Barred.

In the news...Russia's reaction to the US Senate passing of the Magnitsky Bill.

On November 16, 2009, an auditor affiliated with a UK-based investment firm Hermitage Capital Management, died in the infamous Moscow Morskaya Tishina (‘Sea Silence’) prison. He had been held just a few days short of a year (when he would have been freed if the case was not taken to court), in connection with one of the biggest tax fraud cases in Russian history. The previous year Sergei Magnitsky had disclosed that Russian officials with connections to the mafia have re-claimed $230m dollars (5.4b roubles) in tax rebates previously paid by Hermitage’s Russian subsidiaries.  Hermitage’s owner, Bill Browder, was expelled from Russia in 2005 after his own probes into state corruption; Hermitage offices were raided in 2007 and the company accused of tax fraud. Magnitsky was hired to investigate these allegations and uncovered the illegal transfer of Hermitage's subsidiary companies to new owners, and the shocking, even by Russian standards, theft. Refusing to withdraw his testimony, Magnitsky was tortured, denied medical care for his heart condition and pancreatitis and, already critically ill, beaten to death with rubber truncheons. He was 37 years old.

Brutality in Russian prisons is not news. But, in this rare case, Magnitsky’s death became an international cause for justice, mainly thanks to Mr. Browder’s lobbying. Magnitsky’s prison diaries became a symbol of honour and courage in the face of total injustice, and he posthumously received the Transparency International award in 2010. President Dmitry Medvedev ordered an investigation into the murder in 2009, and a number of cases have been opened by the prosecution since. Apart of the ex-vice head of one of the three prisons Magnitsky was held in, whose case has been submitted to court a few weeks ago, no one has been brought to trial, or even close to a courtroom.

In the West, however, repercussions have been more appropriately severe. In 2011, Britain, US and Holland have barred 60 Russian officials from the so-called Magnitsky List from entry. In July 2012, an OSCE committee agreed on a resolution to introduce further sanctions against those officials on the Magnitsky list, barring them from entry into the European Union and freezing their assets. On July 18, 2012 the US Senate Finance Committee replaced the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Bill that denied favourable trade agreements to communist countries that hindered freedom of immigration, with the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Bill. The new version of the Magnitsky Bill, spearheaded by Senators John McCain and Ben Cardin, extends not only to those directly involved in the Magnitsky murder, but to officials who are responsible for human rights and democracy abuses, worldwide. The Jackson-Vanik has been viewed by many as outdated, and prevented PNTR (permanent normal trade relations) that negatively affected the US on the eve of Russia’s entry into the WTO this month. The Obama administration lobbied against the broader version of the Magnitsky Bill, thankfully unsuccessfully.

The new version of the bill has been a prickly issue in Russia. A delegation of parliamentarians visited Washington in early July to lobby against the passing of the legislation. They have provided documents containing testimony that alleges that Sergei Magnitsky was an active member of the criminal organisation that conducted the 2007 fraud, and that his detention was lawful. (To add insult to injury, a Moscow court announced in February that it is ready to resume the case against Magnitsky and Bowder, for the first time in legal history – posthumously.) According to Vitaly Malkin, who headed the delegation, Magnitsky had not received proper medical attention, citing ‘slovenliness’: ‘Magnitsky was 37 years old. When a man his age complains of stomach aches, no one takes it seriously. He drank, was not a sporty man. The doctor did not notice that he had pancreatitis. The committee finding show that there were bruises, but he died of pancreatitis.’ The findings of the Moscow Public Observer Committee that conducted the investigation into the death on Medvedev’s orders and has produced a report that detailed the physical and mental abuse endured by Magnitsky on a daily basis, were dismissed. Fortunately, so were the parliamentarians.

As I have previously written, Alexei Navalny – the blogger behind the internet corruption exposure website RosPil has filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights following a decision by a Moscow court to assign Navalny a fine of 100,000 roubles for his ‘libellous’ exposure of two officials allegedly connected to the Magnitsky case in a video on his website. Navalny had testified before the Senate Committee, and has displayed yet another video that exposes the details of the fraud case last month. According to the 18-minute long reel, Dmitry Kluyev, who has been accused by Magnitsky as the man behind the illegal transfer of Hermitage’s subsidiaries and tax rebates, and his associates have embezzled a further $400 million from the budget between 2009-2010, bringing the overall sum to a staggering $800million, as disclosed in an investigation by the Financial Times and Novaya Gazeta. These men and women have earned a title of ‘untouchables’ in the Russian blogger-sphere, for a good reason.

