Posts Tagged ‘ryabkov’
Moscow Says U.S. Visa Deal, Magnitsky List Separate Issues
Moscow’s ratifying an agreement to ease visa regulations with the United States has nothing to do with the so-called Magnitsky list, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday.
Russia has constantly voiced its concerns over a U.S. bill aimed at freezing assets and barring entry to Russian officials implicated in the death of anti-corruption campaigner and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky. Moscow also threatened with retaliatory measures in case the bill is approved.
“Russia’s possible reaction to the adoption of the Magnitsky bill must be formed in other dimensions,” Ryabkov said adding that the bilateral visa agreement was ratified on Friday by the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma.
Earlier in the year, Kommersant business daily reported that the Russian parliament is delaying the process of the ratification intentionally to use the visa issue as leverage in dealing with other problems in bilateral relations.
Ryabkov said that the agreement meets Russian interests and Moscow views it “as the first step to the long-term goal, which is the transition to visa-free travel between the two countries.”
Moscow and Washington signed the agreement to ease visa requirements between the two countries in November 2011. Under the new rules, businessmen and tourists will get 3-year multi-entry visas, while government officials of both states will be able to receive one-year multi-entry visas.
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Magnitsky showdown nears
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The only way the bill can be withdrawn is if Russia starts a murder investigation into the death of Magnitsky and the crime he exposed, U.S. lawmakers say.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.
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