THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 24, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 11:30 a.m. [ET] for a comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of the Sergei Magnitsky Law, and the Special Economic Measures Act.
Senator Peter M. Boehm (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: My name is Peter Boehm. I am a senator from Ontario and the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
[Translation]
Before we start, I would ask committee members to introduce themselves, starting on my left.
Senator Gerba: Amina Gerba, from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Greene: Stephen Greene, Nova Scotia.
Senator Richards: David Richards, New Brunswick.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Nova Scotia.
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald, Nova Scotia.
Senator Harder: Peter Harder, Ontario.
Senator Busson: Bev Busson, British Columbia.
Senator Boniface: Gwen Boniface, Ontario.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne, from Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: I wish to welcome all of you, as well as people across Canada who may be watching us on sencanada.ca.
Today we continue our review of the provisions and operation of the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, also called the Sergei Magnitsky Law, and of the Special Economic Measures Act.
Today, for 90 minutes, we welcome by video conference, two very well-known individuals. First, joining us from London, United Kingdom, we welcome Bill Browder, Head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, and indeed, as I think everyone knows, the driving force between Magnitsky-type legislation in many countries. Joining us from the United States, we welcome Evgenia Kara-Murza, Advocacy Coordinator of the Free Russia Foundation.
I want to mention on behalf of Senator Boniface and I, we attended the Halifax International Security Forum last weekend, where Vladimir Kara-Murza was given a special award to great applause from all participants.
Welcome to both of you. Thank you for being with us. We are now ready to hear your opening remarks, which will be followed by questions from senators.
Bill Browder, Head, Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign: Members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to present to you today. As you mentioned, I was the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky Act was driven by a strong desire for justice that I had after the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, who was my lawyer in Russia. He had been tortured for 358 days after uncovering a Russian government corruption scheme and was killed on November 16, 2009.
Following his murder, I made it my life’s mission to go after the people who killed him to make sure they faced justice. What we encountered was a total and absolute circling of the wagons in Russia to protect the people involved in Sergei Magnitsky’s murder. That led me to the conclusion that we needed to find justice outside of Russia.
As I looked at all of the measures that one could have gotten justice with, I effectively came to the conclusion that international law didn’t provide any meaningful measures to get justice. There were things like the European Court of Human Rights, but that only issues judgments against the country of Russia, not against individuals. There is a concept of universal jurisdiction in certain countries, but that rarely applied. So effectively, if you had a corrupt government that wanted to kill its own citizens, they could get away with it with impunity.
I looked at the murder of Sergei Magnitsky and I said, Sergei was murdered for money. They killed him because he uncovered a government corruption scheme and that money is spent in the West. So we might not have jurisdiction over a murder that takes police in Russia in Canada, the United States or the United Kingdom, but we do have jurisdiction about who can travel to our countries, who can spend money, and we have jurisdiction over money that is in our countries. That became the genesis of the Magnitsky Act, which is to freeze assets and ban visas. It’s kind of a no-brainer, if you will. I don’t think that anyone can object to the fact that we should freeze assets and ban visas of human rights violators coming into any of our countries.
The Magnitsky Act passed in the United States in 2012. Its successor, the Global Magnitsky Act in 2016, and I’m proud to say that Vladimir Kara-Murza and I and others, Irwin Cotler and others, came to Canada and made the case very strongly for a Canadian Magnitsky Act in October 2017. Both Houses of Parliament unanimously approved the Canadian Magnitsky act, and off to the races we went.
If felt like a great victory. Shortly after the Canadian Magnitsky Act was approved, a good number of the people involved in Sergei Magnitsky’s murder were added to the Canadian Magnitsky list along with people involved in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and officials in Myanmar and a few other places. It felt like Canada had really stepped into the fray, expressed its moral leadership, and it felt like we were on a really good trajectory.
And then, after that, no more Magnitsky sanctions. As far as I’m aware, since 2018, the Magnitsky act has not been used in Canada. People have been sanctioned in Canada under the Special Economic Measures Act, but no one has been sanctioned under the Magnitsky act. I scratch my head and I ask, why not? I don’t have a good explanation.
Furthermore, I know many victim groups from China, Venezuela and Iran that have petitioned the Canadian government to sanction the people involved in their persecution. What happens is that they send in applications and it goes into a black box. There is no requirement for the government to respond. Members of Parliament and members of the Senate bring these cases up. The government stays dead silent, and there is no parliamentary oversight over the Magnitsky sanctioning process.
While Canada has been a moral leader in getting this legislation into place, I believe that Canada now, five years later, has another job to do, which is to tighten it up so the Magnitsky act is used, so that victims have some understanding of whether their petitions and applications are being considered and that Parliament has oversight over this process. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Browder.
Evgenia Kara-Murza, Advocacy Coordinator, Free Russia Foundation: Good morning, members of the committee. Thank you very much for giving me this amazing opportunity to address you.
You’ve already heard today from Bill Browder, a fierce campaigner for the use of the revolutionary legislation, which is the Magnitsky Law, designed to target human rights violators around the world. I am addressing you today on behalf of my husband, another such fierce campaigner, who is currently imprisoned in Russia for opposing the war in Ukraine and is facing up to 24 years of strict regime for high treason, as the Russian government portrays his decades-long fight for a better future for our country.
My husband survived two assassination attempts in retaliation for his advocacy for the introduction of Magnitsky sanctions against murderers and thieves of the Putin regime. The same advocacy for which Boris Nemtsov, the leader of the Russian opposition, paid the ultimate price when he was assassinated in Moscow in 2015.
