Anti-corruption activist Bill Browder has called on the United States to impose visa bans on British lawyers, whom he accused of “enabling” Russian oligarchs.
The US-born financier, an outspoken and longtime critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said imposing such a ban would be at the heart of what he described as a continuing problem for oligarchs using the UK legal system against journalists and petitioners. signals, binding lead them to expensive lawsuits.
Browder suggested that sanctions could ultimately be targeted at any legal and financial experts who could be shown to have helped the oligarchs hide their assets, but said his initial blacklist focused on British lawyers. involved in defamation cases.
Browder described “this whole class of British lawyers, instructed by Russians and those with ties to Russia to sue journalists, dissidents and informers, including me, and they make money.”
“There’s this industry,” Browder said. “It will be quite difficult to legitimize the idea that the plaintiff can hire a lawyer to try defamation, because how do you determine what is good and what is bad? But if you identify a lawyer who has done this regularly – persecutes people – the United States should not give them a visa to come to this country.
The activist proved his influence on Capitol Hill. In a recent statement, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin called Browder a “hero” to “many” in the Senate for his work on the Magnitsky Act, a two-party Obama-era bipartisan bill named after former Browder tax attorney Sergei Magnitsky who died in police custody in Russia in 2009
The law is designed to allow the United States to punish officials involved in Magnitsky’s death, but also authorizes the United States to sanction human rights violators and ban them from entering the country.
Browder said he was seeking the support of senators and members of Congress to write a letter to the US State Department listing the names of specific lawyers whose visas he believes should be revoked. He did not name the lawyers who could appear on the list.
Browder also argues that targeting oligarchs, such as lawyers and accountants, would be an effective way to find their money, at least half of which he says ends up in Putin’s coffers as part of the Kremlin’s pact with the oligarchs.
“There will now be a lot of smart work by law enforcement to deal with avoiding sanctions. “These people have been around us in the past,” Browder said. “They have created the most stable mechanisms for asset protection with trustees, holding companies, nominees and proxies in offshore areas.
Finding the oligarchs’ money, he said, would be an “almost impossible task.” He said he would like to add an amendment to the current sanctions law to hold lawyers, accountants, bankers and other financial advisers accountable – including possible imprisonment – if it is found that they have set up structures to avoid sanctions.
“Very soon the whole system will become very transparent,” he said.
Browder’s remarks follow his recent testimony before the Helsinki Commission, an independent body consisting of nine members of the US House of Representatives, nine senators and one member of the US Department of State, Defense and Trade. The commission aims to help formulate a policy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the hearing focused on the Western “activators” of the Putin regime.
Browder’s recommendations in his testimony included the United States establishing a list of law firms, PR firms and investigative firms involved in “enabling dictatorships and oligarchs to persecute journalists” and banning the US government from doing business with them; abolition of visas for “foreign associates”, application of rules according to which lawyers and public relations firms must disclose their work to foreign governments; and the creation of new laws to protect journalists from so-called SLAPP cases, which aim to intimidate the press.
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