Posts Tagged ‘RFE’
Russia Leverages Western Courts To Chase Wealthy Fugitives
On a balmy morning in August, Janna Bullock steered a light-blue convertible into the driveway of her oceanfront mansion in the swanky hamlet of Southampton on New York’s Atlantic Coast. Waiting for her was a man bearing a stack of documents.
Bullock, a prominent Manhattan-based real estate tycoon and socialite, accelerated toward the house, hopped out of the car and hustled for the door. The man gave chase and touched her with the documents, saying she’d been served with legal papers, according to a U.S. federal court affidavit.
The documents, part of a civil action lodged against Bullock by state-owned Russian banking giant Gazprombank, fell to the steps in front of the sprawling home and remained there as Bullock sequestered herself inside.
From the gilded shores of the Hamptons and the French Riviera to the London stomping grounds of the super-rich, Russia is pursuing ex-officials and entrepreneurs like Bullock who amassed wealth in Russia and then fled the country after falling afoul of powerful officials.
And despite Moscow’s chilled relations with the West over the Ukraine crisis, these efforts in recent months have yielded several favorable rulings for Russia in U.S. and European courts.
The targets of these legal campaigns claim they are victims of a corrupt Russian state, though some critics say they are merely assuming the mantle of political refugees to protect illicit gains purloined in murky business dealings.
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Interpol Said To Eye New Russian Bid For Browder’s Arrest
Britain-based businessman William Browder says the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) will revisit Russia’s request for his arrest on charges linked to whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow jail five years ago this week.
Interpol informed Browder that it will consider the request during a November 20-21 meeting at the organization’s headquarters in Lyon, France, he told RFE/RL.
Interpol has twice rejected earlier Russian requests for a so-called “red notice” against Browder, citing Russia’s “political” goals in the matter.
Russian prosecutors said in June that Interpol had decided to reconsider Russia’s request.
Interpol could not immediately be reached for comment.
Browder has led a global campaign for sanctions against Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky’s death on November 16, 2009.
A Russian court convicted Browder in absentia and Magnitsky posthumously on tax evasion charges last year, decisions slammed by Western governments and rights groups.
Browder told RFE/RL that the basis for Russia’s new push for an Interpol warrant against him is linked to Magnitsky’s posthumous trial, which he called “one of the most scandalous legal proceedings in legal history.”
“It’s surprising that Russia would have the nerve to use this as a basis to have me arrested, and it’s even more surprising that Interpol would even entertain this discussion,” Browder said.
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U.S. Treasury Sanctions 12 More Russians Under ‘Magnitsky Act’
The U.S. Treasury has announced sanctions against 12 more Russians for alleged human rights abuses, including prison officials who allegedly withheld medical care from a man who uncovered tax fraud in Russia.
The visa bans and sanctions under the so-called “Magnitsky Act” freeze any U.S. assets of individuals accused by Washington in the 2009 prison death of whistle-blowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, as well as other as well as other human rights abuses.
The list published on May 20 includes four Russian prison officials, a judge, a court official, a law-enforcement investigator, and alleged co-conspirators in the Russian fraud case.
Those alleged co-conspirators are said to have been involved in a massive tax fraud in Russia that Magnitsky disclosed prior to his death.
Most added to the blacklist are accused by Magnitsky’s supporters of complicity in his arrest and subsequent death while in pretrial detention at a Moscow prison in November 2009.
The judge named on May 20 was involved in the criminal proceedings against Magnitsky.
Russian prison officials on the expanded list include medical personnel who treated Magnitsky in prison.
On the list is Dr. Dmitry Kratov, who was charged with negligence in connection with Magnitsky’s death but was acquitted last December by a Russian court.
The expanded sanctions list does not include a top Russian law-enforcement official that senior U.S. lawmakers had tried to get included.
Proponents of the Magnitsky Act had called for Russian Investigative Committee head Aleksandr Bastrykin to be sanctioned under the 2012 law.
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European Parliament Committee Backs Magnitsky Sanctions
The European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has proposed that 32 Russian officials be sanctioned by the EU due to their involvement in the death of Russian whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The European Parliament had previously called on EU member states to emulate the United States’ so-called Magnitsky List and freeze assets and impose visa bans on Russian officials, but certain European countries have blocked any such move.
However, after the March 17 decision by EU foreign ministers to sanction 13 Russian officials and an additional eight Crimeans for their roles in the crisis in Ukraine, there are hopes that EU member states might change their minds.
It is also the first time the European Parliament has presented the names of those they want punished.
The whole European Parliament is expected to overwhelmingly endorse the proposal during its April plenary. hairy woman онлайн займ https://zp-pdl.com www.zp-pdl.com займы онлайн на карту срочно
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U.S. Congressman Presses Officials On Russian Blacklist
A U.S. lawmaker who spearheaded legislation punishing accused Russian rights abusers plans to meet officials from the Obama administration to press for answers as to why it has failed to blacklist more Russian officials under the law.
U.S. Representative James McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said he is seeking a sit-down with the administration to discuss why it did not expand the blacklist authorized by the Magnitsky Act prior to issuing a mandatory report on the law last month that he called “disappointing” and short on detail.
“I expected more. But I want to give them an opportunity to explain to me why the brevity, why the omission of names,” McGovern, who first proposed the idea of the Magnitsky legislation at a May 2010 congressional hearing, told RFE/RL.
