You're reading: Browder: Magnitsky Act should apply to Ukraine

DAVOS, Switzerland – William Browder, the London-based head of Hermitage Capital, is on an unrelenting quest for justice in the 2009 death of his former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. He wants to see America’s Magnitsky Act – visa bans and asset freezes against human rights violators – adopted by the European Union and applied to other nations, like Ukraine and Belarus.

Magnitsky was a 37-year-old lawyer who was tortured, deprived of medical attention and left to die in a Russian prison in 2009, nearly a year after uncovering a $230 million tax fraud allegedly committed by top Russian law enforcement officials. Russian officials say he was not murdered, but died of a heart attack while awaiting tax evasion charges.

The traumatic events transformed Browder into an activist.

He lobbied successfully for the passage in America last year of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which denies visas to and freezes the assets of those in the Russian ruling elite implicated in Magnitsky’s murder, corruption and other human rights violations. Browder says the EU should take the same track and that such laws may need to be aimed against leaders in Ukraine and other nations where human right violations are severe.

Browder is also a co-defendant in the posthumous tax-fraud trial of Magnitsky set to resume in Russia later this month. Browder will be tried in absentia, after being barred from entering Russia since 2005.

“This Mr. Magnitsky, as he is known, was not some human rights champion; he did not struggle for human rights,” Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying at a December news conference. “He was the lawyer of Mr. Browder, who is suspected by our law enforcement of committing economic crimes.”

Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Kyiv Post contributor Olena Tregub sat down to talk about the Magnitsky case, the Magnitsky Act and its possible implications for Ukraine.

William Browder

Kyiv Post: Bill, after all that happened, do you still see any potential in the former Soviet Union for foreign investors?

William Browder: The fact that there is no rule of law and that there are no property rights makes Russia, Ukraine and other countries in the region uninvestable … having been involved in that part of the world for nearly two decades, I would not put any of my money in the post-Soviet space right now.

KP: There is a media campaign against you in Russia, a black PR campaign. How are you dealing with this?

WB: It is like a question: how do you prove you are not a camel? Everybody who knows anything about the case knows that all the stuff is completely nonsensical.

KP: Do you think the Magnitsky provisions should be applied to places like Ukraine?

WB: There was a very heated debate in Washington just before the Magnitsky Act was passed, about whether it should be legislation that applies globally or just to Russia. All the supporters of the Magnitsky Act in the Senate, including Senator (John) McCain, Senator (Ben) Cardin, Senator (Joe) Lieberman, Senator (Roger) Wicker, were all extremely motivated to make it global human rights legislation. It was only because of the timing issue and the difference of opinions between the House of Representatives and the Senate that it became a Russian issue. As far as I am aware, there is going to be a very strong campaign starting in spring in the Senate to amend the law to make it a global piece of legislation.

KP: How will it affect Ukraine?

WB: It will affect every country. Ukraine is an obvious example, with imprisoning and torturing political prisoners and all the same types of atrocious behavior, as in Russia.

KP:  Do you see any positive outcomes of the Magnitsky Act ?

WB: Yes, the regime is shaking in their shoes right now. They are absolutely terrified because the Magnitsky law creates consequences for their behavior not just in the Magnitsky case but in all future cases like it. The Achilles heel of the Putin regime is their money abroad. They like to behave like cannibals at home and they may dine at the finest restaurants with white table cloths in Europe. They think they can do both. All of a sudden, we created the situation that would take away that privilege.

KP: What is your prediction for Putin’s future?

WB: Putin has ventured into territory that is completely unknown to him and to everybody else. He has created a situation for himself where his only option is hard-core repression in order to retain control. And how people will react to hard-core repression is unpredictable.

KP: What do you think about imprisoned ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko? In Ukraine people talk about the Magnitsky list and the Tymoshenko list (of those responsible for her prosecution and conviction).

Sergei Magnitsky

WB: I think she was completely unfairly treated based on a shocking political agenda. It is terrible for the country because the message of her arrest is that if you are in power you can never leave power. Everyone who is in power will hold on to power in the most vicious ways to avoid her fate. Not just to Ukraine (but) to anyone in that part of the world, it sends the most terrible message.

KP: Ukrainian society does not support her actively on a mass scale because they believe that she is far from being innocent.

WB: But the same goes for many other people from Ukraine ­— all here at Davos. You can’t have a selective justice system or no justice system. You can’t send a former prime minister to jail just because she is a political opponent of the current president. Political motivated justice system is a travesty in any account.

KP: She is now facing life in prison, being accused of a murder.

WB: The fact that they put these charges against her many years after the fact is a clearly politically motivated procedure and shows that they don’t do this for the purpose of justice. Ukrainians have no faith in their justice system and putting her under trial is a miscarriage of justice by definition.

KP: What’s next?

WB: The Magnitsky campaign is far from over. The entire European Union needs to pass the Magnitsky Act. We are also working on an extremely difficult criminal investigation about money laundering, where $230 million, that Magnitsky discovered, went. So far there have been a number of criminal cases opened in foreign countries, lots of bank transfers identified, assets frozen. At the end we will find out who received that money. When we do, that money will be frozen. And people who received that money will end up under criminal investigation. It is very big and important part of the project.

Olena Tregub runs an educational consulting company in Washington DC (www.GELead.org) and is a contributor to the Kyiv Post.