Evidence of meeting #138 for Public Safety and National Security in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was russia.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you.
I am apparently feeling generous today. Mr. Picard has a 15-second statement that he wishes to make.
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
Thank you.
I hope that my colleagues agree that the purpose of this morning's exercise isn't to call into question INTERPOL's reliability and credibility, despite the possible actions of individuals or a group of individuals that are against its interests.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you.
Chief Superintendent Doran and Sergeant Cameron, thank you for being here literally on short notice, red or otherwise. We appreciate your elucidating for us on the intricacies. However, as I sit here, I must admit to a curiosity. If the Secretary-General of the United Nations went back to his or her home country and just disappeared, the entire international community would be very upset about it, hence some of the basis for our inquiry.
I'm going to suspend for a minute or two. We have Mr. Browder coming in by teleconference and Mr. Kasparov coming in by telephone, and we all know that technical connections don't always work as they're supposed to. With that, we'll suspend for a couple of minutes to make sure everything is online. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
We're back in order, colleagues.
We have with us, via teleconference, Mr. Browder, I assume from London, and Mr. Kolga, I assume from Toronto. By telephone we have Mr. Kasparov. He is in New York and it is American Thanksgiving and we thank him for making some time for us.
I don't have any particular order, but I'll start with Mr. Browder because he is the furthest away.
Go ahead.
William Browder Head of Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, Hermitage Capital Management
Thank you very much for inviting me to talk about INTERPOL today. It's quite a topical and important issue, which has risen to the top of the global agenda in the last couple of days; however, it's been on my agenda for a lot longer than a couple of days. I thought it would be useful for the committee to hear my experience with Russia's abuse of INTERPOL to understand where the flaws in the system are.
Many of you will know me from the work that I've been doing over the last nine years in the Magnitsky justice campaign. For those of you who don't know me, I am Bill Browder. At one time I was the employer of my lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in Russia. Sergei Magnitsky uncovered a massive $230-million corruption scheme. He exposed it and in retaliation he was arrested, tortured for 358 days and killed in November 2009.
For the last nine years, I've been on a mission to get justice for him and that mission for justice ended up focusing on legislation named after Sergei Magnitsky, called the Magnitsky Act. In 2012, I was able to advocate in the United States to get the U.S. Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act in December 2012. I should say that this piece of legislation very much upset Vladimir Putin. It upset Vladimir Putin because the Magnitsky Act freezes assets and bans visas of human rights violators from Russia. Vladimir Putin is a human rights violator and he's a person with a lot of assets. Therefore, he felt personally at risk from this legislation.
He embarked after that on a vendetta against me, which has lasted up until today. One of the first and most obvious signs of that vendetta was that in May 2013, about five months after the Magnitsky Act was passed in the United States, Russia issued an INTERPOL red notice for me. An INTERPOL red notice is effectively as close as you get to an international arrest warrant, in which Russia asked to have me arrested through INTERPOL any place that I travelled to.
When we became aware of this, my lawyers provided detailed evidence that this request from Russia was illegitimate and politically motivated. I'm a quite high-profile campaigner. My issue was quite high profile and it did rise to the level of being evaluated in INTERPOL through an organization inside INTERPOL called the Commission for the Control of Files. That's the organization that is supposed to look at the legitimacy of red notices if there's a meaningful challenge.
This Commission for the Control of Files, shortly after we filed our documents, about two weeks later, came to the conclusion that Russia's request to have me arrested violated INTERPOL's constitution. INTERPOLS's constitution says that INTERPOL should not be used for political, religious or military purposes. In this particular case, they said it violated the constitution because it was politically motivated and, therefore, they rejected it. Then they informed all 194 member states not to honour this red notice and to delete it from their system.
I thought that was the end of the story. I thought that I would no longer have any trouble with Russia and INTERPOL.
Shortly after that, as part of Putin's vendetta, I was put on trial in absentia in Russia. Not only was I put on trial, but they put Sergei Magnitsky, my lawyer who had been murdered three years earlier, on trial as well, in the first-ever trial against a dead man in the history of Russia. At the conclusion of the trial in July 2013, I was found guilty and so was Sergei Magnitsky, and Russia then applied again, on the same charges that had been rejected before, for another red notice. Again—and it didn't require any intervention from my side at this point—Russia's request was rejected.
