Sanctions law behind Putin's request to
Trump for former U.S. officials
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[July 21, 2018]
By Joel Schectman
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russian President
Vladimir Putin's request to U.S. President Donald Trump for a joint
investigation of former U.S. officials sought by the Kremlin for
"illegal activities," including a U.S. ambassador to Russia, is just the
latest effort in a years-long campaign to undermine a U.S. law that
imposes financial sanctions on Putin's officials.
Putin and advocates for the Kremlin's position had had no success with
the campaign - until Trump became president. The Magnitsky Act of 2012
is the backdrop of Putin's proposal to Trump at the Helsinki meeting
earlier this week that the United States give Russian officials access
to former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, in exchange for
allowing the FBI to question 12 Russian agents recently indicted for
interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Trump was receptive to the suggestion, calling it "an interesting idea."
That created a fire storm of criticism among Republican and Democratic
lawmakers alike. But on Thursday, the White House reversed course with
spokeswoman Sarah Sanders saying, “It is a proposal made in sincerity by
President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it."
By then the Russian Prosecutor-General’s office had informally proposed
that the United States turn over a U.S. National Security Agency
employee, a CIA agent and State Department officials, among others.
PUTIN'S IRE
The Magnitsky Act was the reaction to the 2009 suspicious death in
prison of a Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who worked for Bill
Browder, a British hedge fund manager who invested in Russian companies.
Magnitsky was arrested after accusing Russian law enforcement officials
of a $230 million tax hoax.
U.S. government officials have long contended that Magnitsky’s arrest
and prison death were retaliation against Browder for revealing state
theft conducted by Kremlin officials.
The financier drew Putin’s ire after he successfully advocated in 2012
for the economic sanctions. The law freezes the bank accounts and bars
entry to the United States of Russian officials who U.S. authorities
said were responsible for the Russian lawyer's suspicious death. Browder
has repeatedly dismissed the Kremlin’s claims as propaganda intended to
punish him for speaking out against Putin.
The law outraged Putin, who barred American adoptions of Russian
children as retaliation.
UNDERMINING BILL BROWDER
By 2015, Washington lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet
counterintelligence officer, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya
began pushing a different narrative to U.S. lawmakers and journalists,
according to their congressional testimony and people familiar with
their advocacy.
They said Browder was the perpetrator of the fraud. Browder, they
argued, had then tricked lawmakers and the Obama White House into
imposing sanctions to distract and cover up his own tax fraud. And
Magnitsky had not been beaten to death, they argued, saying the bruises
found on his body were self-inflicted.
“NOT A SINGLE person in us government has EVER checked the magnitsky
story,” Akhmetshin told Reuters in a text message Thursday.
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President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk
during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang,
Vietnam November 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
Akhmetshin said his lobbying was done, not for the Kremlin, but for
a now-defunct human rights organization called Human Rights
Accountability Global Initiative Foundation in order to find a way
to reinstate the adoptions. “I was working for a client, trying to
expose a con,” he said.
Veselnitskaya has said she is an independent Russian lawyer who has
conducted a private investigation into the Magnitsky issue because
of her concern over the adoption ban. But in an April interview
Veselnitskaya told NBC she has been an active informant for Russian
authorities since 2013. She could not be reached for comment.
Their advocacy had no impact, and lawmakers expanded the Magnitsky
sanctions in 2016.
TRUMP TOWER MEETING
In the U.S. presidential campaign that year, Akhmetshin and
Veselnitskaya appeared to gain traction. At Trump Tower, they met
with the Republican candidate's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and now a senior adviser to
the president - a meeting now under scrutiny in Special Counsel
Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016
election.
The conversation straddled the same subjects they had repeatedly
raised with journalists and lawmakers.
Six months into his presidency, Trump was discussing the Magnitsky
issue with Putin himself, during a private meeting at the Group of
20 conference in Hamburg. "I actually talked about Russian adoption
with him, which is interesting because it was a part of the
conversation that Don had in that meeting," Trump told The New York
Times in July 2017.
Browder denies the Kremlin’s claims. He told Reuters this week, “I’m
always worried about Putin taking extrajudicial actions against me.
I’m always worried about assassination and other renditions.”
But he does not think the U.S. government would give Putin what he
wants. "That’s the last thing that is going to happen," Browder
said.
(Reporting by Joel Schectman in Washington; Additional reporting by
Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Nathan Layne in Washington; Editing by
Damon Darlin and Leslie Adler)
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