Bill Browder, the man behind laws targeting human rights abusers with individual sanctions, says Australia should follow US and UK

This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

The man who spearheaded the United States’ Magnitsky Act – targeting sanctions against human rights violators around the world – has told Australia it risks becoming “a magnet for dirty money” from abusers and kleptocrats across the globe unless it brings in similar legislation.

US financier Bill Browder, who championed the targeted sanctions laws in the US and around the world, said Australia’s new law should be named after his former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

In 2008, Magnitsky uncovered a $230m fraud committed by Russian government officials. Magnitsky testified against the officials and was arrested, tortured and died in jail. He was then put on trial posthumously.

In a submission to an Australian parliamentary inquiry, Browder said legal recompense against human rights abusers had to be sought internationally.

“These types of individuals keep their money in the west, where property rights and rule of law exists. This led to the idea of the Magnitsky Act, which freezes assets and bans visas of human rights violators.”

The United States passed the Sergei Magnitsky Accountability Act in 2012, expanding it in 2016. The US government has since imposed sanctions on 94 individuals and 102 entities from 24 countries, including South Sudan, Uganda, Iraq and Cambodia.

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Nine jurisdictions have adopted Magnitsky-like legislation, and the European Union is considering an almost identical act.

“As a champion of human rights and anticorruption in the Asia Pacific”, Australia should do so too, Browder told the joint standing committee on defence, foreign affairs and trade.

“As an integral member of the Five Eyes, it would make sense for Australia to follow in the footsteps of the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. If Australia does not have its own Magnitsky Act, the country is at risk of becoming a magnet for dirty money from human rights abusers and kleptocrats from around the world.”

In December the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, asked the committee to conduct an inquiry into introducing legislation allowing for visa and property-related sanctions to be imposed on foreign individuals responsible for human rights violations, and those “who have materially assisted, sponsored or resourced significant corruption”.

US state department officials met bureaucrats from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra last week to discuss the proposal.

The legislative proposal has significant support across the political divide, but the Australian government has previously said its current regime – with autonomous sanctions and a “character test” as part of its visa laws – was sufficient.

Australian QC Geoffrey Robertson, who represented Browder in a Magnitsky-related defamation case, told parliament in a separate submission that “Australia should not only have a Magnitsky law, but take this opportunity to have the best Magnitsky law”.

“I believe an effective Magnitsky law should apply to families of human rights violators – parents they pay to send abroad for hospital treatment and children they wish to send to expensive private schools and universities.

“If Australia’s law were to encompass grand-scale corruption, then it ought to apply to corporations as well as to individuals, not only by permitting listing of directors and major shareholders, but enabling companies themselves to be removed from registers and prohibited from trading.”

Human Rights Watch said Australia’s current sanctions regime – through UN-enforced sanctions and autonomous sanctions – was “opaque, ad hoc, and does not require the government to examine human rights concerns”.

Its director, Elaine Pearson, argued that targeted sanctions were an appropriate and useful tool of foreign policy.

“The Australian government should join other governments and pass a law that specifies human rights and corruption as criteria in applying targeted sanctions.”

Pearson argued that with the US, Canada and the UK all implementing Magnitsky laws, collective action could be far more powerful in deterring human rights abusers.

“Telling rights violators in other countries that they can’t travel to Australia or put their money in Australian banks can have a real impact,” Pearson said. “By joining other countries with similar laws, Australia will be sending a strong message to abusive leaders everywhere that there are far-reaching consequences for their actions.”



