Justice for Sergei Magnitsky: Statement in Response to Representative Dana Rohrabacher’s Remarks at the House Foreign Affairs Committee Mark-up on Global Magnitsky

19 May 2016 – On 18 May 2016, the U.S. House For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee passed the Global Mag­nit­sky bill, which cre­ates con­se­quences for cor­rupt offi­cials and human rights abusers around the world in the form of visa bans and asset freezes.

 

Dur­ing the mark-up of the bill, Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabacher, from Orange County, Cal­i­for­nia, pro­posed an amend­ment to exclude Magnitsky’s name from the title of the bill. To jus­tify his amend­ment, Con­gress­man Rohrabacher referred to a “confus­ing sit­u­a­tion” and “seri­ous ques­tions” that “Mag­nit­sky was being held [in Russ­ian deten­tion] because the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment knew that there was $230 mil­lion of tax lia­bil­ity that they did not have the funds, that Mr Brow­der, that was his tax lia­bil­ity.”

 

Con­gress­man Rohrabacher’s remarks imply that Her­mitage did not pay the US$230 mil­lion in taxes to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, and the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about recov­er­ing these funds from the start. These claims are wrong, and are con­tra­dicted by the facts and pub­licly avail­able doc­u­ments, including:

 

(i) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that the US$230 mil­lion in taxes had been paid by the Her­mitage Fund’s Russ­ian com­pa­nies to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment in 2006,

ii) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that those US$230 mil­lion were stolen a year later through a mas­sive fraud per­pe­trated by a Russ­ian crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion com­pris­ing Russ­ian offi­cials, who stole Her­mitage com­pa­nies and then approved in one day the wire trans­fers of US$230 mil­lion away from the Russ­ian trea­sury to accounts opened by known Russ­ian crim­i­nals to a bank owned by a con­victed Russ­ian criminal;

(iii) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that Russ­ian author­i­ties ignored Hermitage’s orig­i­nal reports and com­plaints about the US$230 mil­lion fraud,

(iv) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that the Russ­ian author­i­ties did not look for the stolen money, and instead organ­ised retal­ia­tory crim­i­nal cases against Hermitage’s Russ­ian lawyers includ­ing Sergei Magnitsky.

The facts of the US$230 mil­lion fraud abet­ted by Russ­ian offi­cials are described in con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous com­plaintsfiled by Her­mitage, as well as in tes­ti­monies given by Sergey Mag­nit­sky nam­ing the per­pe­tra­tors, bank state­ments pro­vided by whistle­blower Alexan­der Perepilich­nyy show­ing the acqui­si­tion of multi-million dol­lar prop­er­ties and cash going to accounts of and for the ben­e­fit of Russ­ian offi­cials involved with the US$230 mil­lion fraud, mil­lions of dol­lars in assets and lav­ish lifestyles of Russ­ian offi­cials impli­cated in Magnitsky’s tes­ti­mony for their role in the US$230 mil­lion fraud, and, most recently, the Panama Papers’ leak show­ing some of the stolenUS$230 mil­lion reach­ing the cor­po­rate account of Sergei Roldugin, a close friend of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.
Con­gress­man Rohrabacher’s remarks are also con­tra­dicted by find­ings of inde­pen­dent author­i­ta­tive bod­ies, includ­ing the Coun­cil of Europe, who con­ducted a year-long inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of the Mag­nit­sky case, and sum­ma­rized its con­clu­sions in a detailed report adopted in Jan­u­ary 2014, called “Refus­ing Impunity for the Killers of Sergei Mag­nit­sky.” The report­found the exis­tence in Rus­sia of a “mas­sive cover-up involv­ing senior offi­cials of the com­pe­tent min­istries, the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee and even cer­tain courts” and urged that “the cover-up must be reversed and the true cul­prits must be held to account.”

 

In sup­port of his remarks against Brow­der, Con­gress­man Rohrabacher brought up two arti­cles which pre­sented attacks on Brow­der by the legal defense team of Denis Kat­syv, the son of a Russ­ian offi­cial, who is unsuc­cess­fully try­ing to appeal a US court order and unfreeze US$14 mil­lion of his assets seized under the USGovernment’s money laun­der­ing and civil for­fei­ture action in rela­tion to the Mag­nit­sky case. The U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice has described Katsyv’s alle­ga­tions in rela­tion to William Brow­der as “false,”“wild”, and “untrue,” and his con­duct — as “egre­gious” and “inexcusable.”

