British MP Demands that Magnitsky Killers Be Banned From Entering the UK and Their Names Submitted to Interpol and Europol

January 12, 2012

On Wednes­day the 11^th Jan­u­ary, the Rt Hon Denis Mac­Shane MP, for­mer Min­is­ter for Europe, ini­ti­ated a Par­lia­men­tary Adjourn­ment Debate in the British Par­lia­ment enti­tled, ‘Human Rights and case of Sergei Mag­nit­sky’. Mr Mac­Shane demanded that the British Gov­ern­ment impose visa sanc­tions against the Russ­ian offi­cials who were respon­si­ble for the false arrest, tor­ture and death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky and the $230 mil­lion tax fraud that Mag­nit­sky uncovered.

Mr Mac­Shane said: “We could do more for stop­ping human rights atroc­i­ties by selec­tively ban­ning a few cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials from com­ing into our coun­try, than all the mil­lions of pounds wasted by the For­eign Office on use­less diplo­matic efforts which are sim­ply ignored and scoffed at by the Russians.”

In a damn­ing con­dem­na­tion of the impunity in Rus­sia, Mr Mac­Shane laid out in detail the facts of the Mag­nit­sky case in front of the British Par­lia­ment and called on the British Gov­ern­ment to imple­ment visa sanc­tions on a num­ber of offi­cials named in his tes­ti­mony. He pointed to actions that have been taken in the US Con­gress and demanded that the same be done in the UK.

Mr Mac­Shane con­tin­ued: “Mod­ern Russ­ian appa­ratchiks like to visit, buy flats, or edu­cate their chil­dren in Eng­land. By nam­ing, sham­ing and announc­ing they will lose those priv­i­leges if they break the law and allow a lawyer rep­re­sent­ing a British firm to die in agony for hav­ing defended his client’s inter­ests, diplo­matic pres­sured will be focused, sharp and will send a clear state-to-state sig­nal that Rus­sia can­not live above the law”.

The Russ­ian offi­cials included in MacShane’s tes­ti­mony were: Lt Col Artem Kuznetsov, who was respon­si­ble for falsely arrest­ing Sergei Mag­nit­sky and seiz­ing doc­u­ments in order to mis­ap­pro­pri­ate British assets and steal $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment. Accord­ing to the tes­ti­mony, Kuznetsov trav­elled to the UK twice in 2006. Mac­Shane then named Major Pavel Kar­pov who opened up the fab­ri­cated crim­i­nal case against Mag­nit­sky which was then used to arrest him. Kar­pov trav­elled to the UK 4 times between 2006 and 2007. Mac­Shane also named Dmitri Klyuev, owner of Uni­ver­sal Sav­ings Bank, the bank which sys­tem­at­i­cally laun­dered the stolen funds. Klyuev trav­elled to the UK 5 times in 2008.

Mr Mac­Shane also intro­duced the fol­low­ing Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment offi­cials to the Par­lia­men­tary record, as indi­vid­u­als who should be denied entry to the UK:

From the Moscow Courts: Judge Yelena Stashina, Judge Alek­sey Krivoruchko and Olga Egorova
From the Russ­ian Inte­rior Min­istry: Oleg Silchenko, Oleg Urzhumt­sev, Alexei Anichin, Oleg Logunov, Boris Kibis and Gen­eral Major Tatiana Gerasi­mova
From the FSB: Vik­tor Voronin
From the Russ­ian Tax Ser­vice: Olga Stepanova and Yelena Khim­ina
From the Fed­eral Pen­i­ten­tiary Ser­vice: Dmitri Kom­nov, Fikhet Tagiev and Yuri Kalinin
From the Russ­ian Gen­eral Prosecutor’s Office: Andrey Pechegin

In addi­tion to rec­om­mend­ing a visa ban to the UK, Mr Mac­Shane requested that the British Gov­ern­ment sub­mit this list of names to the Inter­pol and Europol databases.

The British Government’s Min­is­ter for For­eign Affairs, Henry Belling­ham MP, acknowl­edged the list of names sub­mit­ted by Mr Mac­Shane and assured him that the For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Office would study the details of each of the indi­vid­u­als named and pro­vide a com­plete response to Parliament.

In addi­tion to Mr MacShane’s intro­duc­tory speech, a num­ber of MPs from all polit­i­cal par­ties came out in sup­port of the visa ban ini­tia­tive as well as other pos­si­ble actions which the British Gov­ern­ment could take to pun­ish those involved in the Mag­nit­sky case. The other MPs included: Julian Lewis MP, Robert Buck­land MP (Chair­man of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party Human Rights Com­mis­sion), and Dominic Raab MP from the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party; Jo Swin­son MP, and the Rt Hon Mal­colm Bruce MP from the Lib­eral Demo­c­rat Party; Chris Bryant MP (Shadow Min­is­ter for Immi­gra­tion), and Fabian Hamil­ton MP from the Labour Party.

Addi­tion­ally, Dominic Raab MP pro­posed that the British Par­lia­ment should con­sider intro­duc­ing sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion to the US Con­gress bill enti­tled: “The Sergei Mag­nit­sky Rule of Law Account­abil­ity Act of 2011”, which would not only pun­ish those Russ­ian offi­cials involved in the Mag­nit­sky case, but would ban entry and freeze the assets of all gross vio­la­tors of human rights.

The For­eign Min­is­ter, Henry Belling­ham MP, agreed that the For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Office would con­sider all the sug­ges­tions made by the MPs dur­ing the debate.

To see the full speech click here: http://russian-untouchables.com/eng/human-rights-and-the-case-of-sergei-magnitsky/

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