government tax fraud. The Magnitsky law requires the US administration to compile a list of Russian citizens accused of human rights abuses, including those involved in Magnitsky’s case, and bar them from travelling to the US. The measure is designed to hit officials personally and where it hurts them most – to prevent them travelling to and from their luxury pads in New Jersey and accessing their copious bank accounts there. Many say, with some justice, that the same measure should apply to that greatest money-laundering centre of all – London.
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Obama Signs Magnitsky Act Into Law
President Barack Obama signed legislation that cracks down on human-rights abusers in Russia.
The legislation, part of a broader bill that normalizes trade relations with Russia, passed the Senate last week after clearing the House of Representatives in November.
The human rights provision attached to the trade bill was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management who has been cheered as a martyr and a whistleblower after he made allegations of a huge fraud scandal in Russia and died while in the hands of Russian authorities.
Under the law, the U.S. assets of human-rights abusers in Russia would be frozen and they would be banned from being granted visas to enter the U.S.
Moscow has rejected the allegations of human-rights abuses, and has vowed to retaliate with similar legislation.
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Magnitsky Act “unfriendly,” saying U.S.-Russian relations were at stake. онлайн займы микрозайм онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php www.zp-pdl.com unshaven girls
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Obama Signs Magnitsky Act Into Law
US President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law the Magnitsky Act, a bill punishing Russian officials for alleged human rights violations that US lawmakers attached to a landmark trade bill normalizing trade relations with Moscow.
The aspects of the law targeting Russian officials, which simultaneously repeals the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik law, has angered the Kremlin, which says it is an attempt by the United States to interfere in Russia’s internal affairs.
The law calls on the White House to draw up a list of Russian officials deemed by Washington to be complicit in rights abuses. These officials will then be banned from obtaining US visas and have their US assets frozen.
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued an angry statement Friday in response to the new US law, calling the linking of the human rights legislation to the trade bill “cynical.”
The statement also made reference to the Obama administration’s original reluctance to attach the Magnitsky Act to the trade legislation, an effort that had overwhelming bipartisan support in the US Congress.
“We regret that a US administration declaring its commitment to the development of stable and constructive bilateral relations was unable to defend its stated position against those who look to the past and see our country not as a partner, but rather an opponent—fully in line with the canons of the Cold War,” the ministry said in the statement.
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Obama Signs Russia, Moldova Trade Bill And Magnitsky Sanctions Into Law
U.S. President Barack Obama has signed into law legislation that grants permanent normal trade relations to Russia and Moldova while also paving the way for sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
“I think the legislation is important legislation — all of it — and the president was happy to sign it,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters after the bill was signed on December 14. “He believes it’s an important step forward in our relationship with Russia.”
By permanently exempting Moscow from trade barriers imposed by the Cold-War-era Jackson-Vanik Amendment, the United States will look to benefit from increased commerce with Russia afforded by its August entry into the World Trade Organization.
The attached Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act mandates the president to publicly name Russian officials that he determines are responsible for the death of the Russian whistleblower. The officials will then be subject to U.S. visa bans or visa revocations as well as asset freezes.
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