 

Con­gress­man Rohrabacher also crit­i­cized Brow­der for threat­en­ing legal action against NBC. The story he is refer­ring to was an attempt by NBC’s reporter Ken Dilan­ian to repeat alle­ga­tions from Katsyv’s team that Sergei Mag­nit­sky wasn’t beaten in cus­tody and was never a whistle-blower. Both claims were in con­tra­dic­tion to pub­licly avail­able evi­dence from the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment. Promi­nent Russ­ian human rights defend­ers, Lud­mila Alex­eeva and Valery Borschev, who per­son­ally inves­ti­gated the Mag­nit­sky case, spoke out against Ken Dilanian’s attempt to mis­rep­re­sent key facts about the Magnitsky’s case in pub­lic state­ments and in an open let­ter to NBCUni­ver­sal CEO Steve Burke. Ken Dilan­ian had pre­vi­ously allowed his sources to influ­ence or write his con­tent.

 

After Rohrabacher’s inter­ven­tion, the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee sub­se­quently voted to reject his amend­ment and passed the Global Mag­nit­sky bill, which will now be up for a vote on the House floor. The date of the vote is not known yet.

 

The Global Mag­nit­sky bill is named after Sergei Mag­nit­sky, Hermitage’s lawyer who in 2007 – 2008 uncov­ered a mas­sive fraud per­pe­trated by Russ­ian offi­cials and organ­ised crim­i­nals to steal US$230 mil­lion that the three com­pa­nies of the Her­mitage Fund had paid to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment in profit tax a year before, in 2006.  Sergei Mag­nit­sky tes­ti­fied about the fraud, named offi­cials involved, was then arrested by impli­cated offi­cials, kept in cus­tody with­out trial for 358 days in tor­tur­ous con­di­tions, denied fam­ily vis­its and med­ical care, and was killed on 16 Novem­ber 2009 at the age of 37, leav­ing a mother, a wife and two children.

 

In 2010, Sergei Mag­nit­sky was posthu­mously awarded by Trans­parency Inter­na­tional, a global anti-corruption organ­i­sa­tion, with ‘Integrity Award’ in recog­ni­tion of his stance against Russ­ian cor­rup­tion and offi­cial abuse.

 

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact:

 

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

http://www.billbrowder.com/

https://twitter.com/Billbrowder

ICTJ: Debate Continues: Is Remembrance about Rights or Ideology?
Dear friends,

Our online debate is heating up with Pablo de Greiff and David Rieff’s rebuttals. We want to thank Sihem Bensedrine, President of Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, and all of those who already shared their valuable opinions in the comments section. We are looking forward to reading contributions from all of you. Your participation is key to this conversation.

We invite you to read Pablo and David’s responses to each other’s opening arguments. I am sure it will be hard not to jump in after you read their articles – and we hope you do!

Here is a taste of their rebuttal essays:

The Duty to Remember

“A blog is not the best place to lay the argument in favor of a duty. But let me try. Recalling that what is at stake here is not memory but the public acknowledgment of great violations of rights, a refusal to acknowledge them, to give them a place in our public space, involves a value judgment that there is no way to spin without demeaning the value of the victims or the importance of rights — not just their rights but rights in general for the value of the notion that these days rests to a large extent on their generalizability.

Aside from what it says about those who persist in the refusal to acknowledge the pain of others when the subject is the greatest atrocities known to human beings, at the limit, persisting in the refusal to acknowledge great harms in itself generates new harms. Recall, again, that the forms of remembrance at stake in this discussion are not private recollections but public manifestations of recognition.

To the extent that we expect others to be part of a shared political community, we owe them sufficient recognition for them to take the project to be truly shared. This is very clear in the case of our fellow citizens. “Fellow citizens,” however, does not refer to our compatriots only or those with whom we share a nationality. We are today fellow citizens of a community of rights. To the extent that we expect others to trust us in that capacity, we have the duty to remember everything that we cannot reasonably expect our fellow citizens to forget.”
Go to Pablo de Greiff’s Essay

Collective Remembrance is Ideological, Not Impartial

“Our disagreement largely centers on what happens later on, when those who have suffered the injury and, for that matter, their children and grandchildren, are no longer alive. Because while de Greiff is unquestionably right that for a victim of the military dictatorship in Argentina or the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia, forgetting is not an option, those memories are as mortal as the people who retain them. To make an obvious point, there is in fact no such thing as collective memory but only individual memory.

