Magnitsky Bill Advances with a Strongly Ukrainian Flavour

Links to Ukrainian diaspora among supporters give Russia opportunity to dismiss the bill

By Evan Dyer, CBC News 

Nataliya Magnitskaya holds a portrait of her son, Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, in November 2009 in Moscow. The Magnitsky Law, a piece of Canadian legislation not yet enacted, is named after the lawyer, who died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after accusing officials of tax fraud. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press)

The "Magnitsky Law" is a piece of Canadian legislation, not yet enacted, that seeks to hold governments and individuals to account for human rights abuses.

It's named after Russian businessman Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after accusing officials of tax fraud. It could help to bring sanctions to other rights abusers in other countries.

In late 2012, the United States adopted the so-called Magnitsky Act, which imposes travel bans and financial sanctions on Russian officials and other individuals believed to have been involved in Magnitsky's death.

But there's something about the way the bill is moving forward in Canada that should perhaps give pause to legislators.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland is seen on Parliament Hill Thursday. Freeland is a member of Canada's Ukrainian community and among the 13 Canadians sanctioned by Russia for their supposed hostility to the country. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

Two versions exist: a Commons version written by Conservative James Bezan, and a Senate version written by Raynell Andreychuk. That second version yesterday obtained the support of Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, who says the Trudeau government will help to push it through the House.

What do Bezan, Andreychuk, and Freeland all have in common?

All three are active members of Canada's Ukrainian community. And all three happen to be among the 13 Canadians sanctioned by Russia for their supposed hostility to the country.

Diaspora politics

The situation may allow the Kremlin to tell its citizens that the bill is not really about rights abuses, but rather part of a campaign motivated by ethnic animus towards Russia.

Pro-Kremlin news media and bloggers often portray Canada's Ukrainians as this country's version of Miami Cubans, a community calling the shots of Canada's foreign policy on the one issue that obsesses it.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is seen in Nicosia, Cyprus, on Thursday. Last year, Lavrov accused the Ottawa of 'blindly following the demands of rabid representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada.' (Yiannis Kourtoglou/Associated Press)

Last year Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the Canadian government of "blindly following the demands of rabid representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada."

Canada's response perhaps did little to defuse that Russian suspicion.

"We will not tolerate from a Russian minister any insult against the community of Ukrainians in Canada," then-Global Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion responded in the House of Commons. "Ukrainian Canadians, we owe so much to them. We will always support them."

Magnitsky Bill not just about Russia

Human rights groups have welcomed the Magnitsky Bill, and it has enjoyed support from Russian dissidents Gary Kasparov and Zhanna Nemtsova, the daughter of murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

It's also intended to reach far beyond Russia, says MP Bezan.

"This will apply to all countries, whether it's organ-harvesters in China who are falsely imprisoning Falun Gong practitioners to harvest their organs and tissues for sale around the world, whether it's people in the Iranian regime that are denying justice and freedom to their own citizens, or even in the case of Saudi Arabia, where they're targeting people who've tried to speak out against the government, this law has global application."

 "The Russians can say what they want," says Andreychuk. "Ukrainian-Canadians are Canadian citizens. This bill certainly has the support of many Ukrainian-Canadians, but the support that I've received for this bill has not just been from them."

"It isn't going to be centred on Russia, though no doubt there are cases of individuals that this will apply to in Russia."

A government source close to the negotiations around the proposed bill echoed that thinking. "We don't see this bill as being Russia-specific, but rather as providing us with more targeted and modern tools to use sanctions globally in cases involving human rights."

'Should the Canadian Parliament approve this punitive legal act, it would seriously damage relations between our countries, which are not experiencing the best of times already'

- Russian Embassy in Canada

But the Russian Embassy this week issued a "Comment on anti-Russian activities in Canada."

"We are compelled to warn official Ottawa that we consider its strong support for a Canadian version of the U.S. Magnitsky Act, as a means to make unsubstantiated human rights claims against Russia, to be another openly hostile move. Should the Canadian Parliament approve this punitive legal act, it would seriously damage relations between our countries, which are not experiencing the best of times already."

Memories of '30s and '40s still haunt relationship

The Russians also raise wartime abuses by Ukrainians as a way of flagging what it sees as hypocrisy on human rights.

