Panama tax evasion

[ICTChris]

Marine Le Pen implicated, LOL.

[AyrshireTon]

I'm not up on global economics.

Is this Panama thing the same thing which Krusty the Klown did in the episode where Bart wrote him a cheque trying to get his signature?

[doulikefish]

Marine Le Pen implicated, LOL.

So is the new Fifa president

[Joey Jo Jo Junior Shabadoo]

Is this Panama thing the same thing which Krusty the Klown did in the episode where Bart wrote him a cheque trying to get his signature?

Unfortunately I can't divulge any information about that customer's secret, illegal, account.

[strichener]

The allegations about the Putin money is that it has been used to launder money for and on behalf of those who use the banking facilities of Bank Rossiya in violation of both the letter and spirit of international economic sanctions, so yes, there is the suggestion of illegality by either or both of Putin and his associates.

Allegations!  So he hasn't broken any laws to the best of your knowledge?  Nothing to see here then and if you remain consistent in your approach you will tell us that it is a private matter.

[Sloop John B]

Icelandic PM has quit.

 

 

 

 

I'm looking forward to the Pirate Party taking over if there's a snap election currently leading the polls at 37%.Somalia better watch out.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Allegations! So he hasn't broken any laws to the best of your knowledge? Nothing to see here then and if you remain consistent in your approach you will tell us that it is a private matter.

If you don't think Putin and his cronies are thieves then clearly you are even more insular than I thought.

BTW check back to the original post - it's not just how Putin got his money but other political leaders as well. We only have to see Jacob Zuma in South Africa to see how corrupt some so-called democracies really are.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[strichener]

If you don't think Putin and his cronies are thieves then clearly you are even more insular than I thought.

BTW check back to the original post - it's not just how Putin got his money but other political leaders as well. We only have to see Jacob Zuma in South Africa to see how corrupt some so-called democracies really are.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It doesn't matter what I think or what you think.  The point was that Ad Lib basically stated that if the people adhered to the law then their financial affairs were a private matter. 

 

Now, if you can provide some evidence of the criminality of Putin...

[Shades75]

If you don't think Putin and his cronies are thieves then clearly you are even more insular than I thought.

BTW check back to the original post - it's not just how Putin got his money but other political leaders as well. We only have to see Jacob Zuma in South Africa to see how corrupt some so-called democracies really are.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

😂.

[welshbairn]

If you don't think Putin and his cronies are thieves then clearly you are even more insular than I thought.

BTW check back to the original post - it's not just how Putin got his money but other political leaders as well. We only have to see Jacob Zuma in South Africa to see how corrupt some so-called democracies really are.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

 

British and Irish leaders are just as corrupt, just a bit more subtle about it. I can't think of a British PM who hasn't left office with his wealth a large multiple of his career earnings, including Neil Kinnock as only party leader, and not including his and his missuses EU jobs. Charlie Haughey's annual maintenance bills on his properties were said to be equal to his declared lifetime earnings.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

British and Irish leaders are just as corrupt, just a bit more subtle about it. I can't think of a British PM who hasn't left office with his wealth a large multiple of his career earnings, including Neil Kinnock as only party leader, and not including his and his missuses EU jobs. Charlie Haughey's annual maintenance bills on his properties were said to be equal to his declared lifetime earnings.

Don't disagree with what you're saying at all - as I said it's not the tax avoidance that's the issue but how they got the money in the first place.

[doulikefish]

Our very own Hmrc rent a building from a company implicated in this,you couldnt make this up

[welshbairn]

Don't disagree with what you're saying at all - as I said it's not the tax avoidance that's the issue but how they got the money in the first place.

 

The real dirt is where they got their money but tax avoidance is still an issue for me especially for politicians who arrange for ordinary people to be sent to gaol for paltry amounts of undeclared income or claimants not declaring their boyfriend shared their bed quite frequently.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

It doesn't matter what I think or what you think. The point was that Ad Lib basically stated that if the people adhered to the law then their financial affairs were a private matter.

Now, if you can provide some evidence of the criminality of Putin...

In terms of international law he certainly is.

