Evidence of meeting #23 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was money.
A video is available from Parliament.
April 29th, 2014 / 1:35 p.m.
Conservative
Gary Schellenberger Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Thank you.
Thank you again, Mr. Browder, for coming back. I was new on the committee when you were here previously. I found the story to be horrendous, and it has never left me, even through the Ukraine situation. The former president and the former government were really Putin cronies. They were put in place and they looked after themselves first.
It is my understanding that Putin's wealth—I heard this somewhere—was in the neighbourhood of $160 billion. I don't think that as the president of Russia your paycheques would get you to that particular spot, to anyone who knows, but if the regular Russian people don't know that, if the media can't put that out and if it's not out there, they would wonder why they themselves average about $12,000 a year. It would take a long time to get to $160 billion.
Everything you told us when you were here the last time, I more than believe wholeheartedly, especially since what has happened in Crimea, in Ukraine, and I was a little different on it from even what our government did at the very beginning, or the European government or the United States. When this first happened, when the Ukrainian president left and went back to Russia, I would have put sanctions on everyone, all the oligarchs, everyone in Ukraine and in Russia.
One of my staffers was in Europe this past Christmas. I don't know exactly which resort area it was, but over half the houses, the big mansions and everything, were owned by Russians. Most of the Russian and Ukrainian top people live outside; they just take the money from there and then out.
So I do believe in sanctions, and I know that you've explained sanctions, but do you think enough have been put in place already?
1:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Hermitage Capital Management, As an Individual
The answer is absolutely not. There is a lot of negotiating among ourselves that's going on here in the west in relation to Russia.
In relation to Ukraine, I believe that the best way of dealing with the situation would be the sanctioning of all of the cabinet ministers, all of them, sanctioning Putin, and then sanctioning a wide swath of what I call “oligarch trustees”.
Just to explain that to you, the way that kleptocracy works is that most government officials don't keep the money in their own names. They keep the money in the names of people they trust. These are the trustees. As you look at these rich lists of Russians, oftentimes they're not as rich as they look on the list, because they're holding assets on behalf of Vladimir Putin and other senior government ministers. I believe the closest anyone has come to sort of half-satisfactory lists are the U.S. sanctions lists that have come out, because they've actually gone after businessmen, and some very well-known businessmen, but not nearly enough businessmen.
The Canadian list that just came out today had two businessmen on it, which is better than no businessmen. The European list had no businessmen on it. The businessmen are the guys who hold the money for Putin and his colleagues, and those are the people who need to be sanctioned as far as Putin's Ukrainian military adventure is concerned.
With regard to these human rights abuses, nobody has been sanctioned. Nobody has been sanctioned in Canada for the Magnitsky murder. We have all the evidence. They have been sanctioned in America. I don't understand why Canada couldn't just take the American list and adopt it or some version of it. I could come here and spend a week with the immigration minister's staff and share with him the evidence.
I don't know why they are not sanctioned. They should be.
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Gary Schellenberger Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
One minute?
I think what's happened is that Putin and the Russians have lulled everyone to sleep a little wee bit—“trust me, trust me”—and you can see what's happened in Syria. They brokered that deal, or supposedly brokered that deal, which still hasn't been completed. If you see the countries that they're friends of, it's terrible.
Again, I say thank you to you for all the work you have done to try to straighten out some of the wrongs that are being done and have been done in Russia. We'll see if we can't support some of your issues.
1:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Hermitage Capital Management, As an Individual
Thank you very much.
1:40 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is an extremely fascinating presentation.
In terms of the judiciary in Russia, I understand how you can have corrupt government officials and basically gangsters on the loose working with the police to arrest someone like Mr. Magnitsky on false pretenses, but in our system the judiciary is the backstop. It prevents these abuses. Is the judiciary in Russia totally complicit with the corruption? Are judges being bought off or are they simply scared of reprisals? What's the role of the judiciary in all of this?
1:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Hermitage Capital Management, As an Individual
You're absolutely right when you say that in normal countries the judiciary is the check and balance, the backstop, the way of keeping everything working. Your suspicion is also correct that the judiciary in Russia completely does not function as a normal, independent, law-applying body.
The judiciary in Russia, at every level of the judiciary, from the lowest level right up to their Supreme Court, is corrupt. It's corrupt both on a financial basis and on a political basis. Sometimes people pay money for decisions. At other times, people make phone calls for decisions.
I think that probably the most poignant example of the judicial corruption is again in the Magnitsky case. I'm not just being myopic or self-centred when I say this. In July of last year, a senior judge in Moscow held a trial that ran for about two months in which Sergei Magnitsky was the defendant three years after he died.
1:45 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Hermitage Capital Management, As an Individual
The first ever trial against a dead man in the history of Russia was held in Moscow last summer.
1:45 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
It's unbelievable. That brings me to another question about the mechanics of your initiative and how your bill is carried out.
How do you gather evidence? We're dealing with people who are operating in another country, a country that is corrupt, whose police records can't be trusted, and whose judiciary, as you've just mentioned, is corrupt, so how do you get evidence to decide to seize this person's assets? Assets are seized under the act, yes? How do you get evidence to do that and how do you know the evidence is valid?
1:45 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Hermitage Capital Management, As an Individual
The way the evidence was gathered is that the authorities in Russia have a strange way of thinking that nobody from the outside is ever going to look at what they've done, so they document everything. When Sergei Magnitsky was beaten on the last night of his life, there was a protocol written and signed by the people who were involved in the beating, just to confirm to their boss that they did their job properly. In Sergei's case file, there is every piece of paper showing that he was requesting medical attention and showing the judges rejecting his requests for medical attention.
1:45 p.m.
Liberal
1:45 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Hermitage Capital Management, As an Individual
Well, the one thing about Russia that is interesting is that it's a totally unjust system, but they're absolutely wedded to their procedure. You go to court, they present their case file in court, and you have an opportunity to look at their case file. They've pretty much damned themselves in their own defence. Maybe they didn't get into trouble in their own courts, where the courts ruled obtusely in the wrong way on every single thing that ever happened, but the evidence is there, the evidence they created.
1:45 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
You have the Magnitsky Act in the U.S. Are there other countries that have similar legislation or does the U.S. stand alone?
1:45 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Hermitage Capital Management, As an Individual
The U.S. has the legislation.
The European Parliament recently did something that's very unusual for the European Parliament. They passed a resolution in which they attached their own sanctions list of 32 people involved in the Magnitsky case. The European Parliament has never in their history put together a sanctions list.
The reason they put a sanctions list together was that they've passed four resolutions in the past four years calling on the European Union to impose sanctions, and the European Union as an executive body has ignored the Parliament. So they decided to come up with their own sanctions list, which they're then going to distribute to all the European embassies in Russia so that the consular officers at least have the names.
1:45 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
But the individual countries aren't empowered yet to take the same kinds of actions?
1:45 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Hermitage Capital Management, As an Individual
There has been no executive decision taken by any of the European countries.
The British government, strangely, has been sort of lying by omission. They've stated on the record that the people who killed Magnitsky aren't allowed into the country. They then were asked again, on the record, whether the people are not allowed into country, and they've said that they can't say who's allowed into the country, that they don't talk about who's not allowed.
So the answer is, very simply, that only the United States has an explicit Magnitsky Act. It's my job and my mission to change that.
1:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Scott Reid
I'm afraid you're out of time. In fact, you're over time. I apologize for that.
