Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

US House Panel Approves Magnitsky Bill

Wall Street Journal

A U.S. House committee approved legislation — without debate — that would punish Russian human-rights violators.

The legislation was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management who has been lionized around the world 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.

The scandal involved the alleged theft of hundreds of millions of dollars from Hermitage by Russian police, tax officials and others. Magnitsky had testified to Russian prosecutors in October 2008 but he was arrested and remanded to the very officials he accused in his testimony.

As the scandal unfolded, the U.S. created a secret visa blacklist of those it said were involved in the case. Moscow responded with its own list. The bill would make the U.S. list public, broaden it to include other human-rights abusers and ban those on the list from banking at U.S. financial institutions.

Russia has vowed to retaliate if the legislation becomes law, though it faces an uncertain future in an election year, according to a Dow Jones Newswires report.