Fraught memories of the Holodomor, the Stalin-induced famine of the 1930s, and of the Second World War, strained the relationship between Canada's Ukrainian diaspora and Russia long before the current Ukrainian conflict.

Pro-Kremlin websites have raised the record of Foreign Affairs minister Chrystia Freeland's grandfather, Michael Chomiak, alleged to have worked for a pro-Nazi newspaper during the war.

The website of the Russian Embassy in Ottawa includes a picture of a stone monument to victims of a massacre by a Ukrainian SS division, some of whose members ended up in Canada. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his son Xavier arrive at the Holodomor Monument as they visit the museum in Kyiv, Ukraine, in July 2016. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Canada ignored a request from Russia to extradite Nazi war crimes suspect Vladimir Katriuk in 2015. Katriuk, accused of murdering Soviet partisans and civilians, died shortly afterwards in Ontario.

David Matas, legal counsel for B'Nai Brith Canada, is also critical of Canada's handling of Katriuk and another suspected SS guard, Wasyl Odynsky.

He wrote in March: "The organized Ukrainian community urged cabinet not to revoke the citizenship of two ethnic Ukrainian individuals, Vladimir Katriuk and Wasyl Odynsky, even though the courts had found against them. The government of Canada acceded to this political pressure, despite the court rulings."

The influence of right-wing Ukrainian diaspora nationalists ("Banderists" as they are called by the Russian media) is played up publicly and is central to public understanding of the current Ukrainian conflict. Because the Kremlin has been able to portray current events in Ukraine through that lens, ordinary Russians have supported the war.

Diaspora politics

Bezan, Andreychuk and Freeland can all fairly claim to have a track record of promoting human rights generally, but the three are also more than casually involved in Russian and Ukrainian affairs, as is apparent at a glance from their social media.

James Bezan's Twitter account shows him meeting in recent days with a Ukrainian parliamentary delegation and Ukraine's ambassador to Canada. Senator Andreychuk's account shows her in Kyiv last month, attending a security forum and "condemning Russian aggression & support 4 Ukrainian sovereignty".

Another shows her posing on the steps of Parliament with Canadian and Ukrainian flags. At the time of writing, eight of Andreychuk's last 10 tweets were about Russia or Ukraine (none of them about the Magnitsky law).

The Magnitsky bill may do good service in the cause of justice. But its proponents' association with Ukrainian causes will inevitably be used in Russia to dismiss it as just another diaspora poke at the bear.

Twitter - James Bezan: Great meeting w/ with my #CPC colleagues, a Ukrainian parliamentary delegation & @AShevch, Ukraine's ambassador to Canada #cdnpoli

Lawyer in Russian Whistleblowing Case Badly Injured in 4-Story Fall

Oligarchs still in control in Russia

By Ed Adamczyk  

The lawyer for the family of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky was seriously injured in a four-story fall, officials said. Magnitsky died in police custody in 2009. Photo by Voice of America

(UPI) -- The lawyer for the family of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky was seriously injured in a four-story fall, officials said.

Russia media reported that Nikolai Gorokhov fell when a rope broke as he and several others were attempting to lift a bathtub into his home near Moscow on Tuesday, the BBC reported.

Amazing coincidence

The incident occurred a day before Gorokhov as scheduled to appear in a Moscow appeals court in connection with the Magnitsky case. Magnitsky died in prison in 2009; his family said he was jailed, tortured and denied medical treatment as retribution for accusing law enforcement and tax officials of stealing $230 million in state funds. His death prompted a 2012 law in the United States, allowing sanctions against abusers of human rights in Russia.

Bill Browder, a British businessman and co-founder of investment firm Hermitage Capital Management, who has worked with Gorokhov, said in a statement Tuesday that Gorokhov was "thrown from the fourth floor of his apartment building," without identifying a source for his allegation.

A medical source said Gorokhov sustained serious injuries and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, the BBC added.

It's a wonder he wasn't thrown out of the helicopter.

Putin's Russia Looking More and More Like Stalin's USSR

Sex tape scandal was work of Putin, says Russian political activist exposed in video

Natalia Pelevina says Russian president ordered FSB to record her and fellow Putin opponent having sex

By Susan Ormiston, CBC News 

Pelevina and Ormiston, Susan Ormiston's career spans more than 25 years reporting from hot spots such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Haiti, Lebanon and South Africa.