The horrible truth about the war that we are witnessing today is that it was not unexpected. It came as a result of over two decades of impunity that Vladimir Putin has enjoyed while oppressing his own population and carrying out his other military adventures. For years, he’s had the opponents of his regime murdered both in Russia and on foreign soil, and has broken numerous international laws by carrying out the war in Chechnya, invading Georgia, annexing Crimea and bombing Syria, all the while violently squashing peaceful protests in Russia. And all of that with no serious repercussions for himself or the kleptocratic and murderous regime that he’s built. Emboldened by continuous impunity, Vladimir Putin ended up believing that he could get away with pretty much anything and launched a full-scale war of aggression against our closest neighbour killing tens of thousands and displacing millions.
The aggression against Ukraine goes hand-in-hand with a massive-scale repression in Russia. In her report released in Vienna on September 22 of this year, OSCE rapporteur, Professor Nussberger, pointed out:
Even though the time frame for the mission was extremely short, the rapporteur was able to collect much more material than could be included in the report. This is due to the enormous dimension of the human rights problems civil society in Russia is facing.
According to OVD-Info, an independent media project on human rights and political persecution if Russia, since February 24 around 19,500 people have been arbitrarily detained across Russia.
There have been over 4,000 administrative cases and at least 355 criminal cases initiated against protesters under the new legislation that was hastily adopted by the so-called Russian Parliament in early March of this year with the sole purpose of eradicating all anti-war dissent and squashing opposition into silence.
According to Memorial, Russia’s most respected human rights NGO and co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the number of political prisoners in the Russian Federation reached 500 people. And, according to Memorial itself, this number is quite conservative because the NGO uses very strict criteria to determine someone a political prisoner, and dozens of cases are still being reviewed.
All this is happening in the atmosphere of total censorship and propaganda. Since February 24, the remaining three major independent media outlets have been closed down. Access to social networks Facebook, Instagram, Twitter has been blocked. An avalanche of blocks actually destroyed direct access from Russia to non-state socio-political media. Moreover, the trends of recent years include not only an increase in the number of blocks, but also the criminalization of online activity. Users are increasingly receiving fines and prison sentences for their texts, reposting other people’s materials and even likes.
My husband has for years been repeating a very simple thing that should have been obvious, that repression, internal repression, always inevitably leads to external aggression. This sad principle was put in black and white in the report that I already mentioned today prepared by Professor Nussberger, OSCE rapporteur:
Repression on the inside and the war on the outside are connected to each other as if in a communicating tube.
The Sergei Magnitsky Global Justice campaign was borne out of the story of one honest and brave man who fought for truth and accountability, was arbitrarily detained for that, imprisoned, tortured and murdered in prison.
My husband wrote in an article for the Washington Post in the summer of 2021 that:
Concern over human rights is not a political whim, a publicity stunt for an exercise in charity. It is a fundamental aspect of international relations, inextricably linked to both economic development and security issues.
I can say that in Canada we have seen enough proof that when human rights violations are being ignored or considered an internal affair of any given state, time inevitably comes when these human rights violations cross borders and spread around like cancer.
I believe that all methods of curbing monstrous regimes like that of Vladimir Putin should be taken and used fully.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Kara-Murza.
[Translation]
Before we go to a round of questions and answers, I would ask the members that are here in the room not to get too close to their microphone or take off their earpiece when they speak. That will prevent any feedback that could harm committee staff and other persons present in the room who are wearing an earpiece.
[English]
In the spirit of the coming season, you will each have a maximum of five minutes, so not four minutes as before, but today you will have a maximum of five minutes for the first round of questions, and this includes, of course, questions and answers. Nonetheless, I would ask you to be as concise as possible so that we can elicit the best and most fulsome response from our witnesses.
Of course, we can go to a second round if we have time. So just indicate your interest in asking a question to Ms. Lemay or myself and we will proceed.
Senator MacDonald: Thank you to the two great witnesses. I’ll direct my first question to Mr. Browder.
Mr. Browder, you’re an example of how much difference one person can make, I want to thank you for all the work you’ve done on this. Looking at the different countries in the world that have adopted the act, I’m curious what your opinion is on Canada’s response and how we manage the act compared to other countries who also have the act in place, such as Australia, the United States and European countries.
Mr. Browder: That’s a great question. Thank you. There are currently 35 countries that have some version of the Magnitsky Act in place. As I mentioned, the United States, Canada, the U.K., 27 countries of the European Union, Australia, Norway, Iceland and Kosovo-Montenegro.
With Canada, there are two ways of looking at it. One is how is the law? What are the functions of the law and how good is that? And the second is how is the implementation?
When I was going around the world advocating for Magnitsky acts after Canada and people would ask me what’s the best version of the law, I pointed toward the Canadian version. The Canadian version sanctions human rights violators. It sanctions kleptocrats. It imposes asset freezes and visa bans and there is due process in it. Canada wrote a good Magnitsky Act.
But the second issue is how well is it being implemented? I would argue that it’s being very badly implemented. The United States and I don’t have the exact numbers on the tip of my tongue but the United States has around 500 individuals and entities sanctioned under their Global Magnitsky Act, and I believe that the number is below 100 when it comes to Canada. The United States put their Global Magnitsky Act in place in 2016. Canada put their Global Magnitsky Act in place in 2017. So what that means is that Canada is not sanctioning as many bad guys, killers, kleptocrats, despots, as the United States is.
I’ve heard many different reasons and excuses for this, but the fact of the matter is I believe there’s not the same level of resources in order to vet sanctions applications. I sense that there is not as much political will to actually go about sanctioning people. I think there is a feeling in Canada that we’re a little country. Why should we get involved in this? I would respond that Canada may be a littler country than the United States, but Canada actually has an incredible moral authority in the world. It’s an unusual moral authority. When I was first trying to get the Magnitsky Act in place I knew people would be more likely follow Canada than the United States because there is a lot of anti-American sentiment in the world and there is no such thing as anti-Canadian sentiment. There is a lot more that can be done with the Canadian Magnitsky Act.
Senator MacDonald: Is there anything we can learn from other countries in terms of how they are applying the act? Is there a best practice out there that we should be adopting that, to date, we haven’t been applying?
