Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

May bans 60 Russians over corruption scandal

The Sunday Times

Downing Street is facing a diplomatic row with the Kremlin after blacklisting 60 Russian intelligence officers and top officials linked to a corruption scandal. The home secretary, Theresa May, has sent the British embassy in Moscow names of the officials, including judges, intelligence officers and prosecutors, implicated in the torture and death of a young lawyer.

Sergei Magnitsky, 37, was beaten and died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after uncovering a corruption scheme involving tax officials and police.

The ban on officials entering Britain will anger the Kremlin when relations were starting to thaw. Ties have been strained since the radioactive poisoning of the former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in London six years ago.

This weekend, Sergei Markov, a former adviser to President Vladimir Putin, threatened reprisals. “Russia will never recognise such a situation and will reply. That means that those officials who took part in making the decision to restrict the rights of officials to travel will have their own rights restricted,” he said.

A similar move by the United States last year provoked tit-for-tat retaliation by the Kremlin which banned some American officials from visiting the country.

Details of the blacklist have been disclosed by the immigration minister, Damian Green, in a letter to a Tory MP. Green said a list of 60 officials, including prosecutors, judges, tax inspectors, police and prison chiefs, compiled by an American congressional committee, had been sent to the British embassy in Moscow. “[It] will be considered if an entry clearance application is received from any of the named individuals,” Green wrote.