Bill Browder and the Magnitsky Act. Humanitarian Act or Big Scam?

sbenois said:
Only if it is being given out by a lunatic.

 You need to spend time reading that Big Lies in the US article. 

Actually I don't.  I have no intention of reading any crap that you post.

Thanks anyway.   

nan said:

dave said:
Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao conveniently left off that list, if we're tallying up history's death tolls.  At least they're beyond the reach of the Magnitsky Act, so nan should be happy with that.

 In the last 50 years, the US wins the "Jerk Country" award.  Time to stop blaming Russia before we have nuclear war to prove we are nicer.

 I don't blame Russia for invading Crimea. I mean, it was just sitting right there.

dave23 said:

nan said:

dave said:
Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao conveniently left off that list, if we're tallying up history's death tolls.  At least they're beyond the reach of the Magnitsky Act, so nan should be happy with that.

 In the last 50 years, the US wins the "Jerk Country" award.  Time to stop blaming Russia before we have nuclear war to prove we are nicer.

 I don't blame Russia for invading Crimea. I mean, it was just sitting right there.

 Looks like they are doing OK there now and voting in calm elections.  Meanwhile are election system can be hacked by an 11 year old. Maybe we have bigger problems than Russia?

A Look at the Russian Presidential Election From Crimea

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-look-at-the-russian-presidential-election-from-crimea/

A little remarked fact underscores my argument for the key importance of the Crimean vote: the precise date selected to hold the presidential election across the Russian Federation, March 18. That is the anniversary of the formal unification, the culmination of the Crimean Spring of 2014, which followed by several days the original referendum approving unification. It will be recalled that the validity of that first referendum has been denied by Russia’s Western detractors, who insist the result was forced by the presence of Russian troops in the streets and an atmosphere of intimidation coming from pro- and anti-Russian demonstrations. The vote in 2018 has taken place in a totally calm situation, which removes all possibility of reservations about validity unless violations at polling stations could be identified.

Not surprised that you support Russian incursions but not those by the US. 

Nan - do you believe Alexei Navalny should have been allowed to run again Putin?

Do you see Russia and US to be similar democracies?

jamie said:
Nan - do you believe Alexei Navalny should have been allowed to run again Putin?
Do you see Russia and US to be similar democracies?

 Are you a Alexei Navalny fan?

Ukraine’s Anti-Roma Pogroms Ignored as Russia is Blamed for Global Far Right Resurgence

Now Clinton is alleging that the rise of the far right entirely originates from Russia with Putin as its “leader.” To be clear, Putin’s brand of conservatism is not consistent with the ideological character of the far right in the West, including that which contributed to Brexit and Trump’s election. While it is true that zealots such as Marine Le Pen, Richard Spencer and Nigel Farage have professed affinity for Russia based on their perception of its supposed lack of multiculturalism, it is because they are as ignorant about life in Moscow as Russophobic liberals like Clinton. While European countries and the United States are restricting immigration, Putin’s policies are relatively relaxed in comparison. Russia is home to the world’s 2nd largest number of immigrants at more than 11 million foreigners present in the country. In fact, it is more likely that Trump, Ukip or National Front would be the opposition to Putin in an election in Russia, not part of his support or his political party (United Russia). The Islamophobic character of the far right in the EU and US would be inconceivable as an electable majority in Moscow, considering Muslims make up nearly nearly 20% of the Russian population at 25 million people. Contrary to their misconception, Russia is inherently multicultural — it consists of more than 120 different nationalities, with V.I. Lenin once famously describing it as “the prison house of nations.” Finally, the biggest irony of Clinton’s claims is that the opposition figure who is frequently touted by the West, Alexei Navalny, is far more anti-immigrant and xenophobic in a way that resembles Donald Trump than Putin. Navalny has strong ties to Russian ultranationalists like Dmitriy Demushkin from the Slavic Union and has participated in demonstrations advocating the separation of the Muslim-majority North Caucasus from Russia. He even coined the slogan, “Stop Feeding the Caucasus!” which became a rallying cry for Russia’s far right nationalists who scapegoat the ethnic and religious minorities in the region plagued by a history of Chechen terrorism for Russia’s woes. Trump would probably consider Navalny’s supporters “very fine people.”

dave23 said:
Not surprised that you support Russian incursions but not those by the US. 