In Russian law perhaps a different matter since he just changes the laws to suit his and his cronies needs.

It is now no longer possible to distinguish where organised crime ends and the Russian state begins. The whole case around the state-sanctioned murder of Sergei Magnitsky shows how intertwined the Russian state and organised crime are.

An elite crime syndicate headed by gangster Dmitry Klyuev and including active agents of the Russian Interior Ministry and Moscow tax offices managed to steal close to $1 billion through fraudulent tax claims. $230 million was stolen in one day through corporate documents stolen from the business Hermitage Capital. When that group's attorney Sergei Magnitsky exposed this he was tortured, murdered and framed for the crime.

So is justice served up in Russia.

[ford prefect]

The real dirt is where they got their money but tax avoidance is still an issue for me especially for politicians who arrange for ordinary people to be sent to gaol for paltry amounts of undeclared income or claimants not declaring their boyfriend shared their bed quite frequently.

totally agree. The tories are on an ideological crusade against people claiming benefits, but won't do anything about their friends hiding their fortunes. The saddest thing is forelock tugging servile wretches defending their right to do.

[strichener]

In terms of international law he certainly is.

In Russian law perhaps a different matter since he just changes the laws to suit his and his cronies needs.

It is now no longer possible to distinguish where organised crime ends and the Russian state begins. The whole case around the state-sanctioned murder of Sergei Magnitsky shows how intertwined the Russian state and organised crime are.

An elite crime syndicate headed by gangster Dmitry Klyuev and including active agents of the Russian Interior Ministry and Moscow tax offices managed to steal close to $1 billion through fraudulent tax claims. $230 million was stolen in one day through corporate documents stolen from the business Hermitage Capital. When that group's attorney Sergei Magnitsky exposed this he was tortured, murdered and framed for the crime.

So is justice served up in Russia.

Which international laws specifically?

[Ad Lib]

Allegations! So he hasn't broken any laws to the best of your knowledge? Nothing to see here then and if you remain consistent in your approach you will tell us that it is a private matter.

What the f**k even is this?

It is perfectly reasonable to expect journalists to report on allegations of criminality. This is completely different from compromising the client confidentiality of those who are not alleged to have broken any laws.

[AyrshireTon]

Statement from No. 10 that Cameron and his kids do not benefit from this Panama stuff.

Forgetting to add "until his father dies" at the end.

[dogmc]

What the f**k even is this?

It is perfectly reasonable to expect journalists to report on allegations of criminality. This is completely different from compromising the client confidentiality of those who are not alleged to have broken any laws.

As opposed to helping the tories attack the poorest people in society for being allocated accommodation that has an extra room. Lib dem hypocrisy at its rankest. Politicians lying. ...morally acceptable.....politicians embezzling expenses then wandering back into cabinet a year later morally acceptable.....corrupt millionaire politicians avoiding tax morally acceptable......poor people with an extra bedroom and getting free prescriptions totally unacceptable snpbad.....

[DeeTillEhDeh]

There a variety of reports on Human Rights abuses in Russia. 

 

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH 2015 REPORT - https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/russia

 

 

The Kremlin took another leap backward in 2014 by intensifying its crackdown on civil society, media, and the Internet, as it sought to control the narrative about developments in Ukraine, including Russia’s occupation of Crimea and its support to insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

 

Parliament adopted laws, and authorities engaged in practices, that increasingly isolated the country and inflamed a level of anti-Western hysteria unseen since the Soviet era.

 

Freedom of Association

 

In June, parliament amended Russia’s 2012 “Foreign Agent†law, which demonizes advocacy groups that accept foreign funding, by authorizing the Justice Ministry to register groups as foreign agents without their consent. By November, the ministry had forcibly registered 17 independent groups as such.

 

On December 17, the Supreme Court was due to review a Justice Ministry complaint against the Memorial umbrella organization requesting its closure under the pretext of technical breach of Russia’s nongovernmental organization (NGO) legislation.

 

In September, a court vacated a previous ruling against Golos, an election monitoring group, for failing to register as a “foreign agent†due to lack of evidence that the group accepted foreign funding. However, at time of writing Golos remained on the “foreign agents†registry.