Mr. Browder: What the United States does and I think this is very useful, is they have effectively said they don’t want to just have an authority inside the government collecting evidence and reviewing applications. They want to engage with civil society, with non-governmental organizations who can understand how the decision-making process works to encourage them to put together applications, to tell them what kind of information is needed, and to work very actively with these organizations so that there’s not this excuse, well, it’s just too cumbersome and time consuming for us to vet all this information because they’ve given them exactly the instructions on what they need to reach the level of legal threshold to sanction somebody.
I know this is also happening in the U.K. — not to the same extent as the United States, but the United States has the best practice.
There is one other feature that is not on the implementation but in the law itself, which is this: The Australians, who are the most recent country to adopt a Magnitsky Act in 2021, added one more offence to their Magnitsky Act, and that offence is cyberoffence. You have human rights abuse and kleptocracy in the Canadian Magnitsky Act. They’ve added cyberoffences because that is so much a part of everything that is going on today. When I saw that, I thought that would be a real technology worth exploring elsewhere.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Browder.
Senator Simons: First of all, I just want to say how honoured we are to have both of you here with us today. Ms. Kara-Murza and Mr. Browder, your courage is an example to the world.
Mr. Browder, we heard from witnesses last week who suggested to us that one of the problems with the way Canada is implementing the act is that the decision making and investigative powers are held within Global Affairs Canada rather than an investigative body. Global Affairs is a department charged with being diplomatic as opposed to being investigative or punitive. I’m wondering if you can tell us — to follow up on Senator MacDonald’s questions — if there are other countries that have put the decision making and investigative powers in different branches of government. Do you think that would make a difference to our willingness to invoke the act?
Mr. Browder: Another very good question. What I would say is that the United States has two departments that make these decisions. It’s the State Department, which is your equivalent of Global Affairs, and it’s the U.S. Treasury Department. Why is treasury good at this? Because they actually have much more financial expertise in investigating than the State Department has.
I should point out one other thing, which is that — and this is not just true of Canada; this is kind of true across the world — effectively, every country has their foreign affairs ministry as the lead on this thing. The job of the foreign affairs ministry of every country, primarily, is to maximize one set of variables, which is to have smooth functioning relations with every country in the world. So they are in the business of being diplomats.
It’s kind of an undiplomatic thing to go after a torturer, killer, human rights abuser or government official and tell them they’re a torturer and so we’re going to freeze their assets. It creates a conflict of interest within this body.
There is some argument to be made that perhaps it should be some type of investigative or law enforcement body, but I would caution you not to create too much bureaucracy in this whole thing. If you have two departments, then any decision will have to be coordinated. By doing so, you end up creating a whole other layer of potential delays and bureaucracy, et cetera.
I should also caution you that my own experience with the investigative bodies of Canada in relation to money laundering investigations is very disappointing. We’ve made proposals and criminal complaints to the Canadian law enforcement authorities — as we have to other law enforcement authorities in other parts of the world — and I would argue that Canada appears, on the surface at least, to be one of the less capable countries to investigate money laundering and such things.
While it’s not ideal that it’s Global Affairs Canada, my gut would tell me we need to strengthen it there than try to create new parallel organs that may not be doing any better.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much. I want to ask Ms. Kara-Murza: What difference do you think it would make in this historic moment of Russian aggression in Ukraine? What would be the symbolic value of countries using these provisions more aggressively?
Ms. Kara-Murza: Thank you very much for the question. I called this law revolutionary for a reason. It does send a very strong symbolic message to civil societies around the world because it shows them that the global democratic community does not equate entire peoples with regimes that often oppress the said peoples.
I believe that by using this powerful mechanism, you not only bring to accountability those who are actually responsible for gross human rights violations, you also send that message of solidarity and support with civil societies.
It is also symbolic in a different sense. We all know that authoritarian rulers and dictators learn from each other, and they watch each other. When you send a signal to a specific dictator, saying that they’re not going to get away with their crimes and that those who surround them — their officials and their oligarchs — are not going to get away with them, other regimes will look at this and maybe make some conclusions. They will maybe think twice or three times before torturing or murdering people or before using mass repression and punitive psychiatry against their own populations.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I will be asking my question for Ms. Kara-Murza in French. I have been told that you speak this language well. Just like my colleagues, I salute the courage of both our witnesses. Yours is a difficult fight. I am sure you are putting your own lives at risk, and I say thank you for being here.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Canadian government has sanctioned 34 persons and entities in Russia, going beyond the extremely important symbolic measures you mentioned and taking targeted measures. Are we targeting the right people and especially, is it having an effect right now? I am asking this question as an ordinary citizen. Are the sanctions being felt? Are they working, basically?
Ms. Kara-Murza: Thank you for the question. I will try to answer in French: it will be good practice.
Thank you very much for those kind words. I don’t feel that my life is in danger, actually. The people whose lives are in danger are those who are protesting in Russia and in Iran, for example. The people who are being thrown into prisons and tortured, they are the ones whose lives are still in danger. That is why I am carrying on my husband’s work. I am in a better place if I compare myself to those are protesting in Russia, in Iran and in other countries where citizens are the victims of oppressive regimes.
I think it is my responsibility to carry on his work, to continue to work with Mr. Browder, who has risked his life many times while lobbying countries around the world to pass the Sergei Magnitsky Law.
When we are talking about sanctions and their impact, I can tell you that every time a person is sanctioned under the Sergei Magnitsky Law, it’s a win.
It’s true, we want many more such sanctions, because many people are violating human rights around the world, and they think they are invincible and absolutely untouchable. We have to show them that it isn’t the case.
The Sergei Magnitsky Law is a powerful tool; it’s an absolutely extraordinary tool that allows us to show these people that they can’t violate human rights and go unpunished.
I think the only thing that I can tell you is that it would be good if Canada were to impose more sanctions against more people, because there are a lot of people who warrant it, but every person targeted by sanctions is already a win and a step in the right direction.
