White House Rejects Crude Attempt to Repeal Magnitsky Sanctions

May 31, 2016

PRESS RELEASE

For Imme­di­ate distribution

White House Rejects Crude Attempt to Repeal Mag­nit­sky Sanctions

31 May 2016 – The White House has reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to the US Mag­nit­sky Act in a strong­ly-word­ed response to a peti­tion post­ed on the White House web­site in April 2016 by an anony­mous “R.T.” call­ing for the repeal of the US Mag­nit­sky Act.

“More than six years after his [Magnitsky’s] death, we remain dis­turbed by the impuni­ty for this and oth­er vio­lent crimes against activists, jour­nal­ists, and the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion. We are also con­cerned by the grow­ing atmos­phere of intim­i­da­tion toward those who work to uncov­er cor­rup­tion or human rights vio­la­tions in the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion,” said the White House in its state­ment in response to the petition.

The White House reit­er­at­ed its posi­tion on the Mag­nit­sky Act expressed ear­li­er by the U.S. State Department:

“The Admin­is­tra­tion intends to car­ry out and ful­ly imple­ment the Mag­nit­sky Act. It reflects our sup­port for human rights and that those respon­si­ble for human rights abus­es should be held to account…That’s what the act says; that’s what we intend to do.”

The White House said that indi­vid­u­als added to the U.S. Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions list in Feb­ru­ary 2016 “play sig­nif­i­cant roles in the repres­sive machin­ery of Russia’s law enforce­ment sys­tems,” and their inclu­sion was effect­ed “after exten­sive research, includ­ing con­sul­ta­tions with Russ­ian and/or inter­na­tion­al civ­il society.”

“Efforts to imple­ment the Mag­nit­sky Act have so far result­ed in a sig­nif­i­cant list of indi­vid­u­als respon­si­ble for Magnitsky’s death and sub­se­quent cov­er-up, as well as oth­ers respon­si­ble for gross human rights vio­la­tions. The list pro­motes account­abil­i­ty for their actions,” said the White House in its online response to the petition.

The anti-Mag­nit­sky peti­tion was a lat­est in a series of pro­pa­gan­da and intim­i­da­tion attempts by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment and its prox­ies since the begin­ning of the year to over­turn the Mag­nit­sky Act in the US and pre­vent its pas­sage in Cana­da and Europe.

These ini­tia­tives were launched by Russ­ian For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Sergei Lavrov at a Jan­u­ary 2016 press con­fer­ence where he allud­ed to new devel­op­ments in the Mag­nit­sky case. Since then, the Rus­sians set up an anti-Mag­nit­sky Act NGO in Delaware called the Human Rights Account­abil­i­ty Glob­al Ini­tia­tive Foun­da­tion. This new NGO is being rep­re­sent­ed by Natalia Vesel­nit­skaya, the Russ­ian lawyer for alleged mon­ey laun­der­er Denis Kat­syv, whose com­pa­nies are sus­pect­ed by the US Jus­tice Depart­ment and the Swiss Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor of receiv­ing pro­ceeds from the US$230 mil­lion crime Sergei Mag­nit­sky had uncovered.

Anoth­er anti-Mag­nit­sky ini­tia­tive includ­ed two anti-Mag­nit­sky pro­pa­gan­da films. The first one was aired in April 2016 in Russ­ian lan­guage on the main pro-Krem­lin Russ­ian TV sta­tion. It claimed the dis­cov­ery of a CIA plot to mur­der Sergei Mag­nit­sky in Moscow deten­tion in order to blame his death on the Russ­ian author­i­ties. To authen­ti­cate the pur­port­ed CIA plot, the Rus­sians forged CIA doc­u­ments and retained Andrew Ful­ton, a for­mer UK diplo­mat, who now chairs GPW, a pri­vate spy firm in Lon­don, to sign a report “ver­i­fy­ing” the Russ­ian-pro­duced doc­u­ments as gen­uine CIA documents.

The sec­ond anti-Mag­nit­sky pro­pa­gan­da film was pro­duced for a West­ern audi­ence by film­mak­er Andrei Nekrasov, who claims Sergei Mag­nit­sky was not beat­en in cus­tody and was not a whistle­blow­er despite pub­licly avail­able evi­dence to the con­trary. Nerkasov’s film bases its asser­tions on state­ments from ex-Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers Kar­pov and Lap­shov, both sanc­tioned by the US Gov­ern­ment for their role in the Mag­nit­sky case.

U.S. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma signed the Sergei Mag­nit­sky Rule of Law Account­abil­i­ty Act of 2012 into law on Decem­ber 14, 2012. In Feb­ru­ary 2016, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry sub­mit­ted to Con­gress the third annu­al report out­lin­ing the U.S. Government’s actions to imple­ment the Mag­nit­sky Act, and a new list of per­sons added to the Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions list.

“Despite wide­ly-pub­li­cized, com­pelling evi­dence of crim­i­nal con­duct result­ing in Sergei Magnitsky’s deten­tion, abuse, and death, Russ­ian author­i­ties have failed to bring to jus­tice those respon­si­ble. This law [Mag­nit­sky Act] holds Rus­sians account­able for their roles in the Mag­nit­sky case or their respon­si­bil­i­ty for cer­tain gross vio­la­tions of human rights,” said the White House in its statement.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please contact:

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e‑mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

www.billbrowder.com

https://twitter.com/Billbrowder

White House online response to the petition

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