 

Freedom of Expression

 

Russian authorities blocked several independent media websites, adopted new laws, and proposed yet more measures that would further stifle freedom of expression.

 

In January 2014, TV Rain, one of Russia’s few independent television stations, lost access to cable and satellite television after it posted a viewers’ poll about whether the USSR should have surrendered Leningrad during World War II to save lives.

 

In March, the state agency for media oversight blocked three independent websites and an opposition leader’s blog under a new law authorizing the prosecutor general to request that the agency block websites without a court order. Also in March, the editor and executive director of Lenta.ru, an independent current affairs portal, were dismissed and replaced by pro-Kremlin media executives.

 

In April, the founder and CEO of VKontakte, the most popular Russian-language social network, announced he had left Russia because of persistent demands by the Federal Security Service to block opposition users and communities. In September, an Internet company controlled by an oligarch close to the Kremlin took full control of VKontakte by acquiring its remaining shares.

 

As the crisis in Ukraine escalated, Russian policymakers adopted laws imposing further, severe restrictions on media and independent groups. In May,  President Vladimir Putin signed a law  requiring bloggers with more than 3,000 daily visitors to register as mass media. In June, Putin signed a law imposing custodial terms for extremist calls on the Internet, including re-posts on social media. In July, a new law banned commercial advertising on cable and satellite television channels, effectively stripping hundreds of privately owned channels of a crucial income. Also in July, the president signed laws criminalizing “separatist†calls and prohibiting storing Russian Internet users’ personal data on foreign servers. The latter will enter into force in 2016. A law adopted in October severely restricts foreign ownership of Russian media.

 

Several outspoken academics and public figures who work for government-funded cultural institutions were either fired or “rotated out†of their positionsfor example, historian Andrei Zubov, who lost his job after he publicy criticized Russia’s occupation of Crimea in a newspaper commentary.

 

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

 

Russian authorities fined four people during the year for violating the 2013 law banning distribution among children of positive information about “non-traditional sexual relationships,†which are known to signify lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) relationships.

 

Anti-LGBT vigilante groups continued attacking gay people across Russia. The authorities have conducted a few isolated investigations but largely failed to prosecute homophobic and transphobic violence.

 

Attacks on LGBT activists also persist. In April, a group of nationalists interrupted a Moscow screening of a documentary about LGBT discrimination. In September, groups of nationalists disrupted the opening night of an annual LGBT event in Saint Petersburg, QueerFest, throwing smoke bombs. Other QueerFest events were canceled due to threats and to venue operators breaking rental agreements.

 

Smear campaigns have targeted LGBT people working in the public education system. In at least six cases, employers did not renew their contracts, pressured them to resign, or simply fired them. Some LGBT people decided to leave Russia due to homophobia and fear of violations of their rights because of their sexual orientation.

 

Freedom of Assembly

 

Police interference in peaceful public gatherings continued in 2014. Authorities detained hundreds of peaceful protesters during the 2014 Winter Olympic Games and after the occupation of Crimea, in most cases arbitrarily and in some cases with unnecessary force. Between February 21 and March 4, police detained at least 1,300 peaceful protesters in Moscow alone. In March and September, two peaceful marches protesting Russia’s interference in Ukraine took place without incident in Moscow.

 

The government toughened penalties for unauthorized public gatherings. A new law increased to up to 15 years prison terms for “mass rioting,†the offense used to prosecute dozens of people who had protested at Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on the eve of Putin’s 2012 inauguration.The law also introduced a new offense—“mass riots trainingâ€â€”  punishable by up to 10 years in prison. New amendments significantly increased fines for unauthorized public gatherings and introduced criminal punishment of up to three years in prison for repeat offenders.

 

Harassment of Human Rights Defenders and Political Opponents

 

In a March speech, Putin called independent groups and government critics “national traitors†and a “fifth column†working to destabilize the country.

 

Russia’s biggest political trial, against the Bolotnaya Square protestors, continued. In December 2013, four of the accused were released under a federal amnesty. Between February and August 2014, 13 were sentenced to up to four-and-a-half years in prison for, variously, mass rioting, violence against police, and organizing mass riots.

