Magnitsky�s Shadow over Autocratic Regimes

Baku / 11.09.18 / Turan: The Legal Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) calls on member states of the Council of Europe to accept analogues of the Magnitsky Act, DW reports.

The statement of the commission was published on Monday, September 10. The draft resolution of the commission provides for a ban on issuing visas and freezing bank accounts for individuals personally responsible for gross violations of human rights.

Such acts are "excellent tools to combat impunity," said British parliamentarian Donald Anderson, whose report became the basis of the project. According to him, the appearance of such norms will have a "deterrent effect on potential human rights violators who feel themselves protected from responsibility in their own countries, but wish to reap the benefits of their atrocities abroad."

The project will be discussed at the PACE winter session in Strasbourg in January 2019.

The Magnitsky List was developed in 2012 in Washington. The act defined the circle of persons involved in the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in the pretrial detention facility and imposed visa and financial sanctions on a number of Russian officials. On the black list, Washington introduced persons responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture and other gross violations of human rights.

Analogues of this norm were approved in Estonia in 2016, in Canada and Lithuania in 2017, and in Latvia in 2018. In the UK in 2017, the first part of the Magnitsky Act was adopted. It concerns the freezing of assets of those who, according to London, are involved in gross violations of human rights.

Act Magnitsky was added in Britain to the law "On Finance of Criminal Origin" (Criminal Finance Act), adopted almost simultaneously. He gave the government several tools to deal with "dirty money" and its owners.

According to the BBC, the most discussed of these tools is the so-called "request for wealth of unknown origin" (Unexplained Wealth Order). The essence of this request is as follows: law enforcement agencies can, through the court, demand from an alien who is a public figure in his home country and who owns property in value from 50 thousand pounds, to explain the origin of the money for which he acquired this property.

If there is no explanation, or if the addressee of the request fails to prove that he has earned this money legally, the property will be frozen. And if the owner tries to deceive the police and the court, he can receive up to two years in prison for contempt of court.

This part of the law came into force from the beginning of this year. At the end of February, the first (and so far the last) case of a "request for wealth of unclear origin" was reported for two real estate items worth 22 million pounds. The National Criminal Agency of Britain does not disclose the owner"s name, but, according to the press, he is not a Russian.

According to British sources, in this connection, questions about the origin of the funds for which real estate was acquired in this country were also presented to high-ranking officials from Azerbaijan. -0-