Putin Declares Fighting Magnitsky Sanctions One of His Top Foreign Policy Goals

May 16, 2012

In his first foreign policy move, President Putin signed an executive order on foreign affairs on May 7, 2012, where he officially declared that fighting Magnitsky sanctions is now one of Russia’s top foreign policy goals. In the executive order President Putin said:
“Hereby I instruct to carry out active work to prevent the introduction of unilateral extraterritorial sanctions by the USA against Russian legal entities and individuals.” http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/15256)

This is the first time that the Russian head of state has explictly stated that fighting the Magnitsky sanctions of visa bans and asset freezes on corrupt Russian officials is a national policy.

“Putin’s executive order shows clearly that the entire Russian government is now working in the interests of corrupt officials who have committed grave crimes. President Putin is ready to use the full resources of the state to fight sanctions but is not ready to do anything at all to prosecute his own corrupt officials who stole $230 million and who then tortured the whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky who discovered the theft,” said a Hermitage Capital representative.

Putin’s executive order comes ahead of the next meeting of the Bureau of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) scheduled on 24-25 May 2012 in Tirana, where the motion for an independent international investigation into the Sergei Magnitsky case will be discussed.

In April 2012, delegates to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe launched a draft motion entitled “Refusing Impunity for the Killers of Sergei Magnitsky”. The motion calls for a ‘dedicated report’ to investigate the death of Sergei Magnitsky and was supported by 69 members of parliament from 29 countries. It is now scheduled for review by the PACE Bureau at its next meeting.

In addition to the PACE investigation, the European Parliament is also becoming increasingly vocal on the Magnitsky case. The day after Putin’s executive order was published, Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Liberals and Democrats faction of the European Parliament, and former prime minister of Belgium, called upon Europe and the United States to end the policy of “polite appeasement” of the current Russian political regime and urged them to simultaneously enact legislative sanctions on Russian officials in Magnitsky case, stating this will have a “sobering” effect, and will promote democracy and change.

In an article called “Spring Will Come to Russia” published on May 8, 2012 by the New York Times, Mr Verhofstadt said:
“So far our policy of polite appeasement has not worked. Russia needs access and respectability in the outside world more than the outside world needs Russian gas or raw materials… The adoption of similar laws on both sides of the Atlantic to block visas and freeze the assets of those Russian officials, and their immediate families, involved or complicit in the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who died in jail after alleging widespread tax fraud by officials, would have a sobering effect.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/opinion/spring-will-come-to-russia.html?_r=3

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