At that point, I thought for sure that I was finished with trouble from Russia abusing INTERPOL, but I was not. In 2014 the Russian government applied again through INTERPOL to have me arrested. It was again rejected in 2015. There were two more attempts after that, which were rejected.
Then, in October of last year, the Canadian Parliament—you—passed the Canadian Magnitsky act. Literally a day after the Canadian Magnitsky act was passed, Russia issued another INTERPOL notice. That time, it was a diffusion notice, not a red notice. A diffusion notice is a slightly less vetted type of arrest warrant. It's effectively like a preliminary arrest warrant while they process a red notice. Russia issued a diffusion notice for me. Again, after my applying to INTERPOL and pointing out that this was politically motivated, INTERPOL rejected it about a week later. That was number six. That was the sixth time they went to INTERPOL.
As of Tuesday of this week, the European Union has begun serious discussions on an EU Magnitsky act. On the same day, the Russian government announced a whole number of new charges against me, including the unbelievable and ludicrous charge that I somehow murdered Sergei Magnitsky. They then announced that they were going to INTERPOL for a seventh time. On a serial basis, we have Russia abusing INTERPOL. They just did not get the point after one, two, three, four, five or six times.
What is the moral of this story? The moral of the story is that if a country wants to abuse INTERPOL they can just keep on abusing INTERPOL, and it doesn't really matter how many times they do it.
INTERPOL has in its rule book a set of rules that say that if a country consistently abuses INTERPOL, then that country can be suspended from using its systems. I would say that my case by itself—I'll talk just briefly about other cases in a moment—is a perfect example of serial abuse by a country of INTERPOL. This provision in the INTERPOL constitution has never been activated, but as I would argue, part of my project for the next few months is to put formally in place a request for INTERPOL to suspend Russia from their systems.
Let me finish off by saying one thing, which is that my story tells you about serial abuse. In theory, some people from INTERPOL could argue, “Look, our systems do work, because every time Russia has gone after Bill Browder, we have rejected it.” That's all fine and nice, except that I'm probably the most high-profile person in the world with this problem. I've even written a book called Red Notice, which is an international bestseller. Everybody knows about me, with all my notoriety and my resources, but there are literally hundreds if not thousands of human rights lawyers, activists and opposition politicians in Russia who don't have my notoriety, my resources and my lawyers, and who are being chased down.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you. I'm going to Mr. Kasparov. I'm hoping that all of our technology is working and he can hear us.
Mr. Kasparov, are you ready for a 10-minute presentation?
Garry Kasparov As an Individual
Thank you very much for inviting me.
I heard Bill's story, and I've heard it many times. Any time I hear it, I can't believe my ears. If I hadn't lived in Russia, I would probably doubt his words, but I know he was absolutely right. He probably said less than he could have because time was limited.
Russia has no independent judiciary. Russian courts serve Putin, not justice, as you just heard. Russian courts are regularly used to fabricate charges and convictions against regime critics and opposition leaders.
If they live abroad, as so many of us have been forced to do, INTERPOL is often being used to persecute them. It's happened many times. I was shocked when I learned that INTERPOL was just one step away from having a Russian general as the head of its organization.
By the way, as you heard from Bill, Russia isn't going to give up. Prokopchuk, the man who just failed to become the president, is still INTERPOL vice-president. He got 61 votes. Sixty-one national representatives thought it would be a good idea to have a police general from Putin's Russia running INTERPOL. If possible, I would love to see that list.
During the last few days, when there was the massive campaign in the free world for this horrific appointment, we heard analogies such as putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department, or the fox in charge of the henhouse. I don't think they do justice to what almost happened yesterday, because putting a general from Putin's corrupt mafia regime in charge of the global enforcement is much worse.
Following what Bill said, if Canada wouldn't extradite one of Putin's political targets to Russia, why is Russia allowed to issue a red notice? Would you send a North Korean defector back to North Korea?
I don't think it's worth having to decide on a case-by-case basis, when dictatorships can fabricate as many false charges as they like. As you heard a few minutes ago, they can keep fabricating them even when they're rejected. Putin's enemies like Bill Browder or Mikhail Khodorkovsky have both been charged with murder by Russian courts after the original accusations of fraud and theft didn't stick. It's endless.
As Bill said, most of the people targeted by Putin don't have the resources of Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Bill Browder, or their notoriety. Many of them are just being arrested on these red notices and waiting for their extradiction.