Instead, what we are talking about when we invoke collective memory is the consensus about the past that societies develop and that evolve over time. It is that form of collective memory that I am so skeptical of, because, again, of my sense that it can be such a dangerous goad to resentment, hate, and war. From what de Greiff writes in his first contribution, I did not have the impression that he would necessarily disagree.

One final point, both de Greiff and Bensedrine appeal almost exclusively to the language of rights as if rights could be distanced from politics. As someone who believes that law is a fundamentally political artifact, I do not think this is possible. I would simply point out that, uncomfortable as many (though certainly not all) of its advocates are to admit this, human rights is an ideology just as surely as communism was or neoliberalism is today. Can a fundamentally ideological construct lay serious claim to being impartial? Perhaps it can, but I have to say I think it highly unlikely.”
Go to David Rieff’s Essay
Thank you again for all your contributions. Stay tuned for more upcoming guest contributors and closing remarks next week.

Sincerely,

Marcie Mersky
ICTJ Director of Programs

Justice for Sergei Magnitsky: Senators Cardin and McCain Call for a Swift Passage of Global Magnitsky After Clearing the House Foreign Affairs Committee

19 May 2016 – Fol­low­ing yesterday’s approval of the Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights bill by the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, Sen­a­tors Cardin and McCain called on the House speaker to swiftly bring it to a vote.

 

“For too long in too many coun­tries, per­pe­tra­tors of human rights vio­la­tions and grand cor­rup­tion have not been held to account for their crimes and yet con­tinue to enjoy travel and finan­cial priv­i­leges in the United States. With today’s House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee pas­sage of the Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights and Account­abil­ity Act, we are one step closer to pre­vent­ing such impunity, — said Sen­a­tors Ben Cardin and John McCain in a joint state­ment. — We …call on Speaker Ryan to ensure a full House vote on Global Mag­nit­sky with­out delay.”

 

Cardin and McCain, the two orig­i­nal co-sponsors of the Global Mag­nit­sky bill, spoke about the impor­tance ofSergei Magnitsky’s legacy.

 

“The bill is named for Sergei Mag­nit­sky, who has the unfor­tu­nate dis­tinc­tion of serv­ing as a prime exam­ple of the cor­rupt, hor­rific crimes that befall count­less inno­cent peo­ple world­wide. Mr. Mag­nit­sky lost his life for sim­ply doing his job and try­ing to do the right thing when he dis­cov­ered wide­spread fraud and abuse of power in Rus­sia. Just like Mag­nit­sky, human rights defend­ers are vic­tim­ized and stig­ma­tized around the globe,” said sen­a­tors Cardin and McCain.

 

The House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee rejected an amend­ment pro­posed by 68-year old Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabacher seek­ing to remove the name of Mag­nit­sky from the Global Human Rights bill. To jus­tify his amend­ment, Con­gress­man Rohrabacher claimed he could not fig­ure out who stole US$230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian bud­get – Sergei Mag­nit­sky or Russ­ian offi­cials. This is despite the fact that the money has been found in the accounts of Russ­ian offi­cials and their fam­i­lies and most recently, through the Panama Papers, on account of Sergei Roldugin, a close friend of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.

 

Other Con­gress­men firmly rejected Con­gress­man Rohrabacher’s amend­ment describ­ing it as an unac­cept­able attempt to “rewrite history.”

 

Con­gress­man Con­nolly said that it was impor­tant to call out behav­iour of Pres­i­dent Putin which did not adhere to inter­na­tional norms, “whether in Crimea or in a prison cell.”

 

Russ­ian vet­eran human rights defender Lud­mila Alex­eeva, chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group, sent a mes­sage to mem­bers of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee ahead of the mark up, stating:

 

“Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabacher has been fooled by the Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion, and has argued that the name of Sergei Mag­nit­sky be dropped from the Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights Bill. To do this would be a gross betrayal of the human rights move­ment, and of the legacy of Sergei Mag­nit­sky who had sto­ically sac­ri­ficed his life in con­fronting cor­rup­tion and offi­cial abuse in Rus­sia. … To remove his name from the Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights bill would be a sell­out of vic­tims of oppres­sion and abuse every­where around the world, whom Serge Mag­nit­sky has given hope, and of the prin­ci­ples of integrity he had paid with his life.”