The legislation, passed at the end of 2012, introduces visa bans and financial sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the 2009 death of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The December report has not been made public, but an RFE/RL correspondent was allowed to view its one-page narrative portion, which includes general information about the 18 individuals placed on the inaugural blacklist in April by the State and Treasury Departments.
One congressional staffer familiar with the report echoed McGovern’s criticism, calling its narrative section largely a rehash of previously available details and unworthy of serious efforts by many administration officials to “fulfill the letter and spirit of the Magnitsky Act.”
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Putin Promotes Judge Who Posthumously Convicted Magnitsky
Russian President Vladimir Putin has promoted a judge who presided over the landmark trial and conviction of whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky after Magnistky died in police custody.
Hermitage Capital, the investment fund that employed Magnitsky, released information on October 25 from the Kremlin website showing Judge Igor Alisov was promoted from the Tverskoi district court to the Moscow City Court.
The August 29 decree promoting Alisov came just one month after Alisov became the first person in Russia to preside over the trial of a dead man.
“This looks like Judge Alisov’s payback for selling his soul to Vladimir Putin,” Hermitage Capital said in a statement.
Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital, died under torturous jail conditions in 2009 after exposing a massive scheme by Russian officials to defraud the government.
Judge Alisov also exonerated all the officials Magnitsky implicated in embezzling $230 million.
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Interview: McCain On Russia, Putin, And His Pravda.ru Op-Ed
(RFE/RL – rferl.org – NEW YORK, September 20, 2013) U.S. Senator John McCain (Republican-Arizona) has defended an opinion piece he wrote this week that was critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling Yuri Zhigalkin of RFE/RL’s Russian Service that his remarks were based on the facts about rights abuses in Russia.
RFE/RL: Senator, I had the feeling that critics and supporters of your op-ed in Pravda.ru — and this is kind of surprising — are about evenly split. Some say that McCain is basically saying what a good Russian human rights activist should say. Others say he is just an old man outside Russia who doesn’t understand a thing about Russia. Your reaction to that?
John McCain: The comments I make are based on facts — about repression, about [Sergei] Magnitsky [the whistle-blowing Russian lawyer who died in custody in 2009], about total control of the media, and the human rights abuses that continue.
RFE/RL: Why did you decide to write this article? What was your goal, what were you trying to achieve?
McCain: The truth is always an important thing, and the comments that Mr. Putin made [in his “New York Times” op-ed] about the United States of America and events here were directly contradicted by the situation in Russia, and if I ever have a chance to speak to the people of Russia, no matter how insignificant it will be, I will seize that opportunity because I am pro-Russian, and the abuses that are being heaped upon them by the Putin autocracy is, in my view, something that deserves our sympathy and our opposition.
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Could U.S. Assets Seizure Lead To Expansion Of Magnitsky Blacklist?
As shady Russian businessmen snapped up luxury apartments in New York City, lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was confined to the few square meters of a Moscow jail cell. He would die there under suspicious circumstances in 2009 after revealing a scheme by government officials and associates to steal $230 million from the Russian treasury. U.S. prosecutors say the proceeds of that heist paid for the Manhattan properties.
A complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on September 10 seeks the seizure of the four Wall Street-area apartments as well as two commercial spaces. It also details the twists and turns of the fraud scheme. If approved, the seizure would be the first such move in a case that has already seen bank accounts frozen in several European countries.
But perhaps more significantly, at least for U.S.-Russian relations, the complaint names alleged beneficiaries of the fraud that are not included on the “Magnitsky list,” a U.S. blacklist of Russian officials implicated in the case. It appears, then, to offer a potent argument for those members of the U.S. Congress seeking to expand the list and push back against any hesitation by the administration of President Barack Obama over harm that might cause to ties with Moscow.
Informed congressional sources told RFE/RL that the naming of names in the complaint had “been noted” and could be used to push the administration ahead of an upcoming deadline.
The U.S. legislation establishing travel and financial sanctions in the Magnitsky case requires that the State and Treasury departments add more names to the blacklist “as new information becomes available.” The Obama administration must add names to the list by a December 14 congressional reporting deadline or justify why it hasn’t done so.
The first version of the list, published in April, implicated 16 individuals in connection with the case (plus another two implicated in other crimes). Some U.S. lawmakers had expressed disappointment that more names had not been included. It was enough, however, to elicit rage — and a retaliatory blacklist — from Moscow.
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U.S. Seeks Seizure Of Real Estate Connected To Magnitsky Fraud Scheme
U.S. authorities have moved to seize millions of dollars’ worth of Manhattan real estate in what would be the first asset seizure connected to the tax fraud scheme uncovered by Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
A complaint filed on September 10 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said Cyprus-based real estate corporation Prevezon Holdings, owned by Russian Denis Katsyv, was one of the companies that benefited from an elaborate scheme to steal $230 million from Russian state coffers that was later revealed by Magnitsky.
The company and its eight subsidiaries laundered some of the money through the purchase of four luxury condominiums and two commercial spaces in Manhattan, the complaint alleges.
Katsyv has previously said he is innocent of any involvement in the fraud scheme.
The complaint also seeks to seize the assets of two “related companies.”
Magnitsky died in 2009 in pre-trial detention after being repeatedly denied medical care. Supporters say his death was punishment for his whistleblowing.
His case provoked an international outcry and has led to passage of the Magnitsky Act in the United States, which sanctions officials implicated in the lawyer’s case and in other perceived gross human rights violations.
In July Russia convicted Magnitsky of tax fraud posthumously. unshaven girl займ срочно без отказов и проверок https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php займы на карту без отказа
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