 

In June, a court released Mikhail Kosenko, a Bolotnaya protester sentenced in 2013 to forced psychiatric treatment.

 

In February, unknown perpetrators attempted to set fire to the home of Igor Sazhin, a prominent human rights defender in the Komi region. Authorities failed to investigate. Also in February, police in Voronezh arrested Roman Khabarov, a former police officer and human rights defender, on trumped-up charges of membership in an organized criminal group that operated a network of unlawful gambling spots in the region. His trial was set to begin in late 2014.

 

On April 2, a Krasnodar court convicted Mikhail Savva, a civic activist and academic, of fraud and gave him a suspended prison sentence and a fine of 70,000 rubles (US$1,945). Savva had spent over seven months in pretrial custody.

 

On June 9, five men were sentenced for participating in the killing of one of Russia’s most outspoken investigative journalists, Anna Politkovskaya, in 2006. Two received a life sentence; the others received prison terms ranging from 12 to 20 years. Others believed to have ordered the killing remained unpunished. The perpetrators of the 2009 killing of leading Chechen human rights defender Natalia Estemirova had still not been brought to justice at time of writing.

 

North Caucasus

 

The confrontation between the Islamist insurgency and law enforcement agencies continued in Russia’s North Caucasus, particularly in Dagestan. According to Caucasian Knot, an independent online media portal, in the first nine months of 2014, 239 people were killed in the North Caucasus region, including 31 civilians, and 117 people were wounded, including 15 civilians. More than two-thirds of these casualties occurred in Dagestan.

 

Security forces raided Salafi mosques across Dagestan detaining, interrogating, photographing, and finger-printing hundreds of people. Police also subjected many Salafis to forced DNA testing. Abusive special operations in the mountain villages of Gimry and Vremennyi went on for months and involved destruction of property and enforced disappearances.

 

Abduction-style detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances persisted in the North Caucasus, as did attacks against government critics. In August, Timur Kuashev, a freelance journalist and rights activist, was found dead near Nalchik, in Kabardino-Balkaria. The official investigation had not yielded tangible results at time of writing. Several Dagestani activists and lawyers told Human Rights Watch that they frequently received threats aimed at silencing them. In July, a court in Chechnya convicted Ruslan Kutaev, a prominent local activist, on trumped-up drug charges and sentenced him to four years’ imprisonment. The court disregarded torture allegations he made during his trial. On October 31, an appeals court decreased Kutaev’s prison sentence by three months. Two days before his arrest, Kutaev publicly criticized an order handed down by Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

 

Chechen authorities require women to wear headscarves in public places. In September, Kadyrov made a televised statement warning that as part of their fight against “non-traditional Islam,†authorities would detain women who wear “Wahabiâ€-style headscarves, covering the forehead and the chin.

 

Abuses Linked to Preparations for the 2014 Olympic Games

 

Authorities harassed and intimidated organizations, individuals, and journalists in Sochi in advance of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. In February, an appeals court upheld a politically motivated prison sentence for Evgenii Vitishko, an environmental activist and critic of Russia’s Olympic preparations.

 

In January, the authorities announced that an inspection of more than 500 companies involved in Olympic construction exposed 277 million rubles (US$8.34 million) in unpaid wages to workers. However local activists report hundreds of migrant workers still did not receive full wages owed them. 

 

The authorities failed to resettle or fairly compensate some families evicted for Olympic development or whose homes or property suffered damage from it.

 

Palliative Care

 

2014 saw several positive developments in palliative care, including the introduction of clinical guidelines on pain treatment for children. The lack of access to quality pain treatment and palliative care remains a systemic problem. Access to morphine remains overly restricted for the vast majority of patients.

 

A doctor in Krasnoyarsk and another woman who had helped a man in final stages of cancer access pain medication were finally acquitted during a re-trial in October after they had initially been convicted and fined on charges of illegal drug trafficking of controlled substances.