 

Dur­ing the mark-up, con­gress­man Engel said the Global Mag­nit­sky bill would show to all that human rights abuse and cor­rup­tion can­not go on with impunity:

 

“This leg­is­la­tion would send a pow­er­ful mes­sage that human-rights abusers and cor­rup­tion aren’t just inter­nal mat­ters.  They are the con­cern of all coun­tries, and they should not be per­mit­ted to go on with impunity.”

 

On the eve of the Global Mag­nit­sky bill’s mark-up, Russ­ian author­i­ties announced a new crim­i­nal case against Alexei Navalny, the Russ­ian anti-corruption activist and Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions sup­porter. The new case was opened in response to a com­plaint from ex police offi­cer Pavel Kar­pov, who has been sanc­tioned by the US and the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment for his role in Mag­nit­sky case.

 

Last month, the Russ­ian author­i­ties also announced another crim­i­nal probe opened on another spu­ri­ous appli­ca­tion of Pavel Kar­pov against Alexei Navalny and William Brow­der for mur­der of Sergei Mag­nit­sky in Russ­ian police cus­tody, as part of a CIA plan.

 

“The rea­son for the most recent attack on civil soci­ety lead­ers and out­burst of the Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion on the Mag­nit­sky case is the fear of cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials to not be able to enjoy the fruits of their cor­rup­tion in the West as a result of Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions. To fight the Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions, they use fab­ri­cated crim­i­nal cases, and dis­in­for­ma­tion both inside the coun­try and in the West. Russ­ian civil soci­ety lead­ers and inde­pen­dent media have been almost com­pletely shut down, while the Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion is fed a diet of myths and dis­in­for­ma­tion,”said William Brow­der, a leader of the global jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky move­ment and author of “Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s No 1 Enemy.”

 

Sergei Mag­nit­sky, who exposed the theft of US$230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian bud­get and gave tes­ti­mony impli­cat­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials, was arrested and killed in Moscow deten­tion cen­ter in Novem­ber 2009. Those respon­si­ble for his death and those he exposed for the US$230 mil­lion theft have not been brought to justice.

 

Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights Account­abil­ity Act passed the U.S. Sen­ate vote in Decem­ber 2015.

 

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

http://www.billbrowder.com/

https://twitter.com/Billbrowder?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect: Atrocity Alert: Iraq, DRC, Nigeria

Atrocity Alert, No.  5 No Images? Click here

Atrocity Alert is a weekly publication by the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect highlighting and updating situations where populations are at risk of, or are enduring, mass atrocity crimes.

UNHCR Photos

Iraq

On 17 May the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) killed at least 77 people in three suicide bombings in Baghdad. This follows several bombings by ISIL in the Iraqi capital last week, killing at least 100 people around mainly Shia areas of the city, making these the deadliest series of sectarian attacks this year. The attacks are intensifying tensions, including among rival Shia armed groups, putting civilians at a greater risk of mass atrocities.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Amidst reports of violent repression of opposition supporters, the constitutional court in the DRC ruled on 11 May that President Joseph Kabila may stay in office beyond the end of his term in December if the country is unable to hold elections this year. As political tensions in Kinshasa grow, armed groups in the eastern DRC continue to perpetrate atrocities against populations. Allegations have emerged that officers within the Congolese army aided and/or abetted in massacres committed by the Allied Democratic Forces and other armed groups in Beni, North Kivu.

UN Photo/Clara Padovan

UN Photos

Nigeria

On 17 May in Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest a vigilante group – the Civilian Joint Task Force – reportedly rescued one of the more than 200 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from a school in Chibok more than two years ago. This was the first Chibok girl to be rescued, but hundreds of other children abducted by Boko Haram from schools in Chibok, Damasak and other areas remain missing and the government has been unable to liberate them. Last month UNICEF reported that one in five suicide bombers used by Boko Haram is a child, including girls abducted by the group. It is imperative that the government strengthen efforts to rescue remaining abductees.

In case you missed it:

On 15 May the Global Centre published Issue 27 of R2P Monitor, featuring the crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Burma/Myanmar, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Burundi, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Central African Republic and South Sudan.

Syria Justice and Accountability Centre:Asset recovery and repatriation: Could the impossible solution be just the right fit for the impossible conflict?

