Posts Tagged ‘yakovlev’
Sergei Magnitsky: Russia can’t sweep his death under the carpet
Well, it’s official. Russia’s investigative committee has gone ahead and announced that the investigation into the death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky has been closed. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer and father of two who died in November 2009 while being held in pre-trial detention. Before he went to jail, he had just happened to accuse some very powerful people of some very serious tax fraud. Having worked for the global investment advisory firm Hermitage Capital Management at the time of his imprisonment, he was now accused of the very same fraud he had apparently uncovered.
His death became an international scandal and led to the introduction of the Magnitsky Act in the US, which banned people implicated in his death from obtaining US visas, among other restrictions. Russia retaliated with the introduction of the Dima Yakovlev law, named after a Russian orphan who had died while in the care of his adoptive parents in the States. The law banned all adoptions of Russian orphans by Americans.
According to the investigative committee’s official findings, Magnitsky died because he was a very sick man: he was not tortured or treated differently, he was just in poor health. Whether Magnitsky received adequate medical treatment in detention is not mentioned. Both Magnitsky’s family and the human rights activists that have been involved in bringing this case to wider media attention have alleged that Magnitsky did not receive treatment because he wouldn’t testify against his employers.
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Herod’s law
STANDING outside the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, appealed to his compatriots with a traditional new year’s greeting, urging them to be more “charitable”, “sensitive” and “caring for those in need”.
Sincerity has never been Mr Putin’s forte, but this time his words risked being seen as a mockery of the virtues he preached. Only three days earlier, on December 28th, he signed a law that bans Russian orphans from being adopted by American families, depriving some of his most vulnerable citizens of their chance for a better life. The fact that Mr Putin signed it on the day marked by many Christian churches as the Massacre of the Innocents was a coincidence, but it added to the dark symbolism of the law, which has promptly been dubbed as “Herod’s law” and “cannibalistic”.
Formally, the ban is part of the Kremlin’s response to America’s Magnitsky Act, passed by Congress in 2012, which blacklists Russian officials involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer, and, more broadly, those accused of rights abuses. Magnitsky, who worked for Hermitage Capital Management, a London-based investment fund, died in pre-trial detention three years ago, after exposing a $230m tax fraud by Russian police and tax officials. His death became a symbol of corruption and impunity.
Instead of investigating the crime exposed by Magnitsky and going after those who drove him to death, the Kremlin accused America of meddling in its domestic affairs and threatened retaliation. In fact its anti-Magnitsky law is aimed not so much at America as it is against its own citizens.
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Bill Browder: The Man Behind Russia’s Adoption Ban
Last month, when Vladimir Putin signed a law banning American citizens from adopting Russian children, it was widely seen as the latest indication that U.S.-Russian relations were spiraling downward. So who caused this turn of events? The obvious political figures certainly played their roles. But perhaps no one was more central to the unfolding drama than a businessman turned unlikely human-rights crusader named Bill Browder.
Browder’s grandfather, Earl Browder, had been general secretary of the American Communist Party, but his grandson spent most of his career in a very different pursuit: making money. Bill graduated from Stanford Business School the same year the Berlin Wall fell. “My grandfather was the biggest communist in America,” Browder recalls thinking at the time. “Now that the Berlin Wall has come down, I am going to be the biggest capitalist in Eastern Europe.”
In 1996 Browder moved to Moscow and founded the Hermitage Fund, investing fortunes from America in newly privatized Russian companies like Gazprom. (Two years later he renounced his American citizenship and became a citizen of Britain.) At its peak, Hermitage was worth $4.5 billion. But Browder earned a reputation in this period as a “shareholder activist,” launching his own investigations into the shady dealings of Gazprom and other Russian companies—and angering the Kremlin in the process. He was expelled from Russia in 2005 and declared a threat to national security.
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Is Russia trying a dead whistle-blower because of a US law?
The US recently enacted legislation targeting those Russian officials involved in the 2009 death of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, spurring an angry reaction from the Kremlin.
At the center of the stormiest US-Russia diplomatic crisis since the cold war stands the enigmatic figure of Sergei Magnitsky, for whom the US Senate has named a punitive new law that imposes harsh visa and economic sanctions against scores of Russian officials who are deemed to have committed serious human rights violations.
The tale of Mr. Magnitsky, a corporate lawyer who blew the whistle on a vast corruption scheme, was arrested by the same officials he had implicated, and was allegedly beaten to death in prison over three years ago, appears to validate all the worst suspicions held in the West about the nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The Magnitsky Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama last month, is a controversial new breed of legislation that aims to compensate for the perceived failures of Russia’s justice system by meting out punishment to about 60 Russian officials deemed to have been involved in the wrongful prosecution and alleged murder of Magnitsky.
The Kremlin’s incandescent response makes it likely that the mutual acrimony will expand in weeks to come. Mr. Putin called the Magnitsky Act a “purely political, unfriendly act” that demanded a stern riposte. Last week he signed the retaliatory Dima Yakovlev Act, whose key provision is a ban on all adoptions of Russian children by US citizens.
But in an apparent effort to overturn the widely-held Western narrative, which sees Magnitsky as the victim of corrupt officials and a lawless state, Russian prosecutors have announced they will put the deceased Magnitsky on trial later this month, seeking to prove that he and his former boss, Bill Browder, head of the London-based Hermitage Capital, were the real criminals.
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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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Putin Says He Will Sign Law Barring U.S. Adoptions
President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday that he would sign into law a ban on adoptions of Russian children by American citizens, retaliating against an American law that punishes Russians accused of violating human rights and dealing a potentially grave setback to bilateral relations.