 

Disability Rights

 

Adults and children living with various disabilities face many barriers to participating in their communities. These include physical barriers, such as the lack of ramps and elevators and inadequate accommodations in transportation systems; policy barriers, such as lack of inclusive education; and social barriers, such as employers’ unwillingness to hire people with disabilities.

 

In positive steps in 2014, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection introduced amendments to legislation to expand mandatory accommodations for people with sensory and physical disabilities and to prohibit disability-based discrimination. Russia successfully hosted the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympic Games. However, Sochi residents and tourists with disabilities continued to face barriers to using public services and facilities due to lack of accessibility.

 

Hundreds of thousands of adults and children with disabilities currently live in closed institutions. Approximately 45 percent of children in orphanages have disabilities. Many children with disabilities in orphanages face physical and psychological violence and neglect and are denied adequate healthcare, education, and play. Russia has committed to addressing the high rates of children in state institutions, but current policies lack concrete implementation and monitoring.

 

Russia and Ukraine

 

Moscow has made clear its political support for armed insurgents in eastern Ukraine and clearly exerts influence over them. There is also evidence that they provide material support to the insurgents in terms of weapons and training. Mounting evidence, including images of military manouvers and the capture of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, showed that Russian forces are taking part in hostilities there. Yet Russia has taken no public steps to rein in abuses by insurgents (see Ukraine chapter).

 

Key International Actors

 

Russia’s interference in Ukraine largely contributed to the drastic deterioration of relations between Russia and its international partners, including the European Union and the United States, both of which imposed sanctions over Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Although the conflict in Ukraine eclipsed concerns about the crackdown in Russia, various actors sharpened their public criticism of Russia’s domestic record, decrying new, restrictive legislation and the hostile climate for civil society activists and human rights defenders.

 

In February 2014, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) pressed Russian authorities to investigate arrears wages owed to migrant workers involved in the preparations for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, but it failed to condemn the 2013 anti-LGBT law, despite the Olympic Charter’s prohibition of discrimination.

In May, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner noted that pressure on independent journalists in Russia had increased.

 

On June 3, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe rapporteur on human rights defenders expressed regret over the continued repression of civil society and human rights defenders and the fact that Russia had not met its promises to revise the “foreign agents†law.

 

The International Criminal Court prosecutor continued to monitor Russian and Georgian investigations into crimes committed during the 2008 Georgia-Russian conflict over South Ossetia.

 

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 2015/16 REPORT - https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia/russian-federation/

 

 

Freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly remained severely restricted. The authorities dominated the print and broadcast media, and further extended their control over the internet. NGOs faced further harassment and reprisals under the “foreign agents†law, while their access to foreign funding was further restricted by a new law banning “undesirable†organizations. Growing numbers of individuals were arrested and criminally charged for criticizing state policy and publicly displaying or possessing materials deemed extremist or otherwise unlawful under vague national security legislation. Four people faced prosecution under the 2014 law that made repeated violations of the law on public assemblies a criminal offence. Deep flaws in the judicial system were further exposed through several high-profile cases; a new law gave the Constitutional Court the authority to overrule decisions by the European Court of Human Rights. Refugees faced numerous obstacles in accessing international protection. Serious human rights violations continued in the North Caucasus, and human rights defenders reporting from the region faced harassment.

 

Background

 

In the face of Russia’s growing international isolation and mounting economic problems, the authorities sought to consolidate public opinion around the notions of unity and patriotism, “traditional values†and fear of the country’s purported enemies abroad and within. Opinion polls showed a consistently high level of support for President Putin’s leadership. Government critics were smeared as “unpatriotic†and “anti-Russian state†in the mainstream media, and were occasionally assaulted. On 27 February, one of Russia’s most prominent opposition activists, Boris Nemtsov, was shot dead within sight of the Kremlin. Mourners wishing to commemorate him at the site of his death were harassed by city authorities and pro-government supporters.

 

The government continued to dismiss mounting evidence of Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine, while President Putin decreed in May that human losses among the military during “special operations†in peacetime were a state secret.¹

 

The authorities estimated that as of November, 2,700 Russian citizens had joined the armed group Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, the majority of them from the North Caucasus. Independent experts gave higher estimates.

