Posts Tagged ‘visa bans’
How to Get Autocrats to Bend
28 April 2012
Editorial
U.S. Representative Jim McGovern introduced an expanded Magnitsky act to Congress last week. The focus of the bill goes beyond the original legislation sponsored by Senator Ben Cardin, which targeted 60 Russian officials implicated in the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky in pretrial detention. McGovern’s bill contains an additional open clause that expands the same type of sanctions — visa bans and asset freezes — against Russian officials implicated in other cases involving “gross violations of human rights.”
Around the same time that U.S. lawmakers were working to tighten the screws on Russia, the European Union was seeing the results of similar economic sanctions on Belarus. Andrei Sannikov, an opposition presidential candidate in Belarus’ December 2010 election, and his campaign manager, Dmitry Bondarenko, were pardoned by President Alexander Lukashenko and released on April 15 after serving 16 months in prison. The two, along with hundreds of others, were arrested for taking part in mass protests against Lukashenko’s landslide reelection, which independent monitors say was heavily rigged.
Belarussian political analysts and Sannikov himself believe that the dominant factor behind the pardons were EU economic and political sanctions levied against the Lukashenko regime in March.
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U.S. Lawmakers Submit Updated Magnitsky Bill
22 April 2012
By Natalya Krainova
Fifteen ranking members of the U.S. House of Representatives have submitted a bill to impose visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The bill is an updated version of a similar one submitted to the chamber in April 2011, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission said on its website Thursday.
“Since Russian authorities have not provided justice to Mr. Magnitsky and his family, the United States should do what it can to hold individuals accountable for these heinous crimes,” Representative James McGovern said, Magnitsky’s former employer, Hermitage Capital, said in a statement Friday.
The updated bill doesn’t specifically name any officials, a Hermitage Capital spokesperson said. Neither did the previous version.
The earlier bill called for sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the detention, prosecution and death of Magnitsky and in the conspiracy to defraud the Russian Federation of taxes on corporate profits through fraudulent transactions and lawsuits against Hermitage.
Unlike the new version, that bill didn’t call for sanctions against officials implicated in other crimes.
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Cardin Expects ‘Macho’ Russian Response To Magnitsky Bill
Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty
By Richard Solash
April 19, 2012
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin (Democrat-Maryland) says he expects a “macho” response from Moscow should Congress pass legislation punishing Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
“We fully expect that there will be some reactions that are going to try to show [Russian] macho-ness rather than dealing with [human rights],” the senator said on April 19 at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think-tank.
Cardin last year introduced legislation that would ban visas for and freeze the assets of some 60 Russians connected with the Magnitsky case, which has become an international symbol of Russia’s human rights failings.
The lawyer died in jail in 2009 at the age of 37 after implicating top Russian officials in a complex scheme to defraud the government.
Independent investigations have found that Magnitsky was repeatedly denied medical care and beaten before his death.
Moscow is currently prosecuting only one low-level prison official in the case, amid allegations of a cover-up.
Independent of the legislation, the U.S. State Department last year imposed visa bans on implicated Russian officials.
In response, Moscow compiled a blacklist of U.S. officials it says violated the rights of two Russian citizens, a suspected international arms trafficker and a convicted drug smuggler.
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Official Not Worried About EU Visa Ban
A senior Russian investigative official said he would not care if the European Union banned him from entry over the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
“I don’t have any immediate plans to go abroad,” Alexei Anichin, head of the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee, told reporters in Moscow on Thursday. “But if I do go and they don’t let me in, it won’t be a big tragedy for me.”
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Russian police general dismissive of EU, US sanctions over lawyer’s death
REN TV
Text of report by privately owned Russian television channel REN TV on 3 February
[Presenter] Yelena Baturina, the wife of the former Moscow mayor [Yuriy Luzhkov], may be invited for questioning in connection with the theft of R13bn [over 430m dollars at the current exchange rate] from the Moscow city budget, the head of the Interior Ministry’s investigations committee, Aleksey Anichin, has said at a news conference today. He said that the investigation was in full swing, however the journalists were interested not so much in Baturina’s problems as in the problems of Anichin himself and, specifically, if he will be missing Europe since Anichin’s name is on the so-called black list of 60 officials connected with the Magnitskiy case who have been banned from entering European countries and the USA.
[Anichin] To take a decision like that, not only as regards me but as regards 60 people, without any court or other ruling is strange, to say the least. In recent years I have not travelled anywhere apart from former Soviet republics and have no plans to, so even if they do issue the ban, I won’t be suffering much.
[Presenter] Gen Anichin added that he had not received an official notification of a ban to enter the USA and EU countries.
An employee of the investment fund Hermitage Capital, Sergey Magnitskiy, while under investigation, died in custody in November 2009. The circumstances of his death have not been established still. займы онлайн на карту срочно займы на карту без отказа https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php срочный займ на карту онлайн
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