Thank you very much.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you for your answer.
I have a question for your colleague, Mr. Browder.
You criticized Canada for not using the Sergei Magnitsky Law when applying the most recent sanctions. Why do you think that the fact that Canada used another law, and in the case I am referring involved a different kind of intervention, makes a difference and how do you think that harms your cause?
[English]
Mr. Browder: It is not clear to me why Canada has two pieces of legislation that have the same basic impact. I’m not sure there is any technical difference. I don’t want to be firmly on the record about that because a lawyer might be able to tell me differently. However, one thing I can say, which is very important, is that there are 35 countries in the world that have Magnitsky acts. There are not 35 countries in the world that have special economic measures acts. For what Canada does, the value of sanctioning individuals is partly about what you can do in unison with other countries. To do it together with other countries is much more valuable if everybody were to do it together. If every country had a special economic measures act, then we could say that all 35 countries sanctioned such and such despot with a special economic measures act. That isn’t the case. But you can say that all 35 countries applied Magnitsky sanctions to such and such, which is powerful. It’s symbolic and powerful, and it has the advantage of being harmonizing across the world.
I would reserve the answer on the technical differences. Some lawyer might tell me otherwise that there is some difference, so I don’t want to state it one way or the other. In fact, I was speaking to some colleagues —
The Chair: Mr. Browder, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to cut you off. We have gone over time on this segment, but I’m sure we’ll pick it up later.
Senator Boniface: Thank you to both witnesses for being here. My first question will be for Ms. Kara-Murza. Last month, you appeared before the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development along with the Honourable Irwin Cotler. One of his recommendations to the committee was for Canada to help internationalize Magnitsky sanctions by developing a broader international strategy. Do you agree with that recommendation? Do you have any thoughts you can give us around it?
Ms. Kara-Murza: Thank you very much for the question. I would like to say how grateful I am for the Government of Canada for leading the way by sanctioning those officials, policemen and judges involved in the illegal persecution, prosecution, detainment and imprisonment of my husband. It is truly an amazing and heartwarming gesture, and it is also symbolic because it shows other people in Russia who are in similar conditions as my husband that the world sees their fight and understands their struggle.
In answer to your question: I believe that this is what Bill Browder was talking about. So many countries now have this powerful mechanism of going after human rights abusers and of doing it so effectively that, yes, such sanctions should be synchronized. It should become this global mechanism of going after them. Imagine the situation: If, say, an oligarch who stole from his own country — from Russian taxpayers, let’s say, because Russia is closest to my heart. Let’s say he stole from Russian taxpayers. He killed many people to hide that stolen loot, and then he has been sanctioned by Canada, let’s say. But for some reason, he is not sanctioned by the European Union. So he just moves his assets — moves his money — from Canada to the European Union, and that’s it. He has evaded all sanctions. The idea behind synchronizing the sanctions is to make sure they are actually punished for what they do, their assets are actually frozen, the visa bans are actually put on them and they can no longer use the privileges offered by free, democratic countries while they are abusing the rights of the citizens of their country.
I completely agree with what Mr. Browder and what Professor Cotler said at that hearing, which is that we can only make this mechanism more powerful by synchronizing it — by making it a global instrument. Thank you very much.
Senator Boniface: Thank you for your answer. Mr. Browder, just on that particular note — as Ms. Kara-Murza said, you spoke to this as well. I’m interested to know if you have done any work that would help inform us in terms of — given it is 35 countries, what’s the breaking point? How much of the effort needs to be done jointly in order to push it into forcing change in some of the regimes and the actions of individuals.
Mr. Browder: Well, it is not clear, and it all depends country by country. For example, I can remember there was a situation where Duterte of the Philippines imprisoned an opposition senator. Just the discussion of possibly imposing Magnitsky sanctions on people in his regime led to all sorts of scrambling and reaction and so on and so forth without any sanctions being imposed. Then you have a situation in Myanmar. The government of Myanmar is involved in the most horrific genocide and repression, and you can sanction as many of them as you want, but they are all so isolated that it’s hard to make any impact. It is really a question of how international the country is, how much money they have abroad, how much they travel abroad and how much of an effect Magnitsky sanctions have on them.
A lot of people ask me how it can be proven that Magnitsky sanctions are effective. The first response I have to that is to point out how mad Putin got when the Magnitsky Act was passed. He literally, in writing, made it his single largest foreign policy priority to repeal the Magnitsky Act. Secondly, on a more fundamental basis, it’s like asking how you can prove that putting people in jail for murder will cause people to murder less. I don’t know the answer to that, but I can guarantee you it is better to put people in jail for murder than to let them murder with impunity. The same thing is true with human right abuses and kleptocracy. It’s hard to study because we don’t have a control group of people we don’t sanction versus people we do, proving a scientific outcome. It’s just a matter of simple logic that if you prick the bubble of impunity by creating consequences, it will have a better impact than not doing anything.
I think I’m going over time.
The Chair: You are, in fact, but that’s okay. We’ll come back to some of these points.
Senator Greene: Thank you both for being here. I think you are two of the most courageous people I’ve known.
All of us who are interested in international justice, the pursuit of international justice and the widening and deepening of international justice were no doubt disappointed with President Biden’s decision not to pursue Khashoggi’s killers to the extent they could be. Has this decision impacted you at all in your pursuit of international justice? Does it mean that if the United States, which could well be or is thought of in many quarters as a leader in this field — it is certainly part of their Constitution — if they don’t come across on a killing like this, then what hope is there?
Mr. Browder: I can start if you want. What I would say is that this has always been the big sort of elephant in the room in relation to our work on Magnitsky sanctions. There has always been the question is there a head of state who is too important or too much of an ally? Are there countries that are, quote, “good human rights abusers” versus the “bad human rights abusers”?