Natalia Pelevina, a Russian political activist at the heart of a shocking sex scandal, has no doubts about who is responsible for revealing her affair with a former Russian prime minister.

A secret video of her and Mikhail Kasyanov showing intimate bedroom sex scenes and frank private conversations was baldly exposed last Friday on national television.

Pelevina is convinced the Russian security services planted the recording devices to entrap the couple at the behest of the president.

"It had to be Putin. I have no doubt about that," Pelevina told CBC during an exclusive interview in Moscow this week.

She hadn't spoken publicly about the sex scandal since it broke last week. Kasyanov is chairman of PARNAS, a liberal opposition party in Russia. Pelevina is his political assistant and was, until this week, a member of the party executive.

Russian broadcaster NTV aired a 40-minute special program liberally laced with scenes from the secretly taped video of the two.


Natalia Pelevina believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is ultimately responsible for the release of a video showing her and her lover, Mikhail Kasyanov, having sex. The tape was played on national Russian television last week. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)

Since being turfed from Vladimir Putin's government in 2004, Kasyanov has been a prominent Kremlin critic.

The black and white video played on NTV, with clear audio, first showed Pelevina in sexy lingerie, then the two lovers naked in various stages of cooing and lovemaking. It seemed to have been quickly edited to highlight salacious, sometimes cringing moments of intimate talk between the two.

"What has come out, the just unthinkable awfulness of it, really tells me that he (Putin) did not only go after Kasyanov this time. The goal was to destroy him," Pelevina told CBC News.


There were warning signs

Pelevina believes a surveillance camera was installed behind a bedroom wall and a microphone hidden under the kitchen table in a private Moscow apartment owned by Kasyanov.

Pelevina and Kasyanov often met there during their long affair. She is 38 and single; he is 58, married with two children. They worked together in the trenches of Russia's battered opposition. Both were deep in preparations for this fall's parliamentary elections when the video emerged.


Secret sex tape


Pelevina believes the secret surveillance of a private apartment owned by Kasyanov, a married father of two, was carried out by Russia's security services and lasted six months. (NTV)

Pelevina, born in Moscow, lived in Britain until four years ago. She's been an activist with the Magnitksy Justice Campaign, formed in support of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison after blowing the whistle on corruption in Russian state-owned enterprises. She returned to Moscow, she says, to actively work with Russia's opposition.

She acknowledges she and Kasyanov were careless in their relationship, especially given that they had received warning signs that they were being watched. At a restaurant recently, the owner left them a note in their menu saying, "Don't go in there," indicating a corner room. "It was bugged just before you arrived."

They had discussed how they might be tailed and watched.

"We never thought they would go this far," Pelevina said.


6 months of surveillance

NTV did not explain how it got the secret video, but the channel is close to the Kremlin. The footage that aired appeared to show one night of sex, but Pelevina says the scenes were edited together from, she believes, six months of secret surveillance. She is horrified thinking the couple may have been spied on for that long.

There were obvious signs that pressure was building on Kasyanov — beginning in January, when Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted video of Kasyanov inside a sniper's crosshairs. A few weeks later, he was "pied" in the face at a restaurant, a favourite threatening tactic of provocateurs.


Kasyanov is chairman of PARNAS, a liberal opposition party in Russia, and was prime minister before he fell out of favour and was ousted by Putin in 2004. Pelevina is his political assistant and was a member of the party executive until she resigned this week. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)

In an interview with CBC in February, Kasyanov said "the situation is worsening every day. Putin's pursuing a tough policy, squeezing the whole political environment in Russia. We have permanent blackmailing of the opposition. We face problems every day."

Kasyanov's adultery wasn't the only "revelation" in the video. Clear audio recordings reveal Pelevina, a would-be parliamentary candidate, aggressively badmouthing other leaders of the opposition. She is heard saying that an alliance with opposition leader Alexei Navalny was necessary, but she clearly detests him.

"Navalny is a piece of shit," she's heard to say.

She goes on to call the deputy chairman of PARNAS, Ilya Yashin, "a freak who's willing to sell his place in the campaign for $30,000."


In an exclusive interview with CBC News, Pelevina told Susan Ormiston she's convinced Putin's aim was to 'destroy' Kasyanov, who is running in the fall parliamentary elections and has been the target of past intimidation tactics along with other members of the opposition. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)

Kasyanov is heard trying to subdue her strong opinions, then telling her he'll put her in the Duma (Russia's parliament) and build the party around her.

