Posts Tagged ‘washington post’
Goldman Sachs Shouldn’t Work for Russia, Human Rights Group Says
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Russian whistle-blower’s mother thanks Obama for law named after her dead son
The mother of a whistle-blowing Russian lawyer who died in prison is thanking President Barack Obama for a U.S. law targeting Russian officials deemed to be human rights violators involved in her son’s death.
Sergei Magnitsky died in jail of untreated pancreatitis in 2009 after accusing Russian officials of stealing $230 million from the state. The case has angered both Russian activists and the West, and in December, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in Magnitsky’s name, calling for sanctions against officials deemed to be connected with human rights abuses.
Natalya Magnitskaya said Thursday she is grateful to Obama for facilitating the adoption of the bill saying that it “will somehow keep my son’s memory.”
She also criticized Moscow’s decision to bar Americans from adopting Russian children in retaliation. быстрые займы онлайн займы на карту без отказа https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно
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Medvedev Courts Davos Skeptics With Better-Than-China Pitch
Russia has a $10 billion sales pitch for investors at this year’s World Economic Forum: give us your money and we’ll worry about corruption for you.
That was the line from First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov in an interview with Bloomberg Television last week and that’s what Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will try to convince skeptical investors of tomorrow with his keynote address at the conference in Davos, Switzerland, the third by a Russian leader in five years.
Russia plans to raise a record $10 billion from asset sales this year as it seeks to stem capital flight and reverse the state’s creeping hold over the economy, Shuvalov said. The government failed to reach a similar goal last year, when it retained its ranking as the most corrupt country in the Group of 20, an organization it leads this year.
“Russia, regardless of what people are saying, is a place that people can invest, can earn,” Shuvalov said on a Jan. 18 train ride to Moscow from Kaluga, a region that has attracted investment from companies including Volkswagen AG and AstraZeneca Plc. “If you talk with investors, they say they invest maybe less than in China, but lose less than in China. They say people don’t know Russia.”
Putin Critique
Medvedev used his Davos speech in 2011 to highlight the “new opportunities” for foreigners “for doing business with success” in Russia. The message was more upbeat than the one then-premier Vladimir Putin delivered in 2009, in which he said the global crisis had shown the dangers of rampant greed in the U.S.-dominated global financial system.
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Russian children: Pawns in Putin’s power play
In a display of callousness unusual even by Vladimir Putin’s standards, Russia eliminated the possibility of a better life for thousands of orphans last week when Putin signed into law a ban on adoptions by Americans. The law is named for Dima Yakovlev, a Russian child adopted by U.S. parents who died after being left in a truck in the heat in Herndon. That case, and 18 other cited instances of Russian adoptees who died in the care of American parents, are tragedies. But the vast majority of the nearly 60,000 adoptions by American couples over the past two decades have enabled Russian children, some with severe disabilities, to lead happy lives.
Many American commentators have described the Yakovlev act as a response to recent U.S. legislation cracking down on Russian human rights abusers. Such analysis is deeply flawed and, insofar as it is shared by U.S. policymakers, will contribute to a serious misreading of the motives and goals that drive Putin as he sets Russia’s course.
The Sergei Magnitsky Act is named after a 37-year-old lawyer who was beaten, deprived of medical attention and left to die in a Russian prison nearly a year after uncovering a massive fraud allegedly committed by officials. The people Magnitsky implicated arrested him in 2008; a year after his death, several of the same officials were promoted and awarded. Last week, Russian prosecutors dropped charges against the only person formally accused in the case, meaning that Russia is holding no one accountable for Magnitsky’s death. Instead, even though he is dead, Magnitsky is being retried in the original fraud case brought against him.
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U.S. Senate stands up for human rights
How many times have I said in the past few years that the Senate has stood up for human rights? Not many, but it is deserving for two actions taken yesterday.
First, a bipartisan resolution co-sponsored by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and 30 other senators called for the immediate and unconditional release of Alan Gross from imprisonment in Cuba. The resolution also calls on Cuba to provide needed medical treatment to Gross, who reportedly is quite ill and has lost more than 100 pounds in prison. Gross was the U.S. contractor thrown in the dungeons of Cuba after a Mickey Mouse trial for bringing satellite phones to the Jewish community there. This outrage followed the U.S. administration’s lightening of sanctions on Cuba, a move yet to be reversed.
The resolution is important not only because it prevents Gross from being forgotten and gives hope to him and all imprisoned human rights victims; it also may stop in the tracks any deal by which Gross would be released in exchange for release of five convicted Cuban spies. The Post editorial board put it this way: “There is no equivalence between Mr. Gross and the five prisoners, as Havana itself acknowledges. It agrees the Florida prisoners were its spies, but it has never charged Mr. Gross with espionage.” So bravo to the Senate for its demand for Gross’s unconditional release.
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U.S. legislation infuriates Russia
Washington Post
The U.S. Senate on Thursday repealed a trade sanction imposed 38 years ago to force the Soviet Union to allow Jews and other religious minorities to emigrate, replacing it with a modern-day punishment for human rights abuse that has enraged Russian officials.