 

On 30 September, Russia began air strikes in Syria with the stated aim of targeting IS, but also frequently targeted other groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Numerous civilian casualties were reported, which Russia denied. On 24 November, Turkey shot down a Russian military jet for allegedly entering its airspace, leading to mutual recriminations and a diplomatic stand-off between the two countries.

 

Freedom of expression

 

Media freedom remained severely restricted, through direct state control and self-censorship. The editorial policy of most media outlets faithfully reproduced official views on key domestic and international events.

 

The authorities extended their control over the internet. Thousands of websites and pages were blocked by internet providers on orders from the media regulator Roskomnadzor. Those targeted in violation of the right to freedom of expression included political satire, information shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activists, information on public protests and religious texts. A growing, but still small, number of individuals faced criminal prosecution for online postings, usually on charges under anti-extremism legislation; most of them received fines.

 

Yekaterina Vologzheninova, a shop assistant from Yekaterinburg, was put on trial on 27 October for her satirical posts on social media in 2014 which criticized Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its military involvement in eastern Ukraine. The prosecution alleged that she had incited violence and “promoted hatred and enmity towards the Russian government officials, Russian volunteers fighting in eastern Ukraine and the specific ethnic group, the Russiansâ€. Her trial was ongoing at the end of the year.²

 

Harassment of independent media outlets and journalists continued. Past incidents of violence against independent journalists were rarely effectively investigated. Two men were arrested in connection with the beating of journalist Oleg Kashin in November 2010, and a third put on a wanted list. One suspect claimed he had proof that the beating had been ordered by the Governor of Pskov region, which tallied with Kashin’s suspicions, but the authorities declined to investigate the allegation further.

 

Elena Milashina, a journalist from the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, reported that a 17-year-old Chechen girl was being forcibly married to a senior police officer three times her age and reportedly already married. The story was widely reported and caused a public outcry. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov publicly supported the senior police officer and accused Milashina of lying and interfering in the private lives of the Chechen people. On 19 May, the Chechen government-owned online news agency Grozny-Inform published an article containing thinly veiled death threats against Milashina.

 

The clampdown on freedom of expression extended beyond journalists and bloggers. Natalya Sharina, director of the state-run Library of Ukrainian Literature in the capital Moscow, was detained on 28 October under extremism-related charges. The investigators claimed that works by Ukrainian nationalist Dmitry Korchinsky had been found at the library, in a pile of literature that had not yet been catalogued. She was detained at a police station without bedding, food or drink until 30 October when she was placed under house arrest, pending possible charges.³

 

On 15 September, Rafis Kashapov, an activist from Naberezhnye Chelny, Republic of Tatarstan, was convicted of inciting inter-ethnic hatred and threatening the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation; he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. He had been under arrest since 28 December 2014 in connection with posts on social media that criticized Russia’s role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the treatment of Crimean Tatars in Russian-occupied Crimea.

 

On 10 November, the Kirsanovski District Court ruled that the environmentalist Yevgeny Vitishko should be released. He had served over half of his sentence following his conviction on trumped-up charges in the run-up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. However, on 20 November, a day before the court’s decision came into force, the Prosecutor’s Office appealed against the decision; Vitishko was finally released on 22 December after an appeal hearing.

 

Freedom of assembly

 

The right to freedom of peaceful assembly remained severely curtailed. Protests were infrequent, their number having declined following restrictions introduced in earlier years. Organizers were regularly refused permission to hold street rallies or only allowed to hold them in non-central locations. Those who defied the ban or the rules were penalized through fines and detention.

 

Monstration, a humorous annual street event in Novosibirsk mocking the pomposity of the May Day march, was disallowed for the first time since 2005. Its organizer, Artem Loskutov, was arrested and sentenced to 10 days’ detention for violating the law on assemblies after he and several other “monstrators†joined the official May Day march instead.

 

For the first time, a peaceful street protester was convicted under the 2014 law which criminalized repeated participation in unauthorized assemblies.