The political talk is edited over scenes in the bedroom appearing as if it was pillow talk, but Pelevina says much of it was said over wine and cheese in the kitchen, where they often unloaded daily frustrations and talked politics.


'The words I used were foul, but I'm human'

Pelevina has resigned her seat on PARNAS's political council in the wake of the scandal.

"I'm not making excuses but … they cut all the terrible things in such a way that it looks like one crazy verbal explosion, and it was never like that," she said. "The words I used were foul, but I'm human, and when you get upset, you sometimes say things you regret."

But there is no doubt the video hurts the opposition, already weak and struggling to unite in order to present a stronger alternative to an overwhelmingly popular governing party. With only five months to go before the election for the Duma, the opposition is reeling.


Dimitry Nekrasov, a moderate opposition politician, says the greater crime in the sex tape scandal is not adultery but using state power to suppress opposition. (Jean Francois Bisson/CBC)

"I don't want them (security services) to succeed in this. It's not right," said Pelevina. "All of us have sacrificed a lot. It's a tough life in Russia right now, and to be in opposition, it's like being at war."

'The most damaging information was not the fact of sexual affairs of Mr. Kasyanov, 

but the fact of using state power, state secret services, against the opposition.'

- Dmitry Nekrasov, opposition politician

Media reported that millions of Russians watched the NTV broadcast, which raised the bar on political sabotage to new levels, even in a country used to political smut.

"It's damaging, of course," says Dmitry Nekrasov, running for a seat in the Duma this fall.

"But it won't be as damaging for Kasyanov as if it happened in many Western countries. It won't be so harmful.

"In Russia, there's a lot of damaging information regarding all politicians, and it's used from time to time by different parties. That's why people don't believe in many things."


Use of state power against the opposition

Nekrasov concurs that Kasyanov should have been far more careful in the current climate of surveillance.

But "in my opinion, the most damaging information was not the fact of sexual affairs of Mr. Kasyanov, but the fact of using state power, state secret services, against the opposition," Nekrasov siad.

'The fact that Mikhail was and is married, yes, it is wrong, 

but unfortunately, what we felt was stronger than that fact.'

- Natalia Pelevina

"Nothing we did was illegal," said Pelevina angrily. She paused, trying to collect herself. Speaking about the affair is clearly painful for her.

"The fact that Mikhail was and is married, yes, it is wrong, but unfortunately, what we felt was stronger than that fact. We weren't able to end the relationship."

The secret surveillance wasn't the first attack aimed at Pelevina. Only three weeks ago, she was charged with possessing a pen-size spy camera, the kind you can buy at a gadget shop. She says it was a gag gift from her sister. She now faces a criminal charge, and even though she has British residency, she cannot leave Moscow. If convicted, she can never run for political office.


Mikhail Kasyanov and Boris Nemtsov


Kasyanov and fellow opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered on a Moscow bridge in February 2015.

As for Kasyanov, the married man, father and seasoned warrior of Russian politics, he has yet to surface to explain his behaviour. It's not at all clear whether, in political affairs, this is his fatal blow.

But in the affairs of the heart? The tryst, exposed for all of Russia to see, has left many people deeply hurt and damaged.

Pelevina is humiliated. The affair, she says, is over.

"I wish he (Kasyanov) had had better judgment. I wish he had known that this would be possible," she said.

Pelevina said she spoke to Kasyanov several days after the scandal broke. He was very emotional.

"[He said], 'I did this to you. I did it.' And he did. I trusted him to know these things," said Pelevina, tears welling up.

"But I can't be angry at him, because I loved that man very much."

Russian politics is cutthroat. This isn't the first dirty sex tape scandal, nor will it be the last. There is a degree of indifference to yet more political dirty tricks; they're predictable.

While not as violent as Stalin's reign of terror, Putin is exercising autocratic control over politics and the media. He destroys the opposition through any means he can including murder. 

It's a shame! The man is brilliant enough to keep his job and excel both nationally and internationally. Perhaps it is his KGB paranoia that causes him to resort to ruthlessness. Pity, he could bring Russian society into the 21st century by simply behaving with some kind of integrity.