I think we have seen that play itself out for us in real time in the last week when Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who is effectively on tape supervising the murder of a journalist who criticized him — not just the murder but the dismemberment of that journalist. He has now been, according to the State Department, given immunity from prosecution in the United States. On top of that, and we should not forget that there was a request in the United States from the two leading members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to sanction Mohammed bin Salman. This was not a partisan issue. It was bipartisan — the ranking member and the chairman. This was during the Trump administration where they basically defied the law and didn’t respond to that request for sanctioning, which is written into the Global Magnitsky Act, where if the two leading committee members make the request, the government has a duty to respond.
This is a fundamental problem. I don’t think it means the whole thing is flawed. I think it means that there is a big flaw that hangs over our head. But it is just as powerful to sanction the next guy and the next guy down after that and maybe the next woman and the next guy.
I can tell you about the Saudi Arabian situation. I can remember when the sanctions were being considered — by the way, Canada and the United States have sanctioned 19 of the killers of Jamal Khashoggi. But I can remember when that was going on, before the sanctions came out, I was getting panicked calls from people in Saudi Arabia who were under the misimpression that I had something to do with creating sanctions lists, desperately trying to stay off the sanctions list. Of course, I have nothing to do with the creation of Saudi sanctions lists. But the fact that I was getting these calls and the fact there was such concern means that the people who get sanctioned are just the direct hit, but the fact that everyone else is concerned about it tells you something about how important this is, because it evens the scales. It creates a feeling of concern, of terror, among those people who are involved in bad things that think they might be next.
So we shouldn’t lose hope because of one terrible precedent. But I do agree with you wholeheartedly. I guess if you pump a lot of oil, you can murder and dismember whoever you want and there is not going to be any consequence.
The Chair: Thank you. We are out of time on that segment as well.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I would like to thank our brilliant witnesses for their testimony, their presentations and the information that they have provided.
Ms. Kara-Murza, we are relieved to hear that your life is not being threatened and that you feel you are luckier than others; it’s most reassuring.
My question is for Ms. Browder. In an interview you gave recently to the The Globe and Mail newspaper, you stated that Canada does not have the means to investigate cases of money laundering. You even said that we don’t have the resources to enforce the Sergei Magnitsky Law. Can you explain to us on what your opinion is based? What resources should Canada have at its disposal to enforce the law?
[English]
Mr. Browder: Thank you for that question. Let me start with the Magnitsky law because there are two different issues. There is the Magnitsky law, and then there is money laundering. On the Magnitsky law, I believe that the financial resources of Global Affairs Canada should be significantly increased so that there is a very big group of people in the department who specialize in reviewing sanctions proposals, whose job it is to review sanctions proposals, who can come up with methodologies, communications and systems to do this which is far greater than what exists there today.
I don’t think we are talking about a huge amount of money. I think we are talking about a few million Canadian dollars versus zero or some much smaller amount than that.
But there is one other thing which I think is important, and I think you will all agree with me on this, which is there has to be some type of parliamentary oversight over the government’s action or inaction in implementing the Magnitsky Act.
We foresaw this problem in the United States when I was involved in drafting the U.S. Magnitsky Act. We input a provision into the U.S. Magnitsky Act that was called the congressional trigger. This provision said that if certain members of certain congressional panels are to make requests for people to be sanctioned — and those certain members would be the chairman and ranking member of a number of different key Senate or House committees, then the government — the State Department — would have four months to either give a positive or negative response. That was called the congressional trigger.
Something like that needs to be input and imposed in Canada. There needs to be some type of parliamentary trigger. How that gets defined is up to you, but there has to be some type of parliamentary oversight, Senate trigger, House of Commons trigger so that however you define it the government has to respond. They can say, “no.” They can say for any reason “no,” but they have to respond.
Right now it is a black box. People send applications in, members of Parliament make requests and nothing happens. There is no response. There’s no “yes,” there’s no “no,” there are no reasons.
This is probably the single most important thing that could come out of the review you are doing right now is some type of measure in the law which gives you, as people whose job it is to oversee the government, an ability to oversee this particular measure.
The second thing, which is not as important because this can easily be bypassed, but it is important to have anyways, is a requirement that once a year the government writes a report on what they have achieved, what they haven’t achieved, et cetera, on the implementation of the Magnitsky Act.
Again, they could write anything they want in reports, and we have all read reports that are full of words that don’t mean anything. But just the forcing of the government to write a report focuses everyone’s mind on what they have and haven’t achieved.
I have probably run out of time on the money laundering question.
The Chair: You must be watching the clock better than I am, Mr. Browder.
Thank you, senator, for that question. I think it is a very good one.
We have heard from earlier witnesses that certain millions of dollars have been devoted to establishing a specific sanctions bureau within Global Affairs Canada. I think that would align with your thinking. Of course, the fact we are doing this review was actually in response to something that was baked into the legislation — that there would be a five-year review. So things can be put into recommendations that we would then offer up to the government at the end of this particular review. Thank you for the question, senator, and your response, Mr. Browder. That was a very important one in my view.
Senator Coyle: Thank you, very much, Mr. Browder, for being with us today and for starting this. I’m very sorry for the loss of your friend and colleague, Mr. Magnitsky. Thank you also to Ms. Kara-Murza for being with us today. I do hope that your husband will be released and not experience much more trauma. Of course, we all hope that these sanctions and actions that we are talking about here today will have deeper effects than what they currently have had. I think it is wonderful, and we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the bolstering effect that they are having for civil society and also the fear factor for those who might be considering committing human rights abuses, et cetera.
What I would like to understand from both of you are the impacts beyond what we have discussed here today. You have talked about the importance of the synchronicity, the global phenomenon, the countries working together and how powerful that can be. Are there some countries who are within those 35 who are doing it better and from whom we could learn? These are important measures. I’m not questioning that at all. Are there other things that are on both of your minds that we might need to do to take it to another step to really push for the kinds of impacts that we want? We want to see change. We don’t want these human rights abuses. We don’t want the war in Ukraine to continue. I would like to open it up and hear what you have to say, either or both of you.