 Did not say that.

nan said:

dave23 said:
Not surprised that you support Russian incursions but not those by the US. 

 Did not say that.

 You just think they are doing fine. You have strangely selective outrage. You also need to work on your topic-avoidance skills. It's simply too obvious when you aren't comfortable talking about a certain topic.

dave23 said:

nan said:

dave23 said:
Not surprised that you support Russian incursions but not those by the US. 

 Did not say that.

 You just think they are doing fine. You have strangely selective outrage. You also need to work on your topic-avoidance skills. It's simply too obvious when you aren't comfortable talking about a certain topic.

 No, but I don't like it when you put words in my mouth.  I have stated my position clearly.  I don't think Russia gets reported on accurately on in western media.  I think they are portrayed as in far more negative terms than they deserve, and the history of US interference is never mentioned.  As for their doing fine, I would not know that.  I'm thinking they are doing more fine than we think.  But, we think they are the inner circle of Hell.

I only asked if Navalny should have been allowed to run and you bring up some article about Clinton?  Hih?

jamie said:
I only asked if Navalny should have been allowed to run and you bring up some article about Clinton?  Hih?

 Well he seems odious.  Why are you worried about him not being able to run?  Don't we have enough election problems here in the US?  An 11 year old girl is able to hack into our election system and change votes.  Might be time to let Russia run things all by themselves, especially after all the "help" we gave them in the 1990's and with the Ukraine.

nan said:

dave23 said:

nan said:

dave23 said:
Not surprised that you support Russian incursions but not those by the US. 

 Did not say that.

 You just think they are doing fine. You have strangely selective outrage. You also need to work on your topic-avoidance skills. It's simply too obvious when you aren't comfortable talking about a certain topic.

 No, but I don't like it when you put words in my mouth.  I have stated my position clearly.  I don't think Russia gets reported on accurately on in western media.  I think they are portrayed as in far more negative terms than they deserve, and the history of US interference is never mentioned.  As for their doing fine, I would not know that.  I'm thinking they are doing more fine than we think.  But, we think they are the inner circle of Hell.

 Someone has to put words in your mouth because you frequently avoid specifics and either change the subject or post meaningless, vague copy/paste jobs. And the "they didn't do it and so do we" defense isn't as convincing as you think it is.

nan said:

jamie said:
I only asked if Navalny should have been allowed to run and you bring up some article about Clinton?  Hih?

 Well he seems odious.  Why are you worried about him not being able to run?  Don't we have enough election problems here in the US?  An 11 year old girl is able to hack into our election system and change votes.  Might be time to let Russia run things all by themselves, especially after all the "help" we gave them in the 1990's and with the Ukraine.

 Just wanted to know if you were ok with Putin choosing his opponents, this says a lot.

jamie said:

nan said:

jamie said:
I only asked if Navalny should have been allowed to run and you bring up some article about Clinton?  Hih?

 Well he seems odious.  Why are you worried about him not being able to run?  Don't we have enough election problems here in the US?  An 11 year old girl is able to hack into our election system and change votes.  Might be time to let Russia run things all by themselves, especially after all the "help" we gave them in the 1990's and with the Ukraine.

 Just wanted to know if you were ok with Putin choosing his opponents, this says a lot.

 Are you fine with the US interfering with Russia elections, putting Boris Yeltsen in place and then bankrupting the country and causing widespread starvation and misery?  Have not heard that bothering you, so I will assume not.   So now, you are worried that the person in charge, who was freely elected, did not have Russia's version of Donald Trump to run against?  And this is our business how?  Also, I remember reading about this and I'm trying to find the article, but I don't think the way the Western media portrays that election was  accurate. 