Meanwhile, remember some high-profile cases of Russian crimes committed abroad. For instance, Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London in 2006 with the radioactive isotope polonium and his alleged killer escaped back to Russia. The Brits, in vain, asked the Kremlin to extradite him or at least to question him. The Kremlin didn't allow him to be asked questions or extradite him. Instead, Lugovoi was made a member of the Russian parliament. That's the engagement of Putin.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Mr. Kasparov, I apologize for interrupting you, because your testimony is very important.
Our bells are ringing, which means technically I have to suspend the committee. After all this effort to get this committee together, it is really quite irritating.
Colleagues, can I assume that we can go for another 15 minutes and get Mr. Kolga's testimony at least on the record? That will mean, essentially, that we will not be able to ask questions. Is that a reasonable sort of thing to do? That still gives us time to get to these procedural votes.
Please continue, Mr. Kasparov. You have about six minutes left.
As an Individual
As you mentioned, the previous INTERPOL president, Meng Hongwei of China, was disappeared by China just months ago, supposedly to be charged with corruption. I believe the Xi Jinping government was widely disappointed at how few names on their global target list he had captured for them. By the way, the Chinese 100 most wanted list is legally called Operation Skynet. It makes clear who is really in charge and that will be the case with Russia as well, including all Russian oligarchs and bureaucrats around the world. They serve at Putin's pleasure, and they and their families live at Putin's pleasure, as his global assassination campaign has made very clear.
The question is this: How did we get here? How did a Russian general become the head of INTERPOL? It was by taking the road paved with good intentions. Since the end of the Cold War, the western part of the mission is to engage with dictatorships and to invite them into groups like G7, INTERPOL, WTO and the rest. The idea was that partnerships and economic ties would liberalize their autocracies and would raise the standards of transparency and their standards of living.
Instead, the flow has gone in the other direction in almost every case. China is now approaching a one-man dictatorship like Putin's, and Russia is a completely authoritarian state. The global freedom index has declined for seven straight years. INTERPOL is just the latest example of what happens when you abandon your standards and your principles in the name of engagement. Instead of spreading liberalization and co-operation, engagement has allowed Russia and the rest to spread corruption in an attempt to drive everyone down to their level.
After inviting such regimes into free world institutions, it will turn out to be harder to remove these countries, but removed they must be if these institutions are to stand for anything. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before they are subverted and turned against the concept of freedom and justice that they were designed to uphold. For instance, look at the United Nations Human Rights Council with Saudi Arabia, Iran and other infamous human rights violators.
I hope that these hearings will help you to understand the danger of having countries like Russia have so much influence in INTERPOL or in other international organizations, which, as you said, operate by international law, but very often operate by a law of their own, and there is very little transparency, which is also unacceptable.
Thank you.
Liberal
Marcus Kolga As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members, for arranging this important hearing.
I'm going to give you a little bit of context with regard to Canada.
While the results of yesterday's election of a new INTERPOL president were a positive conclusion, serious problems within the organization persist. With regard to politically motivated abuse of INTERPOL's notice system by various authoritarian regimes, the Putin regime leads among them. Abuse of the red notice system presents considerable risks for critics of authoritarian regimes, as we've heard from Mr. Browder. Canadians, too, could become targets of this abuse if reform of INTERPOL is not undertaken soon from Russia, China and other authoritarian member states.
In the Russian context, legislation restricting free speech, regardless of borders, is used to target and convict critics globally, after which their movements can be restricted using the red notice system. Russian anti-gay legislation that criminalizes public advocacy of gay rights has been used to silence foreign activists in the past. Anyone whose interpretation of Soviet history is divergent from the official Russian state version can also be prosecuted.
This puts Canadians and other foreigners at risk of potential prosecution in Russia in abstentia, and at subsequent risk of application of either diffusion or red notices. The Kremlin has no issue with trying critics in abstentia, and we've seen them do this many times in the past, including in the case of Bill Browder, and even posthumously with Mr. Browder's lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
Currently, INTERPOL's red notice system allows the Kremlin and other authoritarian regimes to extend the reach of their repression around the world, and while local authorities are responsible for choosing whether to execute these notices, they do represent a significant threat to activists, who are at risk of being targeted by laws intended to silence them.
For instance, in 2014 Vladimir Putin signed into law legislation that effectively allows the Kremlin to prosecute and jail, for up to three years, anyone who disagrees with its version of Soviet history. The Russian law criminalizes the “dissemination of deliberately false information on the activities of the Soviet Union during the Second World War.”
