Posts Tagged ‘WSJ’
Opposition Figure Irks Russian Oil Czar
President Vladimir Putin’s close ally who runs Russia’s state oil company Rosneft Wednesday accused a popular leader of opposition protests of acting to the company’s detriment by criticizing Russian officials and demanding access to the company’s secrets.
Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s chief executive, said blogger Alexei Navalny works on behalf of the company’s competitors and an investment fund, who are trying to have a peek into Rosneft’s confidential documents.
Mr. Navalny holds a infinitesimal stake in the firm and, as a shareholder, demands that internal documents, including minutes to board meetings, be published. He has also accused the company of misconduct, corruption and infringement on shareholders’ interests. Rosneft has defended the confidentiality of its documents in courts.
Mr. Navalny, a darling of the anti-Kremlin rallies that have been erupting in Moscow over the past few months, has been repeatedly detained by authorities. His apartment and his office were recently searched by the police, and state-controlled media refer to him as a Western stooge.
“According to some information, Navalny is a lawyer employed by Hermitage Capital,” said Mr. Sechin, the Rosneft chief, when asked at the company’s annual shareholders meeting who he thought was right in the dispute between the company and the blogger.
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A Russian Rights Deal
Senate leaders unveiled an agreement on Tuesday to revoke Cold War-era restrictions on trade with Russia and adopt new human rights legislation despised by the Kremlin.
Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, who chairs the Finance Committee, introduced a bill to establish permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with Russia and repeal the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was originally meant to pressure the Kremlin to treat Soviet Jews better. Ahead of Russia’s accession this summer to the World Trade Organization, U.S. companies will be disadvantaged on the Russian market without PNTR.
But the Obama administration will have to swallow new human rights legislation to replace Jackson-Vanik. In a letter, Sen. Baucus on Tuesday promised to include the so-called Magnitsky Act in the PNTR bill. Magnitsky sets out sanctions, including visa bans and asset freezes, for Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses. Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, introduced the bill in 2010 after the death in police custody of Russian lawyer and whistle blower Sergei Magnitsky the previous year.
Senators John McCain (R) and Joe Lieberman (I) made their support for PNTR contingent on passage of Magnitsky. The White House had leaned on Democratic senators to stop or water down the legislation. President Obama has invested a lot of time and capital in the “reset” of relations with Russia, which has threatened to retaliate for Magnitsky. A new draft of the bill circulated by Sen. Cardin’s staff last week weakened some provisions, angering its Republican supporters.
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Top US Senators Introduce Bill to Lift Trade Restrictions With Russia
A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation Tuesday to lift trade restrictions on Russia, with the aim of passing the bill along with measures to protect human rights in the country before it joins the World Trade Organization as expected this summer.
The bill would approve permanent, normal trade relations with Russia by the August recess, a top trade priority for the Obama administration.
But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) also vowed to incorporate provisions being championed by an increasing number of lawmakers on both sides to punish Russian officials for any human-rights violations.
Administration officials have called for Congress to pass the trade bill separately from any human-rights legislation, a plan that has also been supported by Rep. Dave Camp (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which overseas trade issues.
Mr. Baucus said that once the Senate passes the bill, he would work with the House to ensure any final version of the legislation includes the full text of the so-called “Magnitsky” bill, named after a lawyer who died in a Russian prison in 2009 after accusing government officials of fraud.
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US House Panel Approves Magnitsky Bill
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.
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The Myth of a U.S.-Russia Strategic Partnership
After four years of Dmitry Medvedev keeping the czar’s throne warm, Vladimir Putin is once again Russia’s president. There were no public celebrations to accompany Mr. Putin’s inauguration on May 7. Quite the opposite. Moscow’s streets had been cleared by a huge security presence; the city turned into a ghost town. This scene came the day after massive protests showed that the Russian middle class rejects Mr. Putin’s bid to become their president for life. With no independent legislature or judiciary at our disposal, Mr. Putin’s impeachment will have to take place in the streets.
Meanwhile, this modern czar is using the full power of the state to stamp out Russia’s growing democracy movement. Two young movement leaders, Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov, were arrested on May 6 and are still in jail on 15-day sentences. They’ve been charged with “violently resisting arrest,” even though several videos of the arrest show Mr. Navalny with his hands in the air shouting, “Don’t resist! Don’t resist!”