This Russian madness has to stop.  While looking for that article, I accidentally came across this one discussing Browder, and then after reading it realized it was written by Paul Street, the guy who wrote the 10 biggest US lies article that I based a thread.  This one is really good too:

Reflections on Media Gone Russia-Wild

excerpt:

Why does the former KGB official Vladimir Putin hate William Browder? Is it all because of Earl Browder’s misleadership of the American proletariat during the 1930s and 1940s?  (That was a joke.) No, it’s about how Browder conducted his affairs when he swept into Russia and became a ruthless, spectacularly wealthy Russian financial oligarch in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Backed global money-men Edmond Safra and Beny Steinmetz, Browder’s firm Hermitage Capital became the leading foreign investment portfolio in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. Browder made a fortune off the collapse of Russian socialism, filling his coffers while the collapse of social protections and the advance of the so-called free market drastically increased Russian mortality.  Browder profited from the great sell-off of Russian public and natural resources while ordinary Russian struggled with U.S-led capitalist “shock therapy.”

There was a brief specter haunting Browder’s success by the mid-1990s. Yeltsin’s opponent in the 1996 Russian election was the communist Gennady Zyuganov, who threatened to re-expropriate privatized Russian companies.  That would have called off the great plutocratic dispossession and enclosure that was fueling the rise of a new state-capitalist oligarchy in Russia. Browder’s his wealth. “I can stomach strikes, food shortages, and street crime,” Browder (still technically a U.S. citizen) said, “but not government expropriation.”

A great statement of Western capitalist humanism: Browder could have dealt with people starving and mugging each other in the streets, but the Russian government taking back public resources he and other capitalist oligarchs had stolen was too much.

Faced with the specter of Zyuganov, Browder, Safra, Steinmetz and more native Russian oligarchs joined their normally contentious deep pockets hands long enough ensure the drunken Yeltsin’s re-election. The United States helped Yeltsin win with a little “election meddling” of the right kind –election meddling conducted by the United States.

How did Browder make it on to the poison-door-knob **** list of “the world’s most powerful man” (according to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria), the Russian president? Putin didn’t and doesn’t mind cold-blooded and hard-nosed wealth acquisition.  He’s all in with gangster state capitalism.

Still, callous fortune accumulation in Russia must proceed according to Putin’s dictates and on Putin’s terms. Browder broke two of Putin’s rules.  First, he violated Russian national sovereignty concerns by using Russian front-men to circumvent restrictions means to prevent foreigners from gaining control over Russian oil and gas.

Second, Browder got too greedy for his own good.  He hired the Russian auditor Sergei Magnitsky to exploit Russian loopholes (including the establishment of dummy companies in underdeveloped tax-free Russian zones) to take over Russian companies and to avoid paying Russian taxes. Magnitsky and Browder were ingenious, deploying numerous elaborate schemes to attack Russian firms and escape government levies.

When the ruses were discovered, Browder was abroad, having taken millions of dollars with him. Magnitsky was jailed for financial chicanery and tax evasion. Browder’s Russian assets were seized. When Magnitsky died in jail from natural causes in 2009, Browder constructed an Orwellian narrative that was swallowed whole by Western media. In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, he told childishly and/or cynically believing establishment US politicos and media operatives that his “lawyer” Magnitsky had heroically exposed financial misdeeds and thievery on the part of Russian government officials. Because of this marvelous and idealist muckraking, Browder claimed, Magnitsky had been imprisoned and tortured to death at Putin’s command. Using Magnitsky as his moral cover, Browder demanded the recovery of his lost Russian assets.  He managed along the way to charge that anti-Semitism was part of why he was being oppressed by Putin.

Browder’s deceptive public relations campaign against Putin became a critical development in the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations and the crystallization of the full-on New Cold War. In 2012, the US Congress passed, and president Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which said that any Russian found responsible for Magnitsky’s death and/or the “misappropriation” of Browder’s assets could have their U.S. assets seized and their U.S. banks accounts frozen automatically, without any due process.  Adding insult to injury, these dastardly Russians could no longer travel to the U.S. It was an opening act on the path to bigger and more significant sanctions to come in subsequent years.