The Canadian communities and central and eastern European communities that gather each August 23 to commemorate the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact, which triggered the coordinated Nazi and Soviet invasions of Poland and the start of the Second World War in August and September of 1939, would potentially all be found guilty under this legislation.
In 2016, Vladimir Luzgin, a car mechanic from Perm, Russia, was convicted under this legislation for a blog post he wrote in which he stated, factually, that both the Nazis and the Soviets invaded Poland in 1939. Mr. Luzgin has since applied his case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Should Russian authorities and the Kremlin feel threatened by Canadian activists in the local Russian, Ukrainian, Polish or Baltic communities, they could use the same legislation to try them in abstentia and apply to use a diffusion or red notice disrupter movement, or in the worst-case scenario, extradite them from a friendly country.
Another risk to Canadians is Russian's anti-gay propaganda legislation, which outlaws any advocacy for gay rights or criticism of state policy, such as the systematic incarceration of gay men in the Russian province of Chechnya into concentration camps. The legislation specifically makes illegal any propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships. Under the legislation, foreigners who are convicted of breaking this law can be imprisoned for up to 15 days, despite the fact that INTERPOL's article 3 strictly prohibits any intervention in activities of a political or discriminatory nature.
Regimes like the one governed by Vladimir Putin continue to use INTERPOL's notice system to target its critics. As a 2017 parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe report on the abuse of INTERPOL stated, the red notice system has clearly been abused “in the pursuit of political objectives, repressing the freedom of expression or persecuting members of the political opposition beyond their borders”. The same report states that, for the red notice system to properly function, it relies “on mutual trust between the various actors and the belief that member States would only use INTERPOL in good faith, solely for the purposes for which the Organisation was established.” When it comes to the Russian government, this trust has been irreparably damaged by serial use of red notices against multiple political targets, including Bill Browder.
The severity of the crimes of those targeted by red notices applied by authoritarian regimes varies as well.
Alexander Lapshin, a Ukrainian travel blogger, was arrested in Minsk on a political red notice applied by the Government of Azerbaijan in December 2016 for commenting on visits he took to Nagorno-Karabakh in 2012.
Natalia Bushuyeva was detained in Moscow based on a politically motivated Uzbek red notice in July 2016. She was a correspondent for Deutsche Welle and covered the Uzbek government's massacre of protestors in Andizhan in 2005.
In 2013, Russia issued a red notice for Estonian parliamentarian and a leading critic of Vladimir Putin, Eerik-Niiles Kross, days before an election he was participating in.
It should also be noted that on Tuesday, the host of a popular Russian news panel show Olga Skabeeva, told viewers that once the Kremlin takes over the presidency of INTERPOL, they'll put the entire Government of Ukraine in prison.
My own activities here in Canada and abroad advocating for Russian humans rights, opposition activists and for Canadian Magnitsky legislation, has made me a target of Kremlin trolls and propaganda. As early as 2008, I received death threats for publicly criticizing the Kremlin's invasion of Georgia and the subsequent occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
In 2016, I organized a conference at the University of Toronto in memory of assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. Bill was among the participants. Vladimir Kara-Murza, Boris's daughter Zhanna and Irwin Cotler were among them as well. Shortly after the event the Kremlin lawyer who organized the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, now at the centre of the U.S. Mueller probe, Natalia Veselnitskaya, publicly criticized the event motivating a member of the Russian Duma, Yevgeny Yevgeny Fedorov to issue a formal request to Russia's prosecutor general to investigate my activities in Canada.
While I have not run into any immediate problems as a result of this, it does demonstrate the Kremlin's willingness to threaten activists and critics regardless of where they are.
I hope that this government and committee will initiate a much deeper investigation into INTERPOL reform and the notice system that is being so readily abused today by the Kremlin.
Thank you for inviting me today to testify and for arranging this very important emergency hearing.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you Mr. Kolga, Mr. Browder and Mr. Kasparov for arranging your schedules so that the committee could hear this critically important testimony from you. Regrettably we all have to go to votes. For those of you who know democracies this is just a fact of life.
Happy Thanksgiving to Mr. Kasparov. Mr. Browder, do you still celebrate American Thanksgiving?
Head of Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, Hermitage Capital Management
I do, wholeheartedly.
