Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Cyprus and Magnitsky

Wall Street Journal

There’s an irony in the fact that the grudging bailout of Cyprus by other members of the European Union came at the end of the same week in which the late Sergei Magnitsky was due to go on trial in Russia.

Magnitsky was the Russian lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after pursuing Russian officials who seized companies from his client Hermitage Capital and allegedly perpetrated a $230 million tax fraud. It’s a quirk of Russian law that the dead can be put on trial, with Magnitsky charged with the same offenses as the officials he pursued (The initial hearing on the case was delayed until March 22). His treatment led to U.S. sanctions on those officials in the form of the “Magnitsky list.”

What does this have to do with Cyprus? The Mediterranean nation has become what the good-governance group Global Financial Integrity described in a recent report as a “laundry machine for dirty Russian money.” GFI’s report said $128.8 billion flowed into Russia from Cyprus in 2011, more than five times its gross domestic product.