Mr. Putin announced his decision at a meeting with senior government officials on Friday, including cabinet members and legislative leaders. The adoption ban, included in a broader law aimed at retaliating against the United States, was approved unanimously by the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Parliament on Wednesday.
Mr. Putin also said that he would sign a decree, calling for improvements in Russia’s deeply troubled child welfare system that the Federation Council also adopted Wednesday. “I intend to sign the law,” Mr. Putin said, “as well as a presidential decree changing the procedure of helping orphaned children, children left without parental care, and especially children who are in a disadvantageous situation due to their health problems.”
United States officials have strongly criticized the measure and urged the Russian government not to involve orphaned children in politics.
Since Mr. Putin returned to the presidency in May, Russian officials have used a juggernaut of legislation and executive decisions to curtail United States influence and involvement in Russia, undoing major partnerships that began after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The adoption ban, however, is the first step to take direct aim at the American public and would effectively undo a bilateral agreement on international adoptions that was ratified this year and that took effect on Nov. 1. That agreement called for heightened oversight in response to several high-profile cases of abuse and deaths of adopted Russian children in the United States.
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Russia set to advance ban on US adoptions
Russia’s upper house of parliament was due Wednesday to vote for a bill barring Americans from adopting the country’s children, in retaliation for a new piece of human rights legislation in the US.
The highly contentious bill has inflamed tensions between the two former Cold War rivals at a time when Washington needs Moscow’s help to convince President Bashar al-Assad to quit power in Syria.
The draft legislation has already passed the three required readings in the State Duma lower house and is due to reach President Vladimir Putin’s desk before the end of the year.
The Federation Council upper chamber — comprised exclusively of Putin allies and ruling party members — is expected to overwhelmingly approve the measure after it was backed in a committee meeting on Tuesday.
“This will not lead to any infringement of international rights,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
“Russia is fully implementing the rights it has under international law,” he added in comments that reinforced speculation that Putin would sign the bill into law.
The bill also includes a provision banning Russian political organisations that receive US funding.
The legislation came after US President Barack Obama this month signed into law the Magnitsky Act — a measure paying tribute to a Russian lawyer who died in police custody in 2009 after exposing a $235 million police embezzlement scheme.
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Russia: Magnitsky Retaliation Bill Approved
A controversial law banning Americans from adopting Russian children has won final approval from the parliament in Moscow.
The bill – in retaliation for a US law intended to punish Russian human rights abusers – will now go to President Vladimir Putin for his signature.
Putin has strongly hinted he will sign the bill, which also outlaws some US-funded NGOs and hits back at sanctions by imposing visa bans and asset freezes on Americans accused of violating the rights of Russians.
The Federation Council, Russia’s upper parliament, voted unanimously to approve the bill, which has clouded US-Russian relations and outraged liberals who say lawmakers are playing a political game with the lives of children.
The bill has drawn unusual criticism from some government officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Olga Golodets, a deputy prime minister who said it may violate an international convention on children’s rights.
Putin has described it as an emotional but appropriate response to US legislation he said was poisoning relations.
US President Barack Obama this month signed off on the Magnitsky Act, which imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russians accused of human rights violations, including those linked to the death in custody of a lawyer in 2009.
The ban on American adoptions takes Russia’s response a step further, playing into deep sensitivity among Russians – and the government in particular – over adoptions by foreigners, which skyrocketed after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
The bill is named for Dima Yakovlev – a Russian-born toddler who died of heat stroke when his adoptive American father forgot him in a car.
“It is immoral to send our children abroad to any country,” Federation Council deputy Valery Shtyrov said in a one-sided debate before the 143-0 vote.
Child rights advocates say the law, due to take effect on January 1 if signed by Putin, will deprive children of a way out of Russia’s overcrowded orphanage system.
Opposition activist Boris Nemtsov said: “This is the most vile law passed since Putin came to power. Putin is taking children hostage, like a terrorist”.
Police said they had arrested seven people protesting against the law on Wednesday outside the Federation Council.
Nevertheless, lawmaker Gennady Makin said the Magnitsky Act demanded a tough response. “He who comes to Russia with a sword dies by that sword,” he said.
The dispute adds to tension in US-Russia ties already strained over issues ranging from Syria to the Kremlin’s treatment of opponents and restrictions imposed on civil society groups since Putin, in power since 2000, began a new six-year term in May.
The Russian bill would outlaw US-funded “non-profit organisations that engage in political activity”, which Putin accuses of trying to influence Russian politics.
Russia ejected the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which funds Russian non-governmental groups, in October, and Putin has signed a law forcing many foreign-funded organisations to register as “foreign agents” – a term that evokes the Cold War. займ на карту онлайн unshaven girl https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php https://www.zp-pdl.com займы на карту срочно
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Ban on US families adopting Russian children moves step closer
Bill containing measure is approved by Russian parliament and now goes to president, who can either sign it or turn it down.
The upper chamber of Russia’s parliament has unanimously voted in favour of a measure banning Americans from adopting Russian children. It now goes to the president, Vladimir Putin, to sign or turn down.
All 143 members of the Federation Council present voted to support the bill, which has sparked criticism from both the United States and from Russian activists who say it victimises children by depriving them of the chance to escape often dismal orphanages.
The bill is one part of a larger measure by angry lawmakers retaliating against a recently signed US law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators. Putin has not committed to signing the bill, but has referred to it as a legitimate response to the new US law.
Some top government officials, including the foreign minister, have spoken flatly against it, arguing the measure would be in violation of Russia’s constitution and international obligations.
But Senator Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the council’s foreign affairs committee, referred to the bill as “a natural and a long overdue response” to the US legislation.
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