Why not answer the question and then move to your broader point?

Nan’s answer to everything- US is as bad as Russia- Magnitsky died under great conditions in prison- Putin is unfairly treated because of what Browder singlehandedly did to Russia.  Oh and Hillary is bad - Bernie is great.

jamie said:
Nan’s answer to everything- US is as bad as Russia- Magnitsky died under great conditions in prison- Putin is unfairly treated because of what Browder singlehandedly did to Russia.  Oh and Hillary is bad - Bernie is great.

 Not my answer to everything and not even accurate:  The US is worse than Russia.  Magnitsky did not die in great conditions--his health was neglected and he was abandoned by Bill Browder who now exploits him for his own personal gain.  Browder got the Cold War off the ground and his story is so lame, you have to be an idiot to believe it, but it's working well for propaganda so mainstream media just accepts it without question.  Yes Hillary is a corporatist war monger who should not have been allowed to buy the nomination and Bernie is doing good thing getting more and more Democrats to support Medicare for All.  He might help save those loathsome Democrats after all, not that they would thank him.

What do you disagree with here?

you really hate the US - have you thought about moving to Russia?

jamie said:
you really hate the US - have you thought about moving to Russia?

Being critical of a place does not mean you hate it.  Moving to Russia is not an option. We don't agree.  Why are you being so provocative?

jamie said:
you really hate the US - have you thought about moving to Russia?

Age has done nothing to improve the “love it or leave it” retort.

nan,

Can you stop with the whataboutism? It's really tiring. Half the time someone asks you a question about A, your response is "well, what about B?", as if if B did something bad, that resolves the issue with A.

It's really tiresome, and intellectually dishonest.

drummerboy said:
nan,
Can you stop with the whataboutism? It's really tiring. Half the time someone asks you a question about A, your response is "well, what about B?", as if if B did something bad, that resolves the issue with A.
It's really tiresome, and intellectually dishonest.

 Can you stop attacking me personally without examples?  That's lazy, troll-like behavior and tiresome and intellectually dishonest. 

Examples?

How about responding to a question about Crimea with a list of every U.S. military involvement? You do that kind of stuff all the time.

It's been said that Magnisky uncovered a lot of the details that led to the December 3rd, 2007 report.  Do you have proof that this isn't true? 

Can you explain what Magnitsky was ultimately found guilty of - along with the proof?

What would you say to his wife and son today - are they Browder puppets?

jamie said:
It's been said that Magnisky uncovered a lot of the details that led to the December 3rd, 2007 report.  Do you have proof that this isn't true? 

Can you explain what Magnitsky was ultimately found guilty of - along with the proof?
What would you say to his wife and son today - are they Browder puppets?

 Ok, I'm a bit confused about your question on the December 2007 report. What was the source of that question?  Magnitsky had been working for Browder as an accountant for a long time before Bowder claimed him as a lawyer in his book and he helped set up Browder's shell companies.  What do you think he was doing?

Anyway, Magnitsky was never found guilty because he died.  Browder was found guilty and sentenced to 9 years in prison, but he was already out of the country and spinning his story over here. He also lied and said Magnitsky was found guilty after death. For evidence of this see the Krainor book I sent you (might want to read it!).   On page 150 Browder is questioned under oath and presented with evidence and he still just lies:

Browder suggests that Putin was creating legal history through this process. The last time, “a dead person had been prosecuted in Europe,” explains Browder, “was in AD 897, when the Catholic Church convicted Pope Formosus posthumously, cut of his papal fingers and threw his body
into the River Tiber.” You see, Putin’s prosecution of Browder and Magnitsky was just that insanely scandalous and medieval. Browder again ventures to interpret for us the evil tyrant’s twisted logic: “In Putin’s mind, if he had a court judgment against Sergei and me, his officials could then visit all the European governments who were considering their own version of the Magnitsky Act and say, ‘How can you put a piece of legislation in place that is named after a criminal convicted in our court? And how can you listen to his advocate, who has been convicted of the same crime?’ ”

“... Sergei and me,” cries Browder... the evil Russians convicted two innocent lambs of “the same crime...” Except this is not exactly what happened: the only person convicted of the crime was Bill Browder.

