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Sergei Magnitsky was a 37-year-old lawyer who was beaten, deprived of vital medical attention, and left to die in a Russian prison nearly a year after uncovering a massive fraud allegedly committed by Russian officials to the tune of $230 million. The very people whom Magnitsky implicated in the fraud arrested him in 2008; a year after his murder, several of these officials were promoted and awarded, adding insult to the fatal injury inflicted on Magnitsky.

Magnitsky’s client, Hermitage Capital head Bill Browder, launched a full-court press to seek justice for his lawyer in the West in the absence of any possibility for justice inside Russia. Browder recounted Magnitsky’s riveting story to members of the U.S. Congress and anyone else who would listen. Fortunately, two Congressmen, Senator Ben Cardin (D–MD) and Representative Jim McGovern (D–MA), did listen, and they followed up by leading the campaign to adopt the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which was approved by the House in a 365–43 vote November 16, and by the Senate with an equally bipartisan landslide (92-4) on December 6. The Act will deny visas to and freeze the assets of those in the Russian ruling elite implicated in Magnitsky’s murder and other human rights violations and corruption. Various polls in Russia show support for the legislation by a ratio of more than two-to-one among those familiar with it. In targeting sanctions against corrupt and abusive Russian officials as opposed to the whole country, the Act resonates with the many Russians who are fed up with these kinds of problems in their country. The next critical step is to get European countries to adopt similar measures, which would have an even greater impact on those Russians who like to travel and do business in Europe.

There will likely be international ramifications to the approval of the Magnitsky Act —especially if it gets applied to other abusive officials elsewhere around the world; Senator Cardin strongly supports such an extension of the law’s reach. The Act is also bound to influence the Russian-American relationship—if not today, then in the future. If not implemented aggressively, the legislation risks ending up as yet another piece in the “Let’s Pretend” game that the West has long been playing with Russia and other authoritarian states. (Indeed some hope for this outcome.) This would expose the deep crisis affecting the Western world and signal a victory for the forces of authoritarian corruption seeking to demoralize Western society. The U.S. Congress must see to it that the Obama Administration implements the legislation in a serious manner.

To understand the significance of the Act, we have to see the “Magnitsky factor” in a broader historical and political context. During the Helsinki process of the early-to-mid-1970s, the West created a new foreign policy model of linkage between interests and values. While the West pursued this linkage inconsistently and often only rhetorically, it was recognized as the key principle of Western foreign policy doctrine. This recognition was reflected in the almost universal acceptance of the Helsinki Principles, according to which human rights are not merely the internal matter of a country. This principle is a key part of the OSCE and the European Council’s legal framework. It was translated into the philosophy of democracy promotion with the Western states and civic organizations that supported the building of democratic institutions (elections, parties, rule of law) in transition societies.

Regrettably, the Obama Administration announced early on in its reset policy with Russia that it was abandoning the notion of linkage between interests and values. This mistake essentially gave Putin a green light to engage in human rights abuses, secure in the knowledge that such actions would not affect the broader relationship. In passing the Magnitsky Act, Congress has fixed that mistake. Long before the Helsinki Accords, and consistent with them, the U.S. Congress approved the Jackson-Vanik amendment in 1974 to deprive countries of most favored nation trade status if they limited their citizens’ right to emigrate. The Magnitsky Act takes the premise behind Jackson-Vanik and updates it to apply it to today’s Russia. ...

Read the full text of this article in American Interest.