Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski Supports Visa Ban on Implicated Russian Officials in the Death of Sergei Magnitsky

September 14, 2010

In a move which will show increas­ing lev­els of inter­na­tion­al sup­port for the cam­paign to get jus­tice for mur­dered Russ­ian lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky, Poland’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs, Radoslaw Siko­rs­ki said that Poland would be will­ing to sup­port a visa ban on the 60 Russ­ian offi­cials impli­cat­ed in Magnitsky’s death.

Accord­ing to a let­ter sent by Siko­rs­ki to Ryszard Kalisz MP, Chair­man of the Jus­tice and Human Rights Com­mit­tee of the Pol­ish Par­lia­ment, For­eign Min­is­ter Siko­rs­ki said that should inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions estab­lish a visa sanc­tions list, then Poland would con­sid­er intro­duc­ing them as well. 

In the let­ter, Siko­rs­ki wrote: “In the event of inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions estab­lish­ing a list of per­sons, who were involved in the death of the advo­cate [Sergei Mag­nit­sky], a con­sid­er­a­tion will be made to issue appro­pri­ate visa sanc­tions against them.”

If visa bans are adopt­ed in Poland, it will effec­tive­ly ban any­one on the list from trav­el­ling in Europe accord­ing to the 1985 Schen­gen Agree­ment. Cur­rent­ly 25 Euro­pean nations are mem­bers of the Schen­gen accord. 

William Brow­der, CEO of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal said, “The noose is tight­en­ing on the peo­ple who killed Sergei Mag­nit­sky. They may be able to avoid jus­tice in Rus­sia, but they won’t be able to trav­el and enjoy their ill-got­ten gains in coun­tries that val­ue human rights and the rule of law.”

Sergei Mag­nit­sky, the anti-cor­rup­tion lawyer work­ing for Her­mitage Cap­i­tal in Moscow, then the largest for­eign port­fo­lio investor in Rus­sia, was arrest­ed and kept in cus­tody for near­ly 12 months after he tes­ti­fied about Russ­ian police involve­ment in the embez­zle­ment of US$230 mil­lion of state tax­es. Mag­nit­sky was sub­ject­ed to hor­ri­fy­ing pres­sure in deten­tion to force him to change his tes­ti­mo­ny, and despite a dras­tic dete­ri­o­ra­tion in his health, he was denied any med­ical atten­tion and died as a result of his treat­ment, aged 37.

Pol­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Siko­rs­ki stat­ed his con­cern and appre­hen­sion in rela­tion to the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky in cus­tody. He said, “Unlaw­ful acts and abuse of human rights can­not go with­out a reac­tion from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.” He also com­ment­ed that the: “Effec­tive mod­ern­iza­tion of Rus­sia can­not be reached…without strength­en­ing the fun­da­men­tals of a law­ful coun­try, demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues and respect for human rights.”

In his notes to court, pre­pared five days before his death, Sergei Mag­nit­sky said: “I have been detained in prison for a year as a hostage in the inter­ests of the per­sons, whose inten­tion it is to ensure that the crim­i­nals actu­al­ly guilty in the theft of 5.4 bil­lion rubles [$230 mil­lion] from the state bud­get will nev­er be found… Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko does not want to iden­ti­fy the …per­sons, who made this fraud pos­si­ble. He instead wants the lawyers of the Her­mitage Fund, who pur­sued and con­tin­ue to pur­sue attempts for this case to be inves­ti­gat­ed, be forced to emi­grate from their coun­try in which crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against them, or like me be detained in prison. My impris­on­ment has noth­ing in com­mon with the legal pur­pos­es of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings…, but this is a pun­ish­ment for my mere­ly defend­ing the inter­ests of my client, and ulti­mate­ly the inter­ests of the state.” 

Moves to put visa bans in place against those Rus­sians involved in Magnitsky’s death have already begun in the USA. Sen­a­tor Ben­jamin Cardin request­ed US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton to issue a visa ban on all those offi­cials involved in the Mag­nit­sky case from enter­ing the USA. Sec­re­tary Clin­ton pub­licly demand­ed from the Russ­ian author­i­ties that “jus­tice be delivered”.

The devel­op­ments in Poland relat­ing to “Cardin’s list” come hot on the heels of the recent black list­ing of the same 60 Russ­ian offi­cials from inter­na­tion­al bank­ing fol­low­ing their expo­sure by World-Check. World-Check is the data­base used by 49 of the top 50 banks to iden­ti­fy high-risk indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es wor­thy of ‘enhanced scruti­ny’. It has list­ed all the mem­bers of the Cardin list as ‘Polit­i­cal­ly Exposed Per­sons’, which will pre­vent them from open­ing bank accounts with most major bank­ing organ­i­sa­tions around the world.

For­eign Min­is­ter Siko­rs­ki also pledged to bring up the human rights vio­la­tions in the Mag­nit­sky case through talks on the EU-Rus­sia part­ner­ship and the EU-Rus­sia Jus­tice and Home Affairs Com­mit­tee framework.

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