US lawmakers asking that 60 top Russian officials be denied visas to the US and their assets frozen
Modern-day Russian Gulag
by Jennifer Griffin | September 30, 2010
Nataliya Magnitskaya, mother of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in jail two weeks ago, holds a portrait of him and letters he sent to her from jail, as she speaks in central Moscow, Russia, Nov. 30, 2009 (AP)
Two U.S. Democrat lawmakers have presented legislation to Congress asking that 60 top Russian officials be denied visas to the U.S. and have their assets frozen following the death of a prominent Moscow based lawyer, who had been hired to investigate corruption at the highest levels in the Russian government.
Hermitage Capital Investment, once Russia's largest investment fund with assets topping 4.5 billion dollars Russian, hired the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, 37, and six others to investigate Russian corruption and the loss of 230 million dollars.
"The cops were in on the scam," says William Browder, the founder of Hermitage Investment Fund. "They turned on every resource they had to come after the seven lawyers that we had hired and cooked up trumped up criminal cases against all seven of them."
Shortly after testifying against the Russian police and members of the country's tax authority and Interior Ministry, Magnitsky was arrested and placed in one of Russia's toughest prisons. The other six lawyers fled Russia for Europe.
"Sergei not only didn't go, but he was such a patriot that he went and testified against the police officers who stole the money," Browder, who has lobbied Congress to sanction members of Russia's interior ministry who allowed Magnitsky to be arrested and later die in prison. Magnitsky was arrested in November 2008, shortly after testifying against the police. The same police officers he testified against came to his house at eight o'clock in the morning as his wife was preparing their children for school and took him to prison.
The new legislation targets members of Russia's Interior Ministry. It is sponsored by Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern and Maryland Senator Ben Cardin.
"The authorities arrested the whistleblower, threw him into prison where he died," Senator Cardin told Fox News. "This is a horrible human rights violation and the authorities have done virtually nothing about it."…
No comments:
Post a Comment