Senators Cardin and McCain Call for a Swift Passage of Global Magnitsky After Clearing the House Foreign Affairs Committee

May 19, 2016

PRESS RELEASE

For Imme­di­ate distribution

 

Sen­a­tors Cardin and McCain Call for a Swift Pas­sage of Glob­al Mag­nit­sky After Clear­ing the House For­eign Affairs Committee

 

19 May 2016 – Fol­low­ing yesterday’s approval of the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky Human Rights bill by the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, Sen­a­tors Cardin and McCain called on the House speak­er to swift­ly bring it to a vote.

 

“For too long in too many coun­tries, per­pe­tra­tors of human rights vio­la­tions and grand cor­rup­tion have not been held to account for their crimes and yet con­tin­ue to enjoy trav­el and finan­cial priv­i­leges in the Unit­ed States. With today’s House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee pas­sage of the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky Human Rights and Account­abil­i­ty Act, we are one step clos­er to pre­vent­ing such impuni­ty, — said Sen­a­tors Ben Cardin and John McCain in a joint state­ment. — We …call on Speak­er Ryan to ensure a full House vote on Glob­al Mag­nit­sky with­out delay.”

 

Cardin and McCain, the two orig­i­nal co-spon­sors of the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky bill, spoke about the impor­tance of Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s legacy.

 

“The bill is named for Sergei Mag­nit­sky, who has the unfor­tu­nate dis­tinc­tion of serv­ing as a prime exam­ple of the cor­rupt, hor­rif­ic crimes that befall count­less inno­cent peo­ple world­wide. Mr. Mag­nit­sky lost his life for sim­ply doing his job and try­ing to do the right thing when he dis­cov­ered wide­spread fraud and abuse of pow­er in Rus­sia. Just like Mag­nit­sky, human rights defend­ers are vic­tim­ized and stig­ma­tized around the globe,” said sen­a­tors Cardin and McCain.

 

The House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee reject­ed an amend­ment pro­posed by 68-year old Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabach­er seek­ing to remove the name of Mag­nit­sky from the Glob­al Human Rights bill. To jus­ti­fy his amend­ment, Con­gress­man Rohrabach­er claimed he could not fig­ure out who stole US$230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian bud­get – Sergei Mag­nit­sky or Russ­ian offi­cials. This is despite the fact that the mon­ey has been found in the accounts of Russ­ian offi­cials and their fam­i­lies and most recent­ly, through the Pana­ma Papers, on account of Sergei Roldug­in, a close friend of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.

 

Oth­er Con­gress­men firm­ly reject­ed Con­gress­man Rohrabacher’s amend­ment describ­ing it as an unac­cept­able attempt to “rewrite history.”

 

Con­gress­man Con­nol­ly said that it was impor­tant to call out behav­iour of Pres­i­dent Putin which did not adhere to inter­na­tion­al norms, “whether in Crimea or in a prison cell.”

 

Russ­ian vet­er­an human rights defend­er Lud­mi­la Alex­ee­va, chair of the Moscow Helsin­ki Group, sent a mes­sage to mem­bers of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee ahead of the mark up, stating:

 

“Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabach­er has been fooled by the Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion, and has argued that the name of Sergei Mag­nit­sky be dropped from the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky Human Rights Bill. To do this would be a gross betray­al of the human rights move­ment, and of the lega­cy of Sergei Mag­nit­sky who had sto­ical­ly sac­ri­ficed his life in con­fronting cor­rup­tion and offi­cial abuse in Rus­sia. … To remove his name from the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky Human Rights bill would be a sell­out of vic­tims of oppres­sion and abuse every­where around the world, whom Serge Mag­nit­sky has giv­en hope, and of the prin­ci­ples of integri­ty he had paid with his life.”

 

Dur­ing the mark-up, con­gress­man Engel said the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky bill would show to all that human rights abuse and cor­rup­tion can­not go on with impuni­ty:

 

“This leg­is­la­tion would send a pow­er­ful mes­sage that human-rights abusers and cor­rup­tion aren’t just inter­nal mat­ters.  They are the con­cern of all coun­tries, and they should not be per­mit­ted to go on with impunity.”

 

On the eve of the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky bill’s mark-up, Russ­ian author­i­ties announced a new crim­i­nal case against Alex­ei Naval­ny, the Russ­ian anti-cor­rup­tion activist and Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions sup­port­er. The new case was opened in response to a com­plaint from ex police offi­cer Pavel Kar­pov, who has been sanc­tioned by the US and the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment for his role in Mag­nit­sky case.

 

Last month, the Russ­ian author­i­ties also announced anoth­er crim­i­nal probe opened on anoth­er spu­ri­ous appli­ca­tion of Pavel Kar­pov against Alex­ei Naval­ny and William Brow­der for mur­der of Sergei Mag­nit­sky in Russ­ian police cus­tody, as part of a CIA plan.

 

“The rea­son for the most recent attack on civ­il soci­ety lead­ers and out­burst of the Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion on the Mag­nit­sky case is the fear of cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials to not be able to enjoy the fruits of their cor­rup­tion in the West as a result of Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions. To fight the Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions, they use fab­ri­cat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es, and dis­in­for­ma­tion both inside the coun­try and in the West. Russ­ian civ­il soci­ety lead­ers and inde­pen­dent media have been almost com­plete­ly shut down, while the Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion is fed a diet of myths and dis­in­for­ma­tion,” said William Brow­der, a leader of the glob­al jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky move­ment and author of “Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s No 1 Ene­my.”

 

Sergei Mag­nit­sky, who exposed the theft of US$230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian bud­get and gave tes­ti­mo­ny impli­cat­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials, was arrest­ed and killed in Moscow deten­tion cen­ter in Novem­ber 2009. Those respon­si­ble for his death and those he exposed for the US$230 mil­lion theft have not been brought to justice.

 

Glob­al Mag­nit­sky Human Rights Account­abil­i­ty Act passed the U.S. Sen­ate vote in Decem­ber 2015.

 

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e‑mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

http://www.billbrowder.com/

https://twitter.com/Billbrowder?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

 

Comments

• Link