Urges US to grant visa bans to UK lawyers, allowing Russian oligarchs to | US news
Anti-corruption Bill Browder is urging the United States to grant visa bans to British lawyers he has accused of “opportunities” for Russian oligarchs.
U.S.-born financier, outspoken and longtime critic of the Russian president Vladimir Putinhas said that the introduction of such a ban would strike the ongoing problem he describes, where oligarchs use the UK legal system against journalists and whistleblowers and bind them to costly litigation.
Browder suggested that sanctions could eventually be imposed on all legal and financial experts who could be shown have helped oligarchs hide their assets, but said the blacklist in his original proposal focused on British lawyers involved in defamation cases.
Browder described “This whole class of British lawyers,” to whom Russians and those with links to Russia have called for “lawsuits against journalists, dissidents and whistleblowers, myself included, and they are making money.”
“There’s this area,” Browder said. “It becomes quite difficult to get away with the idea that a plaintiff can hire a lawyer to sue for defamation because how is what is good and what is bad? But if you identify a lawyer who has done this on a regular basis – chasing people – the United States doesn’t have to give them a visa to enter this country. ”
The activist has been shown to influence Capitol Hill. In a recent statement, U.S. Senator Ben Cardin called Browder a “hero” to “many” in the Senate for his work in passing the Magnitsky Act, a two-party Obama-era bill named after Browder’s former tax lawyer. Sergei Magnitskywho died in police arrest in Russia in 2009.
The law was intended to allow the United States to punish officials involved in Magnitsky’s death, but it also empowers the United States to punish human rights abuses and deny them access to the country.
Browder said he was seeking the support of senators and members of Congress to write a letter to the U.S. State Department listing the names of certain lawyers whose visas he thought should be taken away. He did not name any lawyers on the list.
Browder also argued that targeting oligarch promoters, such as lawyers and accountants, would be an effective way to find their money, at least half of which he said ends up in Putin’s coffers as part of the Kremlin’s deal with the oligarchs.
“There’s going to be a lot of smart law enforcement work now about circumventing sanctions. These people have been circling around us in the past,” Browder said. “They have established the strongest asset protection mechanisms with trustees, holding companies, candidates and proxy offshore companies.”
Finding the money of the oligarchs, he said, would be an “almost impossible task.” He said he wanted to add an amendment to the Sanctions Act to hold lawyers, accountants, bankers and other financial advisers accountable – including a possible prison sentence – if they are found to have created structures to circumvent sanctions.
“Very quickly, the whole system would become very transparent,” he said.
Browder’s statements follow his recent testimony to the Helsinki Commission, an independent body made up of nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives, nine senators, and one member of the U.S. state, Department of Defense and Commerce. The purpose of the Commission is to help formulate policy in the context of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe hearing focused on western “enablers” On Putin’s administration.
Among Browder’s recommendations, his statement was that the United States draw up a list of law firms, public relations firms, and investigative agencies involved in “persecuting dictatorships and oligarchs to journalists” and prohibiting the U.S. government from doing business with these companies; the revocation of visas for “foreign enablers”, the implementation of rules requiring lawyers and public relations firms to disclose their work to foreign governments; and create new laws to protect journalists from so-called SLAPP lawsuits (a strategic lawsuit against public participation) designed to intimidate the press.