Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Magnitsky showdown nears

The Moscow News

The Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate backed on Tuesday the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which, if passed by Congress and the U.S. president, will impose sanctions on some 60 Russian officials.

The bill will deny entry to the United States and freeze the accounts of those allegedly responsible for the persecution and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was allegedly killed in jail in 2009 after exposing a graft scheme for a tax refund of $230 million set up by a group of Russian law enforcers, tax officers and judges.

Supported unanimously by the Senate’s panel, the bill has fairly good chances of being adopted. “The White House has never indicated an inclination to veto this legislation,” the office of the bill’s sponsor, Senator Ben Cardin, told The Moscow News.

The only way the bill can be withdrawn is if Russia starts a murder investigation into the death of Magnitsky and the crime he exposed, U.S. lawmakers say.

“If Russia was to prosecute those responsible for Sergei Magnitsky’s death, there would no longer be a need to include those individuals on the public list,” Cardin’s office said.

However, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office started a criminal case against Magnitsky himself last August, charging him with embezzlement of the same $230 million in tax refunds.