Hiding behind the deceased Magnitsky and pretending to be “his advocate,” was just another one of Browder’s deceptive three-card montes. When Mr. Cymrot produced a copy of his conviction with an English translation, the following exchange ensued:

Mr. Cymrot: You have said many times that Mr. Magnitsky was convicted posthumously. You’ve said that?
Browder: Yes
Mr. Cymrot: And on the first page it appears that it’s dismissed against Mr. Magnitsky, correct?
Browder: No.
Mr. Cymrot: Under paragraph 4 of Article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation. Do you see that?
Browder: Yes.
Mr. Cymrot: So he wasn’t convicted posthumously, right? You were wrong about that?
Browder: No. I don’t – I don’t read it as such.
Mr. Cymrot: ... It says “sentenced.” ... The sentence only refers to you, correct?
Browder: I see my name here.
Mr. Cymrot: “William Felix Browder found guilty of committing two crimes” and – and then it goes on, right?
Browder: Correct.

Mr. Cymrot: And there’s nothing about Mr. Magnitsky being convicted of anything, correct?

Browder: I’m not a Russian criminal lawyer, so I couldn’t make a judgment about this – about this conviction.

Mr. Cymrot: Well, it appears from these two entries that you were wrong. That he was never convicted posthumously, right?

This exchange goes on another few pages in the transcript as Mr. Cymrot presses Browder to explain what exactly substantiates his claim that Mr. Magnitsky was convicted of anything. Browder can’t substantiate it because he is “not a Russian criminal lawyer,” but he insists nevertheless, that
Magnitsky was in fact posthumously convicted and refuses to acknowledge that he could be wrong. Mr. Cymrot then changes tack, continuing to challenge Browder’s credibility from a different angle:

As for Magnitstky's family, I have no idea what they are doing.  They don't sound sincere.  It's possible they were paid off, as there is evidence that Browder has offered lots of money to get people to change their stories (see the Oleg Lurie testimony I posted before).  The interviewer does not ask them any challenging questions and is very sympathetic.  Or maybe they are delusional or maybe it's easier for them to think of Magnistky in a positive way--it does seem to work out well for them.  We don't have enough evidence.

just present the evidence Russia had to convict Sergei.  

jamie said:
just present the evidence Russia had to convict Sergei.  

 They did not convict him.  He was dead.

nan said:

Anyway, Magnitsky was never found guilty because he died.  

"MOSCOW (Reuters) - Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison in suspicious circumstances, was found guilty of tax evasion on Thursday in a posthumous trial that has further damaged President Vladimir Putin’s reputation in the West."

.....

"Amnesty International called Magnitsky’s prosecution - Russia’s first posthumous trial - “deeply sinister”, saying it “set a dangerous precedent that could open a whole new chapter in Russia’s worsening human rights record.”

The European Union said the trial sent “a disturbing message to those who fight corruption in Russia”. The U.S. State Department said it was “disappointed by the unprecedented posthumous criminal conviction against Sergei Magnitsky.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-magnitsky-idUSBRE96A09V20130711

cramer said:

nan said:

Anyway, Magnitsky was never found guilty because he died.  

"MOSCOW (Reuters) - Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison in suspicious circumstances, was found guilty of tax evasion on Thursday in a posthumous trial that has further damaged President Vladimir Putin’s reputation in the West."
.....
"Amnesty International called Magnitsky’s prosecution - Russia’s first posthumous trial - “deeply sinister”, saying it “set a dangerous precedent that could open a whole new chapter in Russia’s worsening human rights record.”
The European Union said the trial sent “a disturbing message to those who fight corruption in Russia”. The U.S. State Department said it was “disappointed by the unprecedented posthumous criminal conviction against Sergei Magnitsky.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-magnitsky-idUSBRE96A09V20130711





 

 But, but, but...Benghazi !