Naturally, the court has forbidden the admission of any video evidence in the case. It is possible that a criminal case will be added against them for “inciting mass violence”—Kremlin code for a political trial.
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Russia Drops Case Against Doctor In Magnitsky Case
Russia’s top investigative body dropped charges against a prison doctor in the death of imprisoned lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The Investigative Committee said Monday that a two-year statute of limitations ran out on prosecuting former prison doctor Larisa Litvinova on criminal negligence charges. She was in charge of overseeing Magnistky’s health in the weeks before he died in custody in November 2009 while suffering from untreated pancreatitis.
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times each reported the story.
The death of Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management who has been lionized around the world as a martyr and a whistleblower while in the hands of Russian authorities has been a source of friction between the U.S. and Russia, even as President Barack Obama sought a “reset” of relations between the two countries since he came into office.
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Russia’s Steve Biko; What Sergei Magnitsky’s brutal death tells us about the Kremlin’s leadership
In 1977, anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko was arrested by South African police, clubbed to within an inch of his life, chained, stripped, manacled, denied care and ultimately left to die in a car. More appalling was the apartheid regime’s response to his murder: denial, followed by coverup, followed by professions of indifference to Biko’s suffering.
For the generation of Westerners that came politically of age in anti-apartheid rallies—Barack Obama’s generation—Biko’s name became a byword for everything they were fighting against. So it is with most revolutionary movements. It’s not sufficient to have the example of great heroes in the mold of a Walesa or Suu Kyi or Mandela. They also require great victims: Men and women who, in the manner of their dying, demonstrate why it is their victimizers who must perish instead.
Last year, the Arab world found its Biko in Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi. Now Russia may find its own Biko in the memory of Sergei Magnitsky, a mild-mannered, middle-class tax attorney from Moscow who spent the last of his 37 years in a filthy Russian prison before dying in November 2009 of medical neglect and physical torture.
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The Right Way to Sanction Russia
On Thursday, the U.S. Senate will hold a hearing to discuss the accession of Russia to the World Trade Organization and the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment that impedes American trade relations with Russia. The Obama administration has portrayed it as little more than overdue Cold War housekeeping while touting the imagined economic benefits for American farmers that could result from freer trade with Russia.
But the reality on the ground in today’s authoritarian Russia is far more complex. We support the repeal, both as leaders of the pro-democracy opposition in Russia and as Russian citizens who want our nation to join the modern global economy. It is essential, however, to see the bigger picture of which Jackson-Vanik is a part.
The “election” of Vladimir Putin to the presidency is over, but the fight for democracy in Russia is just beginning. At both major opposition meetings following the fraudulent March 4 election, we publicly resolved that Mr. Putin is not the legitimate leader of Russia. The protests will not cease and we will continue to organize and prepare for a near future without Mr. Putin in the presidency. Getting rid of him and his cronies is a job for Russians, and we do not ask for foreign intervention. We do, however, ask that the U.S. and other leading nations of the Free World cease to provide democratic credentials to Mr. Putin. This is why symbols matter, and why Jackson-Vanik still matters.
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Our Friends the Russians: The State Department and John Kerry still believe in the ‘reset’
In its latest display of political retribution, the Kremlin is putting a human-rights lawyer and corruption whistleblower on trial for tax evasion. The notable news here is that Sergei Magnitsky died in police custody two years ago. His prosecution is a poke in the eye of the man’s family, the U.S. and the rule of law in Russia.
Magnitsky worked for an American law firm in Moscow whose clients included a Jewish rights group and the investment house Hermitage Capital. In 2008 he uncovered evidence of police corruption and embezzlement. The police promptly put him in prison, claiming he had helped Hermitage evade taxes. Eleven months later, he died.
A Russian government committee found that Magnitsky was beaten and denied treatment for pancreatitis and recommended that his prison doctors and interrogators be investigated. This didn’t happen. Instead, with the Kremlin’s blessing, the police last summer reopened the case against a dead man and have now announced plans for a trial.
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