Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

One Hour and Eighteen Minutes

Huffington Post

With the wave of oligarchs that continue to flock to London to battle out their grievances, sadly embezzlement scandals and corruption are associations we regularly make with Russia nowadays.

As Russia’s recent accession to the WTO has brought corruption in the country under renewed scrutiny, a play showing at London’s New Diorama Theatre has also shed new light on the lesser-known aspects of the Russian judicial system.

One Hour and Eighteen Minutes, written by Elena Gremina and translated by Noah Birksted-Breen looks at the run-up to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison cell in 2009, having been arrested after he stumbled across a cover-up by state officials to embezzle an estimated $230m (£146m) from the Russian treasury.

The timing of the play couldn’t be more poignant since on Friday 16 November the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, which will impose visa sanctions and asset freezes on 60 Russian officials implicated in Magnitksy’s death.

At the same time the House of Representatives also voted in favour of a law to grant Russia Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR), which will repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, a hangover from Cold War times when the US decided to prevent a number of countries that restricted the emigration of their citizens from enjoying PNTR.

The US House Ways and Means Committee approved both laws in July, but the House of Representatives’ vote was postponed in August for a range of unclear and arguably inexplicable reasons.