Mr. Browder: The 1,800-pound gorilla in the room is the United States when it comes to this. Why is the United States so powerful? It’s one specific reason. If they see that somebody is violating or evading sanctions, if a financial institution has done business with a sanctioned individual, the U.S. Department of Justice will go after that institution and fine them. For example, there was a Swiss subsidiary of a French bank that was doing business with, I think, Sudan and Iran when they were on the U.S. sanctions list. That bank was fined and prosecuted and had to pay, I think, $8 billion. That was a huge amount of money. However, in a case where someone has been sanctioned and somebody has violated sanctions and is somehow connected to a Canadian institution, if that kind of law enforcement were applied, in other words, if there were real pain not just for the sanctioned individual but to the financial institution or corporation that does business with a sanctioned individual, then you could end up with a much stronger sanctions regime.
There are Canadian companies that have done business with sanctioned individuals, and they might be still doing business with sanctioned individuals. I won’t name names out of respect; I don’t think we are supposed to do that here. But if the Canadian law enforcement agencies or the Canadian government were to impose fines or prosecutions against companies and institutions who are doing business with sanctioned individuals, then people would start getting scared of being on the Canadian sanctions list as well, and that will have an outsized effect. It doesn’t have to be across the board. All you have to do is one or two of these prosecutions and everyone will say, oh my, Canada is serious about this.
Ms. Kara-Murza: To add to what Mr. Browder said, the Magnitsky legislation allows you to freeze assets, money and bank accounts. We are talking about the bank accounts of people who have stolen this money. This money has never been theirs. They have been stealing from the Russian taxpayers for over two decades, if we are talking about Russia.
If we are talking about the war in Ukraine, of course, we need to do everything we can, all of us together, to bring the end of this war closer. But what’s going to happen after the war ends? Russia will need to pay reparations, of course, because Ukraine has been half destroyed. You can do that with those frozen assets, with those frozen bank accounts of people who never actually had the right to that money in the first place. You are not going to take someone’s money that doesn’t belong to you, these people would be sanctioned for having launched a war of aggression against Ukraine, for stealing money from Russian taxpayers and for breaking international law. That money can be later used for reparations after the war finally ends.
Of course, there is this slight fatigue that sets in. Many countries have been helping Ukraine, as they should, of course, and this is very admirable. Everything that Canada has been doing to help Ukraine, providing arms and humanitarian aid and everything else. But populations in these countries are beginning to ask how much longer can we support this. Financially, I understand this must be a very big burden on countries that have been helping Ukraine.
The Chair: I’m sorry to interrupt you, Ms. Kara-Murza. We are out of time on that segment. Allow me one observation. You raised a very important point about the repurposing of frozen assets. In fact, the last Budget Implementation Act that was passed by Parliament did have a provision for just that. The trick, of course, will be in its implementation. If I understand correctly, we are probably the first country to go down that path. That would also involve government-to-government consultations with our allies. That’s just an observation on my part.
Senator Richards: Thank you to our witnesses for being here. It is an honour to meet you and listen to you. My question is very quick, and it has been asked in other ways. It is for Ms. Kara-Murza.
All dictatorships sooner or later implode from within, and we never know when it’s going to happen, but sooner or later they do, no matter what dictatorship it is. Within Russia itself, beyond the sanctions that are hurting the oligarchs, within the population, I don’t think they support the war in Ukraine. I don’t think probably many of them support Putin. Am I wrong on that?
Ms. Kara-Murza: Thank you very much for this important question. It is difficult to assess the state of mind of the Russian population in the absence of free media, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, free and fair elections and all the other fundamental freedoms that the Russian population has been deprived of.
What we can rely on is the number of protesters. All those thousands of Russians. I mentioned that over 19,500 people have been arbitrarily detained since the beginning of the war. All of these people who go out in the street knowing quite well that they can be sent to prison for 15 years just for standing in the street with a blank sheet of paper or for making a post online that says they do not support the war. They show much better the state of mind of the Russian population. They do not support the war. There is this part of the Russian population that is prepared to go to these grave risks and they end up in prison, they end up in psychiatric hospitals and they end up tortured. There is a majority of the Russian population that has brainwashed for over 19 years. The last independent television channel was closed in Russia in 2003. That’s 19 years of propaganda.
Also, the last free but not fair, according to international organizations, election in Russia took place in 2003. That’s 19 years of stolen elections.
When we talk about the majority of the Russian population, how can we assess? Have they been brainwashed, and they don’t understand what is happening in Ukraine, what the Russian army is doing there? Maybe they’re scared into silence by watching all those who do get arrested, do get tortured, do get sent to prison.
My husband is facing up to 24 years for high treason. Of course, the authorities want to show, by his case and other cases, what will happen to those who dare oppose the regime.
I believe that using Magnitsky sanctions — to return to the topic of our conversation here today — sends a very powerful signal to that part of the population that understands what’s going on, that the democratic world sees a difference between the people and the regime that has been oppressing the said people, between people who do go to great risks to oppose the regime and those officials and oligarchs who have been stealing money from these people and murdering these people and sending them to prison.
I believe that the situation in Russia can change overnight, as history shows. I believe that it is crucially important to preserve, maintain, build small bridges with at least that part of Russian civil society that continues protesting against all odds, because they are going to be the ones rebuilding the country from scratch when the regime collapses. If we want a different Russia, we need to make sure that the part of Russian civil society that opposes the regime and wants a different future, can actually survive somehow.
We need to preserve those bridges with them, help them and show solidarity with them. Thank you very much.
Senator Richards: Thank you very much.
Senator Busson: I want to first echo the comments of my colleagues and applaud the personal courage and dedication of both of you in coming forward and advocating on this front and literally making this your life’s work, if I’ve heard it correctly. It is no small thing.
I want to get each person’s comments. It was touched on before by both of you. It was a comment about coordination.
