Seimas proposes 44 names for ‘Magnitsky list’

The resolution passed with 83 votes in favour, none against and one abstention.

“This resolution calls on the government to blacklist those people who specifically contributed to the murder of Magnitsky. We would then really have a Magnitsky list,” Conservative MP Gabrielius Landsbergis, the author of the resolution, told the Seimas.

Most of the people on the proposed list are Russian citizens, including Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Oleg Logunov, deputy head of the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee who oversaw the Magnitsky case, and judges Yelena Stashina, Aleksey Krivoruchko, Svetlana Ukhnalyova and Sergei Podoprigorov, as well as the heads of the Moscow tax authority, various civil servants and other persons.

Juozas Bernatonis, chairman of the Seimas Committee on Foreign Affairs, noted that all these people already are on the current blacklist of people barred from entering Lithuania,

“All these 44 people are already on the list. The initiators were late to publish these names. I don’t think we’ll add the same people to the list for the second time,” he said.

In the resolution, the Seimas also urges the national parliaments of other EU and NATO member states to adopt Magnitsky legislation.

Federica Mogherini, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, is invited to urge the European Commission to listen to the European Parliament‘s calls for imposing “Magnitsky sanctions” at the EU level and to begin, in the near future, a full-ranging debate on respective EU legislation.

The Seimas on Nov. 16 passed the so-called so-called Magnitsky law aimed at banning entry to foreigners involved in large-scale corruption, money laundering or human rights violations.

Under the law, which will come into effect next year, decisions on banning entry to such foreigners will be made by the interior minister at the foreign minister’s proposal.

The legislation is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was jailed after uncovering a 230-million-US-dollar tax fraud scheme and died in prison.

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