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 newNGO 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

30 May 2016 – The widow of Sergei Mag­nit­sky has writ­ten to the Nor­we­gian Kort­film­fes­ti­valen request­ing the fes­ti­val to with­draw the film, which posthu­mously slan­ders her mur­dered hus­band, from its June 2016 program.

 

“The fam­ily of Sergei Mag­nit­sky opposes the dis­tri­b­u­tion of “The Mag­nit­sky Act” film by Russ­ian film­maker Andrei Nekrasov in any form, given its false and defam­a­tory con­tent, highly degrad­ing of the deceased Sergei Mag­nit­sky and hurt­ful to the feel­ings of the Mag­nit­sky mother and widow,” said the Mag­nit­sky fam­ily in their statement.

 

“There is no pub­lic inter­est in pub­lish­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion that is know­ingly false, espe­cially when this infor­ma­tion causes pain and suf­fer­ing to the fam­ily of the deceased and is degrad­ing to his mem­ory. The know­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion of mali­cious false­hoods about a deceased per­son will make the fes­ti­val com­plicit in it,” said Sergei Magnitsky’s widow.

 

Russ­ian film­maker Andrei Nekrasov claimed in his inter­view in a Nor­we­gian news­pa­per Dag­bladet on 26 May 2016 that he had con­ducted ”inten­sive research” on which the film is based.

 

The Mag­nit­sky fam­ily strongly dis­agrees, saying:

 

“Had Andrei Nekrasov gen­uinely con­ducted the research, he would have come across pub­licly avail­able evi­dence that con­tra­dicts his asser­tions, and demon­strates that they are untrue.” “It is clear from the review of the pub­lic record on the Mag­nit­sky case, how­ever, that no respon­si­ble research was conducted.”

 

In his film, Andrei Nekrasov claims that Sergei Mag­nit­sky was not a lawyer, when offi­cial Russ­ian court records and Magnitsky’s own tes­ti­mony demon­strates the fal­sity of this claim, show­ing that Mag­nit­sky rep­re­sented clients in courts and iden­ti­fied him­self as a lawyer.

 

Next, Nekrasov falsely claims that Sergei Mag­nit­sky did not blow the whis­tle on the com­plic­ity of Russ­ian police offi­cers in the fraud in his tes­ti­mony before his arrest, when Sergei Mag­nit­sky named the offi­cers 27 times in his 5 June 2008 testimony.

 

Nekrasov also falsely claims that Sergei Mag­nit­sky had not been beaten before his death in cus­tody, when this is con­tra­dicted by offi­cial autopsy pho­tos show­ing seri­ous injuries. It is also con­tra­dicted by: the Russ­ian state death cer­tifi­cate refer­ring to a cere­bral cra­nial injury; the Russ­ian government’s record describ­ing the use of rub­ber batons on Mag­nit­sky the night he died; and the Russ­ian government’s expert con­clu­sion describ­ing Magnitsky’s injuries com­ing from blunt force trauma.

 

In addi­tion, Andrei Nekrasov falsely claims that some­body else, not Sergei Mag­nit­sky, reported the US$230 mil­lion fraud, despite the doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that the first report about the US$230 mil­lion fraud was made in July 2008 by Her­mitage on the basis of Magnitsky’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the crime.

 

Because of the demon­stra­bly false and defam­a­tory con­tent, the screen­ing of the film by Andrei Nekrasov has been can­celled at the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, by French TV sta­tion ARTE and Ger­man TV sta­tion ZDF.

 

The false and defam­a­tory infor­ma­tion about Sergei Mag­nit­sky pre­sented in this film is con­trary to the evi­dence from Russ­ian gov­ern­ment bod­ies, inves­ti­ga­tions by inde­pen­dent Russ­ian human rights organ­i­sa­tions, find­ings and con­clu­sions by numer­ous inter­na­tional organ­i­sa­tions includ­ing the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, the Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly of the Coun­cil of Europe, the Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly of the OSCE, the Moscow Helsinki Group, theUS Helsinki Com­mis­sion, the US Con­gress, the Nor­we­gian Helsinki Com­mit­tee, the UN Rap­por­teur on Tor­ture and Other Cruel, Inhu­man and Degrad­ing Treat­ment, and others.

 

“In addi­tion to pre­sent­ing false infor­ma­tion about Sergei Mag­nit­sky, degrad­ing his mem­ory and his sac­ri­fice, the film presents a fic­tion­alised por­trayal of Sergei Mag­nit­sky as a per­son, cre­ates a fic­ti­tious iden­tity of him and presents his fic­ti­tious con­ver­sa­tions with oth­ers, that are untrue, and removed from real­ity, that also do not jus­tify and con­tra­dict the depic­tion of this film as ”doc­u­men­tary,” said the Mag­nit­sky family.

 

Kort­film­fes­ti­valen in Nor­way has been informed of the Mag­nit­sky family’s con­cern against dis­play­ing or in any other way dis­trib­ut­ing the film’s con­tent, con­trary to the Nor­we­gian Dam­ages Act, which pro­hibits dis­tri­b­u­tion of false infor­ma­tion to cause harm to people’s reputation.

 

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