Just to give you a bit of history, I testified in front of the Helsinki Commission, which is a human rights commission inside the U.S. government, which was chaired by Senator Benjamin Cardin. I testified in June 2009, when Sergei was still alive and when he was incarcerated. I called on the Helsinki Commission for help in getting Sergei out of jail.
Senator Cardin, along with a number of other members of the Helsinki Commission, was very conscious of the whole story while Sergei was still alive. After Sergei tragically died on November 16, I then began discussions with the Helsinki Commission about what could be done. I came across, through one of my lawyers, a law called proclamation 7550 in the United States, which says that corrupt foreign officials can be banned from getting visas to come into the country. I presented that to them and they said this was interesting and could we present them with evidence of who these people were who did this to Sergei. So we provided a number of documents to the Helsinki Commission of people whose signatures were on pieces of paper denying medical treatment and people whose signatures were on paper authorizing the raids, etc. As a result of that, the Helsinki Commission vetted the information we provided them with and came up with this list.
I should point out that you're right, there are different standards of evidence for different types of offences in life. In a criminal case, there's the standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, there's the standard of evidence in the balance of probabilities. But we're talking about visas here, which is not a right for anybody; coming to anyone's country is a privilege. Here, what we're talking about is reliable and prima facie evidence that somebody has committed a crime. I think that's the standard the U.S. is putting into their Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act. You're right to point out the issue of how these lists get compiled.
I should point out that the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act doesn't have a list. It has a standard by which the State Department has to operate. The list of 60 people is a list that Senator Cardin sent to Secretary of State Clinton, but there's no list attached to the law. The law says there's a definition and let's the government agencies decide based on evidence.