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CEO tells lawmakers to stand their ground on Russia rights bill
A prominent international investor who has been instrumental in the push for human-rights legislation related to Russia is exhorting lawmakers to stand their ground against White House and business efforts to weaken the bill.
Bill Browder, the CEO of London’s Heritage Capital Management, is visiting Capitol Hill this week in an effort to solidify support for legislation that would punish Russians involved in the death of attorney Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. Magnitsky, a friend of Browder’s, died in a Russian holding cell after testifying against officials accused of corruption.
“The story is so shocking that once you hear it, you can’t help but want to do something about it,” Browder told The Hill.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will convene Tuesday to mark up legislation. To the surprise of some business lobbyists, the Senate Finance Committee intends to link the human-rights measure to another, time-sensitive bill that would grant permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to Russia.
The PNTR bill must pass Congress by August if U.S. exports are to avoid a competitive disadvantage when Russia joins the World Trade Organization.
Passage of a strong Magnitsky bill is not assured. The Obama administration has qualms with it, and has been pushing a provision that would allow the State Department to keep secret the names of people targeted for human-rights abuses.
Browder blasted the administration’s resistance, comparing it to the way former U.S. administrations failed to confront South African apartheid in the 1980s.
“This blew up in their face,” he said. “Every executive body in every government of the world has the same approach: Don’t pick a fight with the Russians. Every administration had the same approach with South Africa, until the anti-apartheid movement got going.”
Browder wants lawmakers to secure a commitment from State that the 60 Russians accused of abuses in the Magnitsky case will be sanctioned.
“If this administration’s intent is honorable … then they should make it clear and public upfront that the Magnitsky 60 are not going to be made classified and not going to be excluded because of national security.”
There is also opposition in the House to linking the Magnitsky bill to the trade-relations vote, including from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.).
Browder has met with Camp and said he is “sympathetic” to the Magnitsky story and might help in getting the bill through the House, either in parallel with the trade bill or ahead of it.
Browder said he came to Washington this week to settle House uneasiness with the bill, counter administration foot-dragging and quell big-business efforts to gut it.
He’ll be aided in that effort Tuesday by the release of a short movie, “The Magnitsky Files,” that will recount, in graphic detail, the treatment the attorney received in Russia.
“The bill is pretty much going in our favor, but what this is going to do is shame anyone who is arguing against the bill,” Browder said of the film. “There are some people who argue we should just do business and look the other way when you see a murder. And you just can’t do that.”
Juleanna Glover, a former adviser to George W. Bush and McCain who is now an adviser at the Ashcroft Group, is assisting Browder in the lobbying push.
They have faced opposition from business lobbyists, who succeeded in limiting the scope of the bill to Russia after a lobbying blitz led by the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC). They are also grappling with public threats from the Russian government over the bill.
Browder, who has decades of experience doing business in Russia and has been banned from visiting the country over his human-rights crusade, said the Kremlin’s threats of retaliation are mere bluster.
“If you have read the words of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin in the last three days, he is now backtracking on this highly hostile approach that the Russian ambassador has been taking. He’s essentially saying this is not that big a deal; he’s attributing it to American politics,” he said.
He said arguments by big business that the “agent clause” could be used to persecute American companies with only limited ties to any abuses — such as Microsoft or IBM, which might have supplied software or computers to companies employing abusers — ring hollow.
“That’s not going to happen. That’s a straw man,” he said.
Browder is more open to compromise on whether the bill should apply to abuses outside Russia, although he personally thinks it should apply widely.
“I know the administration is desperately against global application,” he said.
On the core issue of punishing those whom Browder believes cruelly killed his friend, the London investor gives no ground.
“How much money is it worth to look the other way when you have these types of facts, when a young man has been tortured to death by named corrupt individuals that we are trying to ban?” he said. “The first people who should be shamed is any business group that says this shouldn’t be done. … Whatever their business is, they should be ashamed of themselves.”
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