You're reading: Magnitsky bill targets rights’ abusers

The West starts to get serious about sanctions.

Rarely does a piece of legislation in the United States excite Ukrainian critics of President Viktor Yanukovych so much. But the Magnitsky bill is one such case.

The U.S. is close to passing the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which will introduce sanctions against many officials in Russia who directly or indirectly were involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a prominent lawyer who investigated massive scale corruption and fraud. He died in November 2009 after being tortured in prison.

There is a possibility that the final version of the bill will affect Ukraine as well, among other nations, giving Washington a tool for potential use in case there is a political decision taken to sanction Ukraine’s officials. So far, Washington prefers to engage, though, sending envoys to Kyiv’s top dogs, who carry messages for them to stay in line.

David Kramer, president of Freedom House democracy watchdog, during his visit to Ukraine last week mentioned the debate around sanctions in Ukraine.

“In the West, we’re debating the possibility of using sanctions against Ukraine,” the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State said while presenting a new report on the state of democracy and freedom. The 24-page report was not optimistic, pointing out “erosion of basic freedoms,” and suggesting that the country is moving towards authoritarianism.

“In the report, we do not recommend sanctions at this time. But there is a possibility that the U.S. will apply sanctions the same way they are applied to Russia, to ring the alarm bell for top officials”  that they’re going down the wrong path, Kramer added.

The Magnitsky bill outlines how sanctions will be applied in Russia. Currently, there are two competing versions of this bill in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. The main difference is that the Senate bill is Russia-specific, while the other version covers the globe. It is this global version that is expected to become law soon.

It states that “the protection of human rights… particularly in the case of a country that has incurred obligations to protect human rights under an international agreement to which it is a party, is not left exclusively to the internal affairs of that country.” And that’s bad news for many officials in Ukraine because it means they may become a target.

Ostap Semerak, an opposition parliament member who returned from Washington last week, said that he got an impression from his multiple meetings with the Obama administration, in Congress and with the National Security Council that the global version will prevail, possibly modified to only cover the 56 member nations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This includes Ukraine.
The bill is expected to be voted for in July, and will provide a mechanism for introduction of specific sanctions against individuals.

According to the bill, the list of individuals who will face sanctions will be prepared by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury. It will be public, and members of Congress will be able to suggest new additions to it.

In the case of Russia, the list of suspected human rights abusers already exists in the U.S., but is not public yet. In Ukraine, there is no such list per se, but the opposition in the past has helpfully provided the U.S. (as well as other countries) with their suggestions of who should be on Ukraine’s equivalent of the Magnitsky list.

After opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in October 2011, her party listed 48 people who were instrumental in her conviction, which many consider to be politically motivated persecution to eliminate her as the president’s main rival.

The list, headed by President Viktor Yanukovych and his elder son Oleksandr, carries names of politicians, investigators and top officials from the General Prosecutor’s Office, experts who testified in Tymoshenko’s case, members of the commission for investigating Naftogaz Ukraine, and judges involved in her case, and others.

Hryhoriy Nemyria, a former deputy prime minister who served under Tymoshenko when she was prime minister in 2007-2009, hopes that this list is taken into consideration if and when the talk of sanctions begins. But he says that even more important are the political and legal criteria used for identifying people who may eventually fall under sanctions, such as conducting elections that do not match OSCE standards or existence of political prisoners.

“The shaping [of the list] and its timing is just a matter of technique,” Nemyria says. Sometimes even a credible threat of sanctions works for the benefit of the country, he adds.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry officials have said in the past that the likelihood of sanctions against the nation’s officials is very low, and that the threat of sanctions is more like the opposition’s spin ahead of the election. A number of U.S. officials who talked to the Kyiv Post on the condition of anonymity, said that historically sanctions have been an extremely inefficient tool, and remain an unlikely development.
Nevertheless, Semerak hopes that sanctions would eventually become a reality, for at least 15 to 20 people.

“But even if a person is recommended for that list, they will be closely monitored,” he said. “All of their business operations will be traced, as well as their family members’.”

The Magnitsky bill details a list of potential sanctions. Firstly, the violators are denied the right to visit the U.S. They will be ineligible to receive visas, and  existing visas will be revoked.

But perhaps even more impressive is that a whole array of financial sanctions will be used against them. Any person on the list or their agent will have their assets frozen. Financial institutions will be required to freeze and report any financial transactions by such people. Penalties are introduced for those who fail to do so.

Semerak says that any financial transaction conducted in U.S. dollars anywhere in the world on behalf of the people on the list will be frozen by correspondent U.S. banks.

But that’s not all. The opposition is hoping that Europe will take a leaf out of the American book when it comes to sanctions against Ukraine’s officials. On July 8, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved a resolution calling on all OSCE member states to impose visa sanctions and asset freezes on people who are responsible for the false arrest, torture and murder of Magnitsky, and the corruption he had uncovered.

Nemyria said this declaration “deserves special attention” in the context of potential sanctions for Ukraine’s officials, as well.

Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].