Magnitsky Law

Magnitsky Law Saga

U.S. Penalizes Russians for Human Rights Violations
By PETER BAKER
Published: April 12, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday imposed sanctions on about two dozen Russians for human rights violations under a new law that has soured relations with Moscow, but it avoided targeting many high-level figures in President Vladimir V. Putin’s government.

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The administration identified 18 Russians on an unclassified list of those who will be barred from traveling to the United States and have their assets here frozen. All but two of them are tied to the death of a lawyer, Sergei L. Magnitsky, who was investigating official corruption only to be arrested and die in custody. Another smaller group is included on a classified list, officials said.

The administration was informing the Russian government and Congress about its decisions on Friday. Under the human rights law passed in December, the administration had until Saturday to name officials to be penalized. But the timing is awkward, with the moves coming just days before President Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, plans to travel to Moscow to explore next steps in a relationship that has turned rocky.

The pending sanctions have irritated the Russian government, which responded to the passage of the original law by blocking Americans from adopting Russian orphans. Administration officials are bracing for further retaliation with the release of the list, and they recognized that it would complicate Mr. Donilon’s visit. But they decided to proceed with the trip anyway because Mr. Obama is due to meet with Mr. Putin on the sidelines of an economic summit meeting in Northern Ireland in June and then travel to Russia in September.

“We will respond to it, and the American side knows it,” Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said at a news conference on Friday during a visit to Switzerland. “The timing is bad.” The head of an international affairs committee in the Russian Parliament told a Russian newspaper that Moscow’s response would be “commensurate.”

Still, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Mr. Putin, was quoted by Interfax, a Russian news agency, before the release of the list as saying that it would result in “negative developments,” but added that the relationship was multifaceted and that there were still “a lot of prospects for further developments.”

The list disappointed lawmakers and human rights activists who pressed the administration to apply the new law aggressively. Representative James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat who helped pass the law, named for Mr. Magnitsky, had sent the administration a list of 280 Russians compiled by Mr. Magnitsky’s family for possible sanctions, including senior officials like Yuri Y. Chaika, the country’s general prosecutor.

Human rights activists said that the law should be applied beyond Mr. Magnitsky’s case to cover a wide array of infamous episodes. Among those who should be on any list of human rights violators in Russia, they argued, were Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, who has been accused of widespread abuses, and Aleksandr I. Bastrykin, the head of the country’s investigative committee, who was reported to have taken a journalist to a forest and threatened his life after a critical article was published.

Mr. Chaika, Mr. Kadyrov and Mr. Bastrykin were not on the unclassified list. It was not immediately clear if they were on the classified list. The unclassified list included 16 investigators, tax officials, judges and prison supervisors connected to Mr. Magnitsky’s case. The other two were Chechens tied to prominent murders. One, Lecha Bogatirov, has been connected by investigators to the shooting death of Umar Israilov, a critic of Mr. Kadyrov, on the streets of Vienna in 2009. The other, Kazbek Dukuzov, has been accused of murdering the American journalist Paul Klebnikov in Moscow in 2004.

Lawmakers like Mr. McGovern wanted the administration to apply the sanctions to anyone about whom there was “credible information” on human rights violations.

But the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control required a higher degree of evidence, because it will have to justify depriving people of financial assets if challenged in court. Some human rights activists said Congress may have to re-examine the question and rewrite the law to make sure it covers a wider range of figures.

Russian Judge Delays Trial of Dead Lawyer (March 12, 2013)

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“While the list is timid and features more significant omissions than names, I was assured by administration officials today that the investigation is ongoing and further additions will be made to the list as new evidence comes to light,” Mr. McGovern said in a statement. “The fact that a name is not on the list does not mean that person is innocent.”

David J. Kramer, the executive director of Freedom House, a nonprofit group advocating human rights and democracy, said that he regretted that the list was not longer but that he took heart from the fact that it did go beyond the Magnitsky case. “The key now is to keep this as an ongoing process by which more names can be added,” he said.

The limited number placed on the list may temper Moscow’s response, although the administration expects the Kremlin to be upset regardless. The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Friday that the Russian government had anticipated a larger list and had prepared a comparable list of 104 Americans to be banned from the country.

Mr. Magnitsky was a lawyer for William F. Browder, once the largest portfolio investor in Russia, who has been barred from the country and has become one of Mr. Putin’s biggest critics. Mr. Magnitsky was jailed while investigating a scheme to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from Mr. Browder’s firm. While in custody, according to his advocates, Mr. Magnitsky was beaten and denied medical care. He died at age 37.

With Mr. Browder’s lobbying, Mr. Magnitsky’s case animated members of both parties in Congress to pass the human rights law in his name at the same time lawmakers lifted cold-war-era trade restrictions. In response, Russia not only barred American adoptions, but also refiled criminal tax charges against Mr. Magnitsky and moved to put the dead man on trial.