 

On 7 December, a Moscow court sentenced Ildar Dadin to three years in a prison colony for his repeated participation in “unauthorized†assemblies between August and December 2014. He had been placed under house arrest on 30 January, after serving a 15-day detention for joining a peaceful protest in Moscow against the politically motivated conviction of Oleg Navalny, the brother of anti-graft campaigner and opposition leader Alex Navalny.

 

Two other peaceful protesters from Moscow, Mark Galperin and Irina Kalmykova, also faced criminal prosecution under the same law at the end of the year.

 

Prisoners of conscience Stepan Zimin, Aleksei Polikhovich and Denis Lutskevich, who had been detained in 2012 in connection with the Bolotnaya Square protests, were released during the year, having completed their prison sentences. Another prisoner of conscience, Sergey Krivov, remained in prison; the authorities brought criminal proceedings against at least two further individuals in connection with the Bolotnaya protests.

 

Freedom of association

 

Freedom of association was further restricted. By the end of the year, the Ministry of Justice’s register of NGOs considered “foreign agents†contained 111 entries, requiring the NGOs concerned to put this stigmatizing label on all their publications and observe onerous reporting requirements. NGOs that defied these requirements faced hefty fines. Not a single NGO succeeded in challenging their inclusion on the register in court. Seven were struck off the register after giving up all foreign funding, and a further 14 NGOs included on the register chose to close down.

 

The Human Rights Centre (HRC) Memorial was fined Rub 600,000 (US$8,800) in September after its sister organization, the Historical and Educational Centre Memorial – which was not on the register – did not mark its publications with the label “foreign agentâ€. The HRC Memorial lost its court appeal against the decision. Following a regular inspection of the HRC Memorial in November, the Ministry of Justice concluded that criticism by its members of the Bolotnaya Square trials and of Russian policies in Ukraine “undermined the foundations of the constitutional system†and amounted to “calls for the overthrow of the current government and change of the political regimeâ€. The Ministry submitted its “findings†to the Prosecutor’s Office for further investigation.

 

In May, a law was passed authorizing the Prosecutor’s Office to designate any foreign organization as “undesirable†on the grounds of posing a “threat to the country’s constitutional order, defence or state securityâ€, with the immediate effect of rendering its presence, and any activity on its behalf, unlawful. In July, the US-based National Endowment for Democracy was declared “undesirableâ€. Three more donor organizations, the Open Society Foundation, the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation and the US Russia Foundation for Economic Advancement and the Rule of Law, were declared “undesirable†in November and December.

 

Rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people

 

LGBTI activists continued to operate in an extremely hostile environment. Discrimination against LGBTI individuals continued to be widely reported.

 

On 25 March, a court in St Petersburg ruled that the Children-404 group – an online community set up by journalist Elena Klimova to support LGBTI teenagers – be blocked. In July, a court in Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk region, fined Klimova Rub 50,000 (US$830) for “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minorsâ€. On 2 October, a court in St Petersburg ruled that the page should be unblocked.

 

The authorities continued to violate LGBTI individuals’ right to peaceful assembly. In May, LGBTI activist Nikolay Alekseev attempted to hold an unauthorized Pride march in Moscow. It resulted in clashes with anti-LGBTI protesters and 10 days’ detention for three LGBTI activists, including Nikolay Alekseev. In St Petersburg, LGBTI activists were able to conduct some public activities without interference from police.

 

Justice system

 

Several high-profile trials exposed deep-rooted and widespread flaws in Russia’s criminal justice system, including the lack of equality of arms, the use of torture and other ill-treatment in the course of investigations as well as the failure to exclude torture-tainted evidence in court, the use of secret witnesses and other secret evidence which the defence could not challenge, and the denial of the right to be represented by a lawyer of one’s choice. Less than 0.5% of trials resulted in acquittals.

 

Svetlana Davydova was one of the growing number of cases of alleged high treason and espionage, under vague offences introduced in 2012. She was arrested on 21 January for a phone call she had made to the Ukrainian Embassy eight months earlier, to share her suspicions that soldiers from her town Vyazma, Smolensk region, were being sent to fight in eastern Ukraine. Her state-appointed lawyer told the media that she had “confessed to everything†and declined to appeal against her detention because “all these hearings and the fuss in the media [create] unnecessary psychological trauma for her childrenâ€. On 1 February, two new lawyers took up her case. She complained that her initial lawyer had convinced her to plead guilty to reduce her likely sentence from 20 to 12 years. On 3 February, she was released; on 13 March, in marked contrast to all other treason cases, criminal proceedings against her were terminated.

