A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Thursday unanimously approved a bill that seeks to deny visas to a group of Russian officials allegedly linked to lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death.
The "Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act," named for a 37-year-old Russian anti-graft lawyer who worked at Hermitage Capital, could badly damage U.S.-Russian ties and hurt U.S. exports, say opponents of the legislation.
The legislation would also require the United States to freeze the assets of Russians allegedly linked to the detention and death of the lawyer. It also seeks to make public the list of alleged offenders.
The bill is expected to win approval Thursday in the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee. The legislation still faces a battle before it can become law, however, as the Senate has delayed considering its version of the bill.
Many in the U.S. Congress favor the bill as a trade-off for lifting trade restrictions on Russia.
The U.S. National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) on Wednesday urged Congress to oppose the legislation.
“The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act is seriously flawed,” NFTC President Bill Reinsch said in a statement released Wednesday. “This legislation would harm U.S. relations with Russia and many other nations, and would jeopardize the significant benefits arising from Russian concessions during its WTO accession negotiations.”
Commenting on the impact Magnitsky blacklist will have on Russian-U.S. relations, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul on Thursday said: “We think it would be a mistake to say that [the Magnitsky list] would prevent us from doing business deals or from cooperating on Syria or Iran. That's the principle we are trying to prevent.”
“We don't want to talk about it publicly, it's our policy not to publish the list, we think this infringes the rights of those on the list because this list doesn't say you've committed a crime, this list says you don't get to our country. It's a different standard,” McFaul added. “So we think it's not right to publish the list.”
Magnitsky was arrested on tax evasion charges in November 2008, just days after accusing police investigators in a $230 million tax refund fraud, and died after almost a year in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center in Moscow.
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