Why You Keep Hearing the Name Magnitsky in the News
The U.S. law known as the Magnitsky Act has been wielded against Russian officials and the Myanmar military, proposed as a tool to punish China and Saudi Arabia and invoked in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Forensic investigators arrive outside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul
Photographer: Kostas Tsironis/BloombergLike a legislative Zelig, it pops up in all sorts of places. The U.S. law known as the Magnitsky Act has been wielded against Russian officials and the Myanmar military, proposed as a tool to punish China and Saudi Arabia and invoked in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. There’s quite a story behind it as well.
It’s a law signed in 2012 by President Barack Obama that authorizes some of the sanctions the U.S. has imposed on Russian companies and individuals. It’s named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax lawyer who, while working for the international investment company Hermitage Capital Management in 2008, identified what he called a Kremlin-connected scam to steal a $230 million tax rebate that Hermitage had paid to the Russian government in 2006. He was arrested, held without trial and died in a Moscow prison in 2009. The U.S. said he was beaten to death. The Magnitsky Act was written to punish "persons responsible for the detention, abuse and death" of Magnitsky by refusing them entry into the U.S. and freezing any of their assets in the U.S.