Now, in a new twist, the Washington bureau chief of RTVi, an independent channel that hosts the video service for Echo Moscow, has been fired. Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is also a member of the Solidarnost Movement, claims that his dismissal is a direct result of his support for the new version of the Magnitsky Bill, which he had actively lobbied in Washington. In an interview he claims that while the 2010 version of the bill only focussed on the officials directly responsible for the death of Magnitsky, the current edition encompasses those responsible for electoral fraud and other human rights abuses, and this has proven a step too far for the Kremlin. After a brief silence, it was disclosed by Boris Nemtsov – a well-known opposition leader, that the call for the dismissal came from Putin’s administration and, for the first time in recent history, encompasses a ban for Kara-Murza to work in any Russian media. The incident came to light when Kara-Murza was denied access to the staff area of the Russian embassy in Washington, as he is no longer an accredited journalist.

Vladimir Gussinski, the former owner of NTV who fled Russia after raids on the independent TV network in 2001, had sold RTVi in March 2012. The new owner is Ruslan Sokolov, previously head of the media conglomerate ‘Zvezda’, which was formed in 2005 by the Ministry of Defense, which holds 100% of its shares. Sokolov protests that the takeover has anything to do with the Kremlin, citing personal ambitions – all $10 million of them. In an interview to TV Rain, he claimed that Kara-Murza was a freelancer, and that the channel simply decided to stop buying his services starting September. He said he was personally shocked by these ridiculous, false accusations. 

This news story broke at a sensitive time. Prior to the Senate hearing, the Putin administration threatened ‘mirror counter-measures’ to the Magnitsky Bill, and so far enforced a no-entry policy for 11 US citizens – for the 11 Russian officials barred from entry into the US under the current legislation. On July 21^st, President Putin signed the law that equates foreign-funded NGOs to ‘foreign agents’. Under this new legislation, all non-government organisations that receive part or all of their finding from abroad must be entered into a special registry within the next 90 days, will be subject to annual audits, must file expenditure reports every six months, and any publication or mention in the media has to refer to their foreign-agent status. Failure to do so will result in either a fine of one million roubles, or up to four years in prison. (This is according to the 1TV website – details of the penalties vary for different sources.) On July 18^th just five days after the parliament approved the NGOs law, a member of the United Russia party has entered a proposition into the Duma to extend the law to foreign-funded media outlets. 

On July 10^th, Russia’s Wikipedia site went on strike in response to the Duma’s discussion of the new internet information law, veiled as ‘protection of children from information that harms their development and health’. (This is very similar to the anti-paedophilia and homosexuality law that I wrote about earlier. Russian children are becoming the best-protected children in the world.) Under this new law, if passed, all sites with content on child pornography, suicide advice and information on drugs will be blacklisted, and will have 24 hours to close down. Human rights activists claim that the vagueness of the law can effectively be used to close down any site the government deems ‘dangerous’.

Just three days before Putin’s inauguration, followed by mass protests, he signed the law enforcing tougher punishments for misconduct during public demonstrations. The fine starts with 10-20,000 roubles, increasing to 300,000 in case of damaged property or personal injury, and reaches 600,000 for organisers, with 1,000,000 for officials. Given that the average monthly salary in Russia is around 20,000 roubles, this legislation was clearly aimed at dissuading mass demonstrations, so far with limited results.

These measures are hailed as infringements on democracy in Russia, producing world-wide criticisms. Fair enough. But in a country where an honest man, doing his job is subjected to a slow, painful death with no repercussions, where three young girls, two of them with young children, are held without trial for a punk-song stunt (Pussy Riot’s detention has been extended for further six months) and face a seven-year jail sentence, where the head of the investigative committee threatens a journalist with murder, it seems that democracy is not being infringed on – its very existence is in question. Commentators suggest that President Obama will not sign the Magnitsky Bill in its current version, fearing an unfavourable deterioration of US-Russian trade relations. I hope he does, as right now it seems the only way to force Russian lawlessness into some kind of retribution.