Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

French ‘Magnitsky Act’ Is Gaining Momentum

Moscow Times

As French President Francois Hollande met with President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, he was under serious pressure to raise the case of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose mysterious death in a Moscow jail led the U.S. to impose sanctions on Russians suspected of human rights violations.

A survey published Thursday by the independent French Institute of Public Opinion (IFPO), one of the country’s most respected pollsters, revealed that 85 percent of French citizens would support their own version of the sanction-imposing Magnitsky Act, which U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law in December.

Bill Browder, the man behind the US Magnitsky Act has been drumming up support in France to pass its own version of the legislation. Shortly after the American law was passed Russia banned U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans in what was widely seen as a tit-for-tat response.

“Now that the U.S. Magnitsky Act has been passed, it’s our major priority to get the Europeans to the same level within a year,” Browder said in an interview in Paris earlier this month.