WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, today commented on the Treasury Department’s release of a list of individuals it has determined to be in violation of human rights in Russia as required by the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act enacted last December.
“Sergei Magnitsky was just a lawyer doing his job,” said Chairman Menendez. “His efforts to unmask massive corruption led to his death. The eighteen names on the Magnitsky list are the start of a process to hold violators accountable for human rights abuses and to use our foreign policy to shed light on abuse wherever it occurs.”
The Magnitsky Act, named for Russian anti-corruption activist and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in custody in 2009, withholds U.S. visas and freezes the assets of person determined under the Act to be responsible for or connected to his detention, abuse, and death, as well as those responsible for other gross human rights violations in Russia.
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