Posts Tagged ‘yekaterina kravtsova’
EU Links Easing of Visas to Russia’s Rights Record
An official from the European Union spoke out about several concerns over Russia during a visit to Moscow on Friday, warning that plans for a visa-free regime would be put on hold until issues of corruption and human rights are addressed.
The meeting came shortly after the EU decided to cut short a planned meeting with Russian leaders in Brussels later this month, a move which observers have attributed to an ongoing spat over Ukraine.
Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov said Friday’s meeting of the Russia-EU Permanent Partnership Council was more about preserving ties than anything else.
“We are trying not to turn our relations completely sour and maintain a certain level of dialogue,” Konovalov said after meeting with EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia MalmstrЪm, adding that the EU was not willing to take further steps in the dialogue for a visa-free regime with Russia.
Konovalov added that Russia was not going to pressure the EU over the visa deal. “We have a feeling that our colleagues in the EU are not committed and do not feel a need to eliminate the barriers between Russia and the EU,” he said.
Negotiations about the visa-free regime have been ongoing for more than 10 years, and Russia has accused the EU of deliberately delaying the process on several occasions. In December, Russia said it had prepared a visa agreement and that it hoped the EU would sign it at the next Russia-EU summit, which has now been shortened from two days to a few hours on Jan. 28.
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U.S. Magnitsky List Near-Finalized
The U.S. government is expected this week to finalize the list of Russian officials to be punished for suspected human rights abuses under the Magnitsky Act. But the final version of the list, due to be released by Saturday, may become a sticking point between Congress and the State Department.
Congress is apprehensive about the White House’s decision to release only 15 names so as not to fuel tensions with the Kremlin, Kommersant reported, citing a source in Congress who did not specify why the number was 15. Representative James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat who was one of the authors of the law, sent to Obama’s administration on Friday his own list of 280 names.
McGovern said a shortlist such as the one by the White House might produce a conflict between the State Department and Congress, and the latter would insist on gradually updating the list. “If the final version is short, we will have to pass a new, tougher amendment,” he told Kommersant in an interview published Monday.
The law is aimed to punish Russian officials implicated in whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death in jail in 2009, a year after he had accused officials of embezzling $230 million in state funds. Officials placed on the list would be banned from entering the U.S., and their assets there would be frozen.
According to the Magnitsky Act, signed into law in December, the list of officials must be sent to Congress by April 13. U.S. President Barack Obama said in a memorandum Friday that he had delegated functions for creating the list to the U.S. Treasury and State Departments.
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Lawyer for Magnitsky Requests to Be Removed From Case
A lawyer appointed by the state to represent Sergei Magnitsky in a tax evasion case said at a hearing Friday that his participation in the posthumous trial was illegal, and he asked to be removed from the case.
“I have not found a single declaration from relatives asking that the case be reopened,” Nikolai Gerasimov said in comments carried by Interfax.
People are typically tried posthumously in Russia only when a family wants to clear their names, but Magnitsky’s family fiercely opposes the trial against him. Magnitsky’s mother, Natalya, has called it “blasphemy” and refused to allow any lawyer to represent him, saying anyone who would assume such an obligation would be acting against her son’s interests.
Magnitsky’s name has become known around the world since he died in a Moscow jail in 2009 while awaiting trial on tax evasion charges, which his supporters say were retaliation for accusing officials of stealing $230 million in state funds.
A Kremlin human rights council investigation said Magnitsky was severely beaten before he died, but the Investigative Committee closed a criminal case into his death earlier this year, saying there was no evidence of a crime.
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Investigators Close Case Into Magnitsky’s Death
Investigators said Tuesday that they had closed the case into the 2009 death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose name is attached to a U.S. law that has caused tension in U.S.-Russian relations by seeking to punish Russians implicated in human rights violations.
An inquiry into Magnitsky’s treatment and death in a Moscow jail, where he was awaiting trial on tax evasion charges brought after he accused government officials of a fraudulent $230 million tax rebate scheme, revealed no evidence of wrongdoing, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
The committee’s findings contradict a 2011 investigation by the Kremlin human rights council, which said Magnitsky was pressured by prison authorities over his testimony in the tax fraud case and was left to die of pancreatitis in an isolation cell. The council’s investigation also found that Magnitsky had been beaten in prison and that there was insufficient evidence to jail him.
William Browder, head of Magnitsky’s former employer Hermitage Capital, said that the Investigative Committee’s action was not a surprise to him and that it was “a result of basically politically motivated intervention by [President Vladimir] Putin to change the narrative of what really happened to Sergei,” Radio Free Europe reported.
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Magnitsky Hearing Put Off for 2 Weeks
The opening of a tax evasion trial against deceased whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and business associate Bill Browder, who founded what was once one of Russia’s largest foreign investors, has been postponed to March 4 so the state-appointed defense team can familiarize itself with some 60 tomes of case documents.
Magnitsky, whose name titled a recently passed U.S. law imposing international sanctions on alleged human rights abusers, died in a Moscow pretrial detention facility in 2009, about a year after he accused high-ranking Russian officials of a multimillion-dollar embezzlement. Soon after he made that accusation, Magnitsky was jailed on tax evasion charges.
In April 2012, the Prosecutor General’s Office moved to revive the case because, it said, Magnitsky’s mother had on many occasions said she wanted official acknowledgement that her son was innocent. In 2011, Russia’s Constitutional Court had ruled that dead people could be tried in a court of law if close relatives sought vindication for the accused.
But Magnitsky’s mother, Natalya, has publicly condemned her son’s posthumous trial as “unlawful” and refused to allow any lawyer to represent him.
Ahead of Monday’s hearing, in which Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court honored the defense’s request to delay the trial, Magnitskaya’s lawyer read a statement saying she did not authorize anyone to represent her son. “Any person who assumes such an obligation acts against my son’s interests,” the statement said.
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