The old law, one of the last vestiges of the Cold War, was called the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, named after a U.S. senator and a representative. The new law, passed 92 to 4, grants Russia and Moldova permanent normal trade relations, but it is coupled with the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which honors a dead Russian. The law blacklists Russians connected to the death of Magnitsky in police custody and to other gross human rights violations, prohibiting entrance to the United States and use of its banking system.
“Today, we close a chapter in U.S. history,” Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), one of the prime movers of the Magnitsky bill, said during the debate on Jackson-Vanik. “It served its purpose. Today, we open a new chapter in U.S. leadership for human rights.”
How the United States can best promote democracy and human rights in Russia – and elsewhere – became a matter of agonizing and often bitter debate as pressure grew to repeal Jackson-Vanik. Not only was it widely considered a relic with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and freedom to emigrate from Russia, but, under the regulations of the World Trade Organization, which Russia joined this year, it also penalized American exporters.
The House approved the measure last month. President Obama said he looked forward to signing the law because of the WTO benefits for American workers, although originally the administration had argued that the Magnitsky bill was unnecessary because the president could – and would – create the desired blacklist by executive order.
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Senate to vote to normalize trade with Russia, impose human rights sanctions
The Senate is set to endorse legislation that both normalizes trade with Russia and highlights the discord between the two countries over human rights issues.
The vote Thursday to establish permanent normal trade relations with Russia will bring considerable relief to U.S. exporters and investors anxious about losing shares of Russia’s growing market to European and Chinese competitors. It also could bring retaliation from Moscow over a provision that sanctions Russian officials who allegedly commit human rights violations.
The House passed the legislation last month on a 365-43 vote, and President Barack Obama’s administration has urged Congress to move quickly to get it to the president’s desk.
There’s a sense of urgency because Russia in August became the last major economic power to enter the World Trade Organization, committing it to lowering tariffs, removing other trade barriers, protecting intellectual property, opening up its service industries and submitting to the WTO’s dispute resolution process.
But unless Congress formally normalizes trade relations, U.S. exporters will be alone among the members of the 157-nation WTO unable to enjoy the increased market access. That puts them at a serious disadvantage in competing for sales in the world’s ninth-largest economy, with an estimated 140 million consumers.
“This is no small matter,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Russia’s accession to the WTO “includes lower tariffs on aircraft and auto exports, larger quotas for beef exports and greater access to Russia’s telecommunications and banking markets.”
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Targeting Russia’s offenders
ON FRIDAY, the House of Representatives stepped out of the past and confronted today’s human rights debacle in Russia. By a vote of 365-43, the chamber repealed the 1974 Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions that were a cornerstone of the long struggle to win freedom for Soviet Jews to emigrate. At the same time, the House approved legislation creating new sanctions against human rights abusers, including those who sent corruption-fighting lawyer Sergei Magnitsky to his death in a jail cell three years ago.
The Jackson-Vanik amendment was a singularly powerful instrument in the Cold War, a counter-weight to detente that was championed by Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.). The original purpose has long been realized. Russia does not prevent emigration, as the Soviet Union once did, and it has now joined the World Trade Organization. The new legislation will create permanent, normal trade relations with Russia, an important and welcome foundation for American firms seeking to do business there.
But Mr. Jackson’s goals have not been fulfilled entirely. Respect for human rights in Russia has plunged since President Vladimir Putin returned to office this year, confronted by large street demonstrations against his rule. A string of new laws has restricted freedom of expression, assembly and association. The laws give the state expanded powers to accuse individuals of treason; restrict nongovernmental organizations that receive money from abroad; and attempt to limit participation in public demonstrations. Moreover, Mr. Putin’s enforcers have been eager to set an example for those who would challenge the Kremlin. A band of punk rockers, Pussy Riot, received harsh prison sentences after a performance prank that included criticism of Mr. Putin. An opposition activist was apparently abducted by Russian agents while in Kiev, brought back to Moscow and interrogated. These tactics are intended to create fear and intimidation.
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U.S. House to take up Russian rights bill as another graft case comes to light in Moscow
As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to take up legislation known as the Magnitsky bill this week, a newspaper reported Wednesday that a key figure in the Russian corruption case that inspired the measure is involved in a two-year-old criminal investigation.
Olga Stepanova was the head of a tax office that approved a fraudulent $230 million refund in 2007, a scheme revealed by whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky before he was arrested. He died in jail three years ago Friday. Now, the newspaper Vedomosti reports that criminal investigators have been following a separate tax-refund case — from 2009, worth $130 million — in which Stepanova was a principal actor.
The Vedomosti article was sparked by the burgeoning corruption cases that have made news here over the past few weeks. They began with an investigation in late October into Russia’s Defense Ministry that has claimed the job of one of President Vladimir Putin’s most loyal colleagues, Anatoly Serdyukov.
Stepanova worked for former defense minister Serdyukov when he was head of the tax agency, and she later transferred to work under him at the Defense Ministry. She no longer works there and has not been directly linked to the Defense Ministry scandal, which involves the sale of millions of dollars worth of property at rock-bottom prices.
Andrei Piontkovsky, a political analyst, suggested Wednesday that without Serdyukov’s protection, Stepanova may have been sacrificed in a last-ditch bid to mollify the West and perhaps even derail the House bill, which would put strict banking and visa sanctions on Russian officials associated with the Magnitsky case.
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