https://twitter.com/vkaramurza/status/1020773522493194240
FROM WAPO ARTICLE:
What’s really behind Putin’s obsession with the Magnitsky Act
By Vladimir Kara-Murza
July 20, 2018 at 11:33 AM
SNIP
Volumes of research, hours of expert testimony and countless policy recommendations have been dedicated to finding effective Western approaches to Putin’s regime.
The clearest and the most convincing answer was provided, time and again, by the Putin regime itself.
*It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin tasked his foreign ministry with trying to stop;
*it was the Magnitsky Act that was openly tied to the ban on child adoptions;
*it was the Magnitsky Act that was the subject of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting attended by a Kremlin-linked lawyer;
*it is advocating for the Magnitsky Act that may soon land any Russian citizen in prison.
*It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin named as the biggest threat to his regime as he stood by Trump’s side in Helsinki.
After the Trump-Putin meeting, the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office released the names of U.S. citizens it wants to question as supposed associates of Browder.
The list leaves no doubt as to the nature of the “crime.”
It includes Michael McFaul, senior director for Russia policy at the Obama White House and later
U.S. Ambassador in Moscow who oversaw the “compiling of memos to the State Department … on the investigation in the Magnitsky case.” It includes
David Kramer, former assistant secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration,
who, as president of Freedom House between 2010 and 2014, was one of the most effective advocates for the Magnitsky Act.
Perhaps most tellingly, it includes
Kyle Parker, now chief of staff at the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, who, as the lead Russia staffer at the commission,
wrote the bill that subsequently became the Magnitsky Act.
Vladimir Putin has left no doubt: The biggest threat to his regime is the Magnitsky Act, which stops its beneficiaries from doing what has long become their raison d’être — stealing in Russia and spending in the West.
It is time for more Western nations to adopt this law — and for the six countries that already have it to implement it with vigor and resolve.
MAGNITSKY ACT: The Biggest Threat To Putin's Regime
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/07/20/whats-really-behind-putins-obsession-with-the-magnitsky-act/?utm_term=.3a550f7869cb&__twitter_impression=true