 

In September, the trial of Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian citizen and member of the Aidar volunteer battalion, began. She was accused of deliberately directing artillery fire to kill two Russian journalists during the conflict in Ukraine in June 2014. She insisted that the case against her was fabricated and the testimonies against her, including by several secret witnesses, were false. Her trial was marred by myriad procedural flaws.

 

On 15 December, President Putin signed a new law under which the Constitutional Court can pronounce the European Court of Human Rights’ and other international courts’ decisions “unimplementable†if they “violate†the Russian Constitution’s “supremacyâ€.

 

Refugees’ and migrants’ rights

 

According to official figures, in the first nine months of the year, 130,297 people were given temporary asylum, 129,506 of them from Ukraine and 482 from Syria. Only 96 of the 1,079 applications for permanent refugee status were granted, none of them to Syrian nationals. NGOs reported numerous obstacles, including corruption and deliberate misinformation, intended to discourage those seeking international protection from applying for permanent or temporary asylum.

 

A family of six refugees from Syria, including four children, were stranded in the international transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for over two months. On 10 September, border officials denied them entry claiming their travel documents were fake. On 19 November, Khimki City Court fined them Rub 10,000 (US$150) for trying to enter the country under forged documents; the following day, they were registered as asylum-seekers and relocated to Tver region, with help from the NGO Civic Assistance Committee.

 

There were regular reports of forcible return of individuals to Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries, where they risked being subjected to torture and other serious human rights violations.

 

North Caucasus

 

Fewer attacks by armed groups were reported in the North Caucasus than in previous years.

 

Law enforcement agencies continued to rely on security operations as their preferred method of combating armed groups, and continued to be suspected of resorting to enforced disappearances, unlawful detention, as well as torture and other ill-treatment of detainees.

 

Human rights reporting from the region visibly declined, due to a severe clampdown on human rights defenders and independent journalists, who regularly faced harassment, threats and violence, including from law enforcement officials and pro-government groups.

 

On 3 June, an aggressive mob surrounded the office building of the human rights group Joint Mobile Group in Chechnya’s capital Grozny. Masked men forced their way into the office, destroying its contents and forcing staff to evacuate.⁴ No suspects had been identified by the end of the year.

 

On 6 November, the office and residence in the Republic of Ingushetia of human rights defender Magomed Mutsolgov were searched by armed law enforcement officers, who seized documents and IT equipment. According to Mutsolgov, the warrant authorizing the search stated that he was “acting in the interests of the USA, Georgia, Ukraine and the Syrian oppositionâ€.

1. Russian Federation: Making troop deaths a secret "attacks freedom of expression" (News story, 28 May)
2. Russian Federation: Prosecuted for criticizing government: Yekaterina Vologzheninova (EUR 46/2682/2015)
3. Russian Federation: Natalya Sharina. Librarian detained for holding "extremist books" (EUR/2900/2015)
4. Russian Federation: Joint Mobile Group office ransacked by mob (EUR 46/1802/2015)

 

 

Alos read HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST (FORMERLY LAWYERS COMMITEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS) FEBRUARY 2016 - http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/Russias_Bad_Example.pdf

 

In addition we have also seen publication of the report in to the Litvinenko death where the SNP's Peter Grant said:

 

“The report I think leads to only one possible conclusion – we now have to regard the Russian government, the Russian state, as an organisation actively involved in the commission, funding, supporting and directing acts of terrorism against UK citizens within the United Kingdom.â€

 

 

And in the USA the adoption of the Magnitsky bill by the US government at the end of 2012 by which those Russian officials believed to be involved in the auditor’s death were barred from entering the United States or using its banking system. 

 

There are also a raft of other reports from international lawyers on these abuses.

 

Russia is a mafia state with Putin as its Godfather.