Posts Tagged ‘Cardin’

20
January 2014

SENATORS SEEK ADDITIONS TO MAGNITSKY LIST OF RUSSIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSERS

US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

U.S. Senators Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Bob Corker, R-Tenn., Ben Cardin, D-Md., and John McCain, R-Ariz., all members of the Foreign Relations Committee, today requested the Obama administration add individuals to a U.S. government list of Russian human rights abusers who are subject to U.S. sanctions and travel restrictions. Enacted in 2012, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act, requires the U.S. government to maintain a list of individuals involved in human rights violations committed in Russia. Despite reports indicating the administration would make additions to the list at the end of 2013, the annual report on enforcement of the act that was sent to Congress in December contained no new names.

“On December 20, 2013, we received the Department of State’s first annual report. Disappointingly and contrary to repeated assurances and expectations, this report indicates that no persons have been added to the Magnitsky list since April 2013 and does not provide adequate details on the administration’s efforts to encourage other governments to impose similar targeted sanctions,” said the senators in their request of Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. “We look forward to your response to our request and hope you will also clarify when we can expect additional names to be added to the Magnitsky list as well as specific administration efforts to encourage other governments to adopt legislation similar to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012.” займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно быстрые займы на карту https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php займы без отказа

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16
January 2014

Cardin, McCain Introduce Global Human Rights Accountability Act

Ben Cardin Senator for Maryland

WASHINGTON- U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have introduced the Global Human Rights Accountability Act, legislation that would ensure human rights abusers from anywhere in the world are denied entry into the United States and barred from using our financial institutions. The bill, S. 1933, would expand the Russia-specific sanctions in the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act (Public Law 112-208) to apply globally, as outlined in the 2012 Senate Foreign Relations Committee- and Senate Finance Committee-passed versions of the bill.

“The United States must maintain its global leadership in the fight against corruption and human rights abuses wherever they occur,” said Senator Cardin. “This bipartisan bill gives us the tools to deter future abuses throughout the world, while also protecting our strategic financial infrastructure from those who would use it to launder or shelter ill-gotten gains. Gross violators of human rights from Zimbabwe to Ukraine, and Honduras to Papua New Guinea, are put on notice that they cannot escape the consequences of their actions even when their home country fails to act.”

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10
December 2013

Browder Expects Broader Magnitsky List Sanctions for Russian Officials in U.S., Europe

Moscow Times

The United States may publish the extended version of the “Magnitsky list” as early as next month, while Europe is expected to pass a similar measure, Hermitage Capital investment fund president and bill supporter William Browder said.

The Magnitsky Act, enacted by the U.S. Congress in December 2012 and named after late Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, imposed personal sanctions on Russian officials responsible for human rights violations and obstructing the rule of law.

“The law is only one year old now,” an assistant to U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, who helped draft the bill, said in an interview for the Voice of America. “We are at the very beginning of its implementation process and anticipate its expansion both here in the U.S. and Europe.”

Executive Director of U.S.-based human rights NGO Freedom House David Kramer said his organization is currently working with lawmakers in several countries to “try to advance the adoption of a similar law as early as next year.”

Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers say they are unaware of U.S. plans to expand the “Magnitsky list” or European intentions to pass similar legislation, Interfax reported.

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15
July 2013

US blasts Russia over Magnitsky conviction

The Hill

The Obama administration and lawmakers lashed out at Russia on Thursday after the country sentenced a dead whistle-blower on tax evasion charges in the country’s first posthumous trial.

President Obama signed human rights legislation named after Sergei Magnitsky last year. The legislation places travel and financial restrictions on Russians whom the State Department identifies as human rights violators.

“We are disappointed by the unprecedented posthumous criminal conviction against Sergei Magnitsky,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “The trial was a discredit to the efforts of those who continue to seek justice in his case. Despite widely publicized credible evidence of criminal conduct resulting in Magnitsky’s death, the authorities have failed to prosecute those responsible.

“We continue to call for full accountability for all those responsible for Magnitsky’s wrongful death and will continue to support the efforts of those in Russia who seek to hold those individuals accountable.”

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29
April 2013

Magnitsky Act: Holding Russia accountable in lawyer’s death

Telegram & Gazette

On Nov. 16, 2009, Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died of heart failure in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina Prison, after eight guards are alleged to have beaten him with rubber batons for more than an hour. An ambulance crew that had been called to provide medical attention was detained outside his cell until it was too late.

According to a report issued by then-Russian President Dimitry Medvedev’s Human Rights Council, the death of Mr. Magnitsky, 37, followed his unlawful 2008 arrest and subsequent 11-month detainment, during which he was repeatedly denied medical attention and tortured by his captors while awaiting trial.

Despite these findings, no arrests have been made in connection with Mr. Magnitsky’s death, and none appear to be forthcoming. But his death has since become an international affair, with U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester, and U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., at the forefront: The two legislators worked together to enact a law late last year that seeks to hold accountable those in Russia who were involved,

The statute, formally known as the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, this month resulted in publication of a list of Russian officials that the State Department says were responsible. These individuals have been barred from entering the United States, with some of them subject to a freeze on personal assets in this country.

At the same time, the Magnitsky law also has triggered a retaliatory ban on adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens, while creating further complications in an already strained relationship between the United States and Russia.

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22
April 2013

‘Magnitsky List’: Powerful, if not perfect

Politico

The State Department’s “Magnitsky list” – sanctioned last Friday by the Obama administration, officially branding 18 Russian government officials as gross humans rights violators – was rightly criticized as inadequate and weak by the congressional authors of the original law authorizing the creation of the list.

Congressional champions of the Magnitsky Act pointed out that State seems to be purposely misreading the law, minimizing the act’s original power to punish those who have committed egregious human rights violations by applying the criteria only to those criminals who might be dumb enough to maintain financial assets in the United States.

