It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt).
Two years ago this month, the House called for a UK Magnitsky law, inspired by dissident Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured to death and posthumously prosecuted on orders from the Kremlin for disclosing the biggest tax fraud in Russian history.
The Magnitsky law is relevant today because it would create a presumption of near automatic UK visa bans and asset freezes for individuals where there is concrete evidence that they had a role in torture or other gross human rights abuses. It should apply not just to Russia but more generally, and it could be used to impose sanctions on those involved in other egregious violations of international law, such as the unlawful use of force that Russia is bullying Ukraine with.
Why should we care about the violation of such basic rules of international life hundreds of miles away? Do we want to become a safe haven for international outlaws—the mafia bosses, the despots and their fixers? Do we want London to be the safety deposit box for their dirty money? The answer from this House must be no. We should ban those crooks and bullies as a matter of course, and prevent them siphoning their illicit gains through London or British companies.
The Government already have power to impose visa bans and asset freezes, but that power is underused and, frankly, lacks transparency. If someone is deported or extradited from this country, there is a major public debate and huge transparency, yet there is a veil of secrecy over visa bans and the decision-making process concerning them. We still do not know whether any of those linked to the Magnitsky case had been to Britain either around that time or have been since. Likewise, the Serious Fraud Office and HMRC were passed evidence about the criminal money from the Magnitsky cases and links to Britain, but they did precious little.
The links between the Magnitsky case and the current crisis in Ukraine are palpable. There is evidence that three companies cited in documents recovered from Yanukovych’s presidential palace are registered in the
UK: Navimax Ventures, Roadfield Capital LLP, and Fineroad Business LLP are holding some of those assets, and it is striking that all three share the same UK address, offshore shell companies, and directors as companies linked to the Magnitsky case. Further reports suggest that Yanukovych used British shell companies to finance the construction of various properties, including the presidential palace, which is part-owned by a UK-registered firm named Blythe (Europe) Ltd. Many of those siphoning their money through Britain are also directly connected to Putin himself, as others have said.
The wider point is that after Iraq and Afghanistan, this country has, in the words of US President John Quincy Adams, grown wary of going abroad
“in search of monsters to destroy”.
The public’s appetite for serving as the world’s policeman is unlikely to return, yet from the Arab spring, through Putin’s Russia to China, we are likely to face more and more cases of serious violations of international law, where the international response is divided, where there is no domestic appetite for military action, and where wholesale economic sanctions may be too blunt a tool. We need better tools for targeted financial sanctions that apply a direct cost to the worst violations of the cardinal rules of international law, whether torture in the Magnitsky case or military aggression in Crimea. The Magnitsky model offers that accountability, a way to deter those who bankroll the likes of Putin, and a pressure point to hit despots where it hurts.
We may not be the world’s policeman, but that does not mean we should let the henchmen of despots or dictators waltz into this country, buy up property, send their kids to school here and enjoy a very British veneer of respectability, as if their outrages back home had never happened.
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