I’m wondering if you could comment on whether or not it would be helpful in the big picture for all of the countries that are involved in Magnitsky sanctions to formalize and coordinate not just their work but, perhaps, associate more closely in some kind of congress or association to more effectively put together the effect of the Magnitsky sanctions on certain actors. I’m specifically thinking of Russia and others, but I’d like to get your comments on that.
Mr. Browder: Thank you for that excellent question. The only time we’ve seen all the countries act in unison against human rights violators, using Magnitsky or Magnitsky-like sanctions, has been the sanctions against four Chinese officials involved in the concentration camps for the Uighur minority. That was a situation where Canada, the United Kingdom, the U.S. and the EU all worked together on that thing.
It’s an extremely powerful measure. The reason it’s so powerful, as we’ve said before, is that you basically get shut out of the whole world when you get on everybody’s Magnitsky list at the same time.
However, that was a one-off. It was based on an extreme situation. By the way, four people being sanctioned for 2 million to 3 million people in concentration camps is still woefully inadequate, but at least it was done all together and was very symbolic.
There doesn’t exist a coordinating body. We don’t want to end up in a situation where we’ve got to get agreement from everybody to put someone on a Magnitsky list, because it will all grind to a halt the way all multilateral organizations work, but there needs to be a coordinating body.
For example, the case of the Kara-Murza family. Evgenia Kara-Murza and I have gone around the world meeting with officials and members of Parliament in all the places with Magnitsky Acts to say, “Please sanction the people who are persecuting her husband, Vladimir Kara-Murza,” the man who I would say is coequal in getting the Magnitsky Act passed. The man who tried and succeeded in getting Magnitsky Acts passed all over the world is now a big victim, and the Magnitsky Act needs to be used for him.
We have gone to all these different countries. Everyone is highly sympathetic. Vladimir Kara-Murza is respected and loved everywhere. So far, Canada has acted first, which is wonderful.
Everybody says, “What is everyone else doing?” I go to the United States, and they ask, “Who do we speak to in Canada?” I go to the U.K., and they say, “Well, we need to get our act together.”
It would be great if such a thing existed. It’s a natural thing, as your question suggests. You could put in your recommendations from this review that Global Affairs Canada should have a team of people whose specific job it is to coordinate, reach out to and find their counterparts in other governments to specifically try to conform. This would also require Canada adding more people to the Canadian Magnitsky list to conform with other countries that have already done it, but those are two separate issues.
The Chair: Ms. Kara-Murza, did you want to respond to that as well?
Ms. Kara-Murza: I would say I completely agree with Mr. Browder. This is something that needs a lot more work.
The Magnitsky legislation is very new. No one has ever done anything of the sort. We are at the beginning of a very long and productive story, I believe, but we will learn as we go.
I believe that such a body would be very helpful. Thank you very much, Mr. Browder.
The Chair: Thank you. I’d like to follow up on this exchange. I think it’s quite important.
Ms. Kara-Murza, you mentioned earlier this need for synchronizing and working together. We’ve heard some recommendations that you both have made.
I would say that from my perspective and as a former government official involved in much of this, the amount of consultation that has taken place since February 24, certainly between G7 governments, is unprecedented. I would give a lot of credit to the German presidency in terms of pushing a lot forward.
The sanctions business, at least in this form, is relatively new, as you’ve just indicated, Ms. Kara-Murza, but there is also an importance that has to be attached to accuracy. We’ve seen this in everything from the spelling of names differing between the different governments that are issuing or imposing the sanctions, to addresses, to family members and the like. There is an importance there, I would suggest.
On the other side, of course, you’re meeting with senators who have all been sanctioned. We’ve learned the Cyrillic spellings of our names. In one case, the last list that came out from Moscow had an interesting inaccuracy with respect to a Canadian who is a former premier of Alberta and who was sanctioned and listed as a former premier of Saskatchewan. Well, wrong province. So errors can take place wherever.
I would like to ask you — Senator Coyle touched on this earlier — in terms of best practices, what would you recommend specifically?
Ms. Kara-Murza: It is very important, of course, to avoid all sorts of mistakes when we’re talking about sanctioning someone. That process needs to be transparent and should be based on the law as much as possible, because we want this to be as objective as possible.
Of course, when we sanction someone, we need to make sure that we’re sanctioning the right person, that all the information on which we are sanctioning the said person is there. I believe that in order for the whole process to be respectable, it has to be as solid, transparent and independent as possible.
Mr. Browder, would you agree?
Mr. Browder: Let me jump in here. You made an extremely good point, which is that when you see your own names on the sanctions list, they have the wrong place and so on. When we were trying to get various people involved in getting Sergei Magnitsky’s torturers and murderers sanctioned, we presented a package of information based on court documents and protocols and so on from the Russian system which showed the involvement of different officials. When the list came out from the United States, which was the first country to sanction Magnitsky’s killers, it was missing two names. Why was it missing the two names? For a very mundane reason but a very important reason, we didn’t have birth dates. Why is the birth date so important? Because there could be lots of people with that name, and so having a birth date actually means you don’t end up sanctioning the wrong person.
As Ms. Kara-Murza said, the Magnitsky sanction has a wonderful authority about it because it’s so righteous, it’s such a good-versus-evil thing. So far it hasn’t been abused and it hasn’t been used badly in a way where someone who shouldn’t have been on the list ends up getting on the list by accident or whatever.
I would imagine that Canadians are just as adherent to this as everybody else, but there has to be a very good dossier and file in order to sanction a person. It has to reach a legal threshold that would hold up in court.
I would also say that it doesn’t necessarily — and this comes back to this coordination point — require that Canada does the work. If you trust the Americans who have done their work, you don’t have to do all the work yourself. The work can be shared around, and as long as it looks to be of a certain standard, why not use the designation file that was created by the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. State Department or similarly with the U.K.