The Magnitsky law was born out of Senator Ben Cardin’s (D-Md.) frustration with Secretary Hillary Clinton’s dismissal of his recommendation that State blacklist 60 Russian government officials connected to the death of Russian whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky. Clinton’s State Department was truculently opposed not just to the Magnitsky act, but to naming and shaming even the most obvious of those who now reside on the Magnitsky list.

Although the critics are right to condemn the list as inadequate, the unveiling of the list underscores a more important point. Under John Kerry’s leadership, the State Department is sending a strong message that the era of appeasing kleptocratic dictators is over.

This particular law is limited to Russia, but efforts are afoot to expand its reach. Now every letter Congress writes to State – previously batted back with polite but meaningless form letters – has the potential to grow into a new round of Magnitsky-style laws sanctioning corrupt officials in governments around the world. It will have the most impact when human rights activists leverage the “Magnitsky magnifying effect” to name, shame and seize the assets of autocrats previously unknown to the public. Public opinion is a powerful tool: it can and should be leveraged to fight corruption.

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18
April 2013

Cardin to meet with family of Russian lawyer

Baltimore Sun

Sen. Ben Cardin is scheduled to meet Thursday with the family of a Russian lawyer whose death sparked an international outcry over human rights in that country, renewing focus on a controversy that has complicated U.S.-Russian relations at a sensitive time.

The meeting with the widow, mother and son of Sergei Magnitsky — who died in a Russian jail in 2009 after exposing corruption in the Russian government — comes just days after the State Department released a list of Russian officials barred from obtaining U.S. visas over alleged human rights abuses.

The list was required by a law championed by Cardin, a Maryland Democrat. He named the legislation for Magnitsky.

The Obama administration is trying to move beyond the controversy that erupted when Congress passed the law last year. While relations with Moscow remain strained — aggravated by differences over the civil war in Syria — the White House is seeking cooperation on Iran and the escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Cardin, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he is not concerned that his meeting with the Magnitsky family or the naming of Russian officials prohibited from traveling in the United States might disrupt those broader international efforts.

“We can deal with more than one subject at a time,” he said in an interview.

The meeting, he said, “gives us a chance to underscore the importance of these new standards, of not abating on gross violators of internationally recognized human rights standards.”

Russian officials seem to be making a distinction between the White House and the Congress. The officials responded positively to a meeting with U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon this week and a letter from President Barack Obama to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. The two leaders are expected to meet later this year.

But those officials criticized what they described as a “Russiaphobic” Congress, a reference to the Magnitsky language. Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in December to pass the measure after it was attached to a broader trade bill that was a priority for both countries.

The Putin administration has said the Magnitsky provision represents meddling in Russian affairs.

The measure required the State Department to publicly release a list of Russian human rights abusers, deny them visas and prohibit them from accessing U.S. banks.

The department released a list of 18 officials, most of whom were involved in the Magnitsky case, on Saturday. The Kremlin responded with a list that included several top U.S. officials involved with running the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Last year, Russia passed a law banning U.S. adoptions of Russian children. It is named after a young Russian orphan who died in Virginia in 2008 after being left in a car by his adoptive father but is viewed as a retaliation for the Magnitsky Act.

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16
April 2013

US identifies alleged Russian human-rights abusers targeted for sanctions

Associated Press

The Treasury Department on Friday announced sanctions against 18 Russians over human rights violations, but avoided some prominent officials whose inclusion could have enflamed U.S.-Russian relations.

U.S. lawmakers who backed the sanctions viewed the list as timid while a prominent Russian lawmaker said it could have been worse. State Department officials denied that political considerations had been a factor.

The list was mandated by a law passed last year and named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested in 2008 for tax evasion after accusing Russian police officials of stealing $230 million in tax rebates. He died in prison the next year, allegedly after being beaten and denied medical treatment.

The list included Artem Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov, two Russian Interior Ministry officers who put Magnitsky behind bars after he accused them of stealing $230 million from the state. Two tax officials the lawyer accused of approving the fraudulent tax refunds, and several other Interior Ministry officials accused of persecuting Magnitsky were also on the list. Absent were senior officials from President Vladimir Putin’s entourage whom some human rights advocates had hoped to see sanctioned.

Magnitsky’s former client, London-based investor William Browder, who has campaigned to bring those responsible in his death to justice, has claimed that one of those tax officials, Olga Stepanova, has bought luxury real estate in Moscow, Dubai and Montenegro and wired money through her husband’s bank accounts worth $39 million.

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05
March 2013

Rep. James McGovern condemns Russian trial of dead lawyer

Washington Times

A decision by Russian authorities to go ahead with the trial of a dead lawyer is yet another example of the “endless vendetta” against him, a U.S. congressman said Monday.

A judge in Moscow has ruled that the posthumous trial of Sergei Magnitsky, who claimed to have exposed a web of corruption involving Russian officials, will proceed March 11. He has been accused of tax fraud.

“Unfortunately, the ordeal of Sergei Magnitsky did not end with his death,” said Rep. James P. McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat. “All these malevolent moves make it clear that Russian leaders recognize that they no longer have the support of the people they govern, and so they must resort to scare tactics to try and keep the lid on dissent.”

Mr. McGovern spoke at an event in Washington hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative, Freedom House and the Institute of Modern Russia, which is led by Pavel Khodorkovsky, the son of jailed Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

“The farce of the trial of Sergei Magnitsky shows how far the regime is willing to go to protect itself,” said Guy Verhofstadt, a former prime minister of Belgium.

Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer, died in a Moscow detention center in November of 2009. He claimed that he had uncovered a $230 million tax fraud involving Russian government officials.

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