For a simple overview of the conflict, a casual reader can turn to Wikipedia’s entry for the “Syrian Civil War,” which has no less than 860 footnotes. An advanced reader might turn to the myriad of reports produced by international human rights and Syrian civil society organizations, including the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, to learn detailed information about the record of violations that have occurred since the start of the conflict.

This record of abuses will be critical in assessing justice and remedy mechanisms for the survivors. And there are a lot of survivors to consider — estimates of up to 470,000 people killed, half the population displaced, and an unfathomable 4 million plus refugees as of July last year. Reparations processes for survivors, and the country as a whole, must be as robust, widespread, and multidimensional as the conflict itself, and, to be effective, will need to prominently include the active participation of victims, the families of the slain, and the survivors of trauma. In particular, women, who have largely been absent from peace negotiations, must be actively involved.

Funding such a robust and inclusive reparations in post-conflict Syria will be problematic, however. This is where one of the most complicated wars in modern history meets its match in a politically, legally, and socially complex area of remedy: stolen asset recovery and repatriation. Despite the complexities, Syrians, having survived a domestic uprising and the military interventions of dozens of states, could be up for the challenge.

Recognized as “one of the most complex projects in the field of law,” international asset recovery includes the tracing, freezing, confiscation, and repatriation of illegally obtained proceeds located in foreign jurisdictions. The history of stolen asset recovery and repatriation is not simple. It takes significant political will to reach the point of identifying and freezing the assets of political leaders and their associates in foreign countries. And freezing assets is only the beginning of a contorted series of legal and political confrontations to determine to whom the assets rightfully belong, how to distribute and allocate the funds, and who gets to decide. These questions will turn on interpretations of Syrian law, as well as international law and the laws of the jurisdictions where the assets are found.

While Switzerland, the European Union, and the United States announced asset freezes of accounts held by the Assad family and associates in 2011 and 2012, many commentators opined that the total amount frozen (£100 million in the United Kingdom, $78 million in the United States, and 70 million Swiss Francs) is likely a very small proportion of the assets abroad, most of which are presumed to be concealed in jurisdictions less likely to identify and freeze accounts, such as Russia, Hong Kong, or other states in the Middle East/North Africa region.

Even within the small portion of wealth that has already been frozen, arguments are already surfacing with regard to its legal and rightful ownership, with both the government and opposition making claims over the assets. Even non-Syrians may have legal claims over the funds. For instance, lawyers representing the family of Steven Sotloff, an American journalist beheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS), have filed a civil suit against the Syrian government and may be eligible to recoup a fraction of the frozen assets if the court finds in the family’s favor and the Syrian government refuses to pay damages.

The World Bank’s Arab Forum on Asset Recovery, a 2012 initiative to support asset recovery by Arab countries in transition, is now entering its fifth year, but it has not yet proven particularly successful in wading through the competing legal perspectives of the “home” and “host” states, nor the political discord that accompanies these differences in views.

The one bright spot in this otherwise entangled dynamic is the increasingly useful and relevant role of civil society’s participation in conversations about how to identify public assets as such and return them to their true beneficiaries — the people. Given the extraordinary international attention on Syria, domestic civil society, with support from colleagues and allies in “host” countries as well as in other countries that have relevant experiences to share (such as Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea or Ukraine), could play a very prominent role in leading the conversation about the possibilities for open, clear adjudication of disputes over the assets and their disposition.

If there is any silver lining to the horribly grey clouds that have hovered over Syria for the past several years, it might be that there is both international space for Syrian civil society to be heard, and that such space might actually prove useful as a starting point for citizen-government dialogue. Starting with even a relatively tiny fraction of Syria’s resources — a mere few hundred million USD — has untold potential not only for providing remedy to those devastated by the violence and for rebuilding key support systems but also for building trust, stable governance, and the equitable distribution of resources.

Despite the political obstacles, isn’t it at least worth a shot?

 

Erica Razook sits on SJAC’s Board of Directors and is a Syrian-Lebanese American anti-corruption lawyer and certified fraud examiner living in New York. She participated in the 2014 Arab Forum on Asset Recovery and supported civil society efforts to repatriate stolen assets to Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and Ukraine in her former role at the Open Society Foundations, including coordination of the civil society-led event on the topic at the 2015 UN Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa.

For more information and to provide feedback, please contact SJAC at info@syriaaccountability.org.