Now that Vladimir Kara-Murza has been sanctioned by Canada, why shouldn’t the U.K. use your dossier? I don’t know how much information sharing is available, whether it’s open to sharing, but again if that were to be the case, that would streamline the process and that potentially get more people on to a sanctions list. It doesn’t have to be that every —
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Browder. We’re going over time on my segment. I have to set a good example. Thank you for that.
We’ll move to round two. I have Senator Simons, followed by Senator MacDonald.
Senator Simons: This turns out to be a very good segue. Last week when we were discussing these matters, I raised the problem of what happens when a rules-based international order breaks down and if, hypothetically, there were to be a government in the United States that was not going to use the act in the way it has been used heretofore. For example, hypothetically the U.S. government might sanction people from a country that other members of the rules-based international order did not feel this was an appropriate use of those sanction powers.
I know you are an American expat, but as you’re looking at your home country and its political situation right now, what could we do and can we do anything to make sure that global public respect for this process doesn’t break down if a country that used to be part of the international order were to go rogue? Say a really important country.
Mr. Browder: That’s a very important question. It already happened. The United States under the Trump administration by Mike Pompeo sanctioned Fatou Bensouda. Fatou Bensouda is a Gambian judge, who is a chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court who had opened up investigations against American troops in Afghanistan. As a result, they set up a special sanctions mechanism — that wasn’t the Magnitsky sanctions — and froze all of her assets and all of her family member’s assets for doing her job as the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Thankfully, after the Trump administration ended, the Biden administration immediately removed that. She is no longer sanctioned. She is now the High Commissioner of Gambia in the U.K. and she attended the Magnitsky prize celebrations last week and received the Magnitsky prize for her work as an amazing and brave prosecutor.
So this stuff has happened. It’s not a hypothetical. It’s a real situation.
It’s one of the reasons why I haven’t gone around the world to non-rule-of-law countries to try to get them to create Magnitsky Acts. I don’t want a Thai Magnitsky Act or a United Arab Emirates Magnitsky Act because these are countries that probably at some point may be subject to Magnitsky sanctions. We only want rule-of-law countries that, for the most part, respect the rule of law. We could end up in a situation. Donald Trump has thrown his hat in the ring to be the next president of the United States. He could end up winning. We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.
Senator Simons: Somehow I don’t find that a very comforting answer.
This comes back to your answer to Senator Busson. If you set up some kind of international coordinating body, there is a greater risk that if one rule-of-law country becomes a little less focused on the rule of law that it could derail an entire international order.
Mr. Browder: You don’t have to be slavish about coordinating. In other words, you coordinate to the extent that it’s in your interest to coordinate and you don’t coordinate if it’s not in your interest to coordinate. We don’t want to set up a NATO-like structure for Magnitsky sanctions where we all have to do it because if we did that then nothing would ever happen because there would always be somebody not acting.
That is one of the problems with the EU. The EU to this day has not sanctioned Magnitsky’s killers, even though it has a Magnitsky Act, because Hungary which is a member of the European Union has done exactly what you’re talking about. Hungary is run by Viktor Orbán. Viktor Orbán is taking instructions from Vladimir Putin and he vetoed Magnitsky’s killers to be put on the EU Magnitsky list. We want to coordinate to the extent that we can but we don’t want anyone to have veto power over our coordination if it’s not right, not lawful or not in the interest of justice.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much.
Senator MacDonald: I’m going to direct a question to Ms. Kara-Murza, and I want to pick up on what Senator Richards mentioned. I find it very hard in the West, I believe, to get a feel or a read on what’s going on below the surface in Russia. You say things can change very quickly. I’m just curious, would the change be more likely to come from inside Putin’s United Russia party or would it be more likely to be driven by the military itself? Do you have a feel for what’s going on in both his party and the military? Thank you.
Ms. Kara-Murza: Thank you very much for this question. You know how much I would love to have the answer to that question myself. I’m not a politician, nor am I a military expert. I can only judge by what I see and the news I get from Russia of mass persecution and from the news following mobilization efforts made by — you know.
I can say that change in Russia will probably become a collective effort.
This is why I believe that sanctions should continue and become even stronger. I believe that Ukraine should get all the help that Ukraine needs to win this war on Ukraine’s terms, and I believe this is also why — when I talk about sanctions, I mean, of course — Magnitsky sanctions that are extremely powerful, but also economic sanctions that will make it costlier for the regime to continue its war.
It’s high time that the democratic world stop relying, stopped depending on oil and gas sold by despotic regimes out there because that makes democratic countries hostages of those regimes and this cannot be.
This is also why it is so important to support that part of Russian civil society that continues opposing the regime from inside and tries to do everything, including setting on fire conscription centres, but whatever works. At this point, I understand when people have been deprived of any peaceful means of voicing their protest, they are turning to other means like setting on fire conscription centres and official buildings and derailing trains.
This is not what I want for my country, because this is yet another step toward a civil war. But this is what’s happening. And I can see that there is a lot of frustration. There is a lot of anger within society toward what the regime is doing both in Ukraine and in Russia.
This is why I believe that we need to do everything we can to bring forward the downfall of the regime, because this is what’s needed in order for a change to happen there. For as long as Putin stays in power or for as long as an authoritarian or dictatorial regime is in place in Russia, there will be warmongering. The war will continue for as long as Putin stays there. In order for this change this vertical power — Putin’s vertical power — has to collapse. This is when we’re going to be able to change something to make sure that Russia never becomes an authoritarian or totalitarian country any more.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Kara-Murza.
Senators, we’ve come to the end of our hearing today. I’d like to, on behalf of this committee, deeply thank Mr. Browder and Ms. Kara-Murza for appearing as witnesses today. You have enriched our thinking on this very important matter of sanctions, and our work will also be enriched as we proceed.
I also think I’m expressing the sentiments of this committee in saying how much we admire the work that you undertake and the courage that you demonstrate in doing so. Thank you very much.
(The committee adjourned.)