Raab targets kleptocratic human rights abusers

Foreign Secretary plans expansion and toughening of sanctions for the ‘very worst of cases’

KLEPTOCRATS and corrupt oligarchs will face visa bans and asset freezes under Government plans to expand new laws targeting those deemed responsible for human rights abuses.

Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, is drawing up plans to add a “corruption regime” to the so-called Magnitsky sanctions, which were introduced earlier this month.

The disclosure follows concerns the list of those being targeted by the sanctions omits many individuals whose assets have been frozen under equivalent laws in place in the US and Canada.

MPs and peers have stated the version introduced as part of the UK’s post-Brexit sanctions regime fails to cover corrupt individuals who prop up the human rights abusers it targets.

Mr Raab is examining the regimes in the US and Canada as he considers how the UK scheme can be expanded.

Magnitsky sanctions in the UK, US and Canada were drawn up in the name of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in a Moscow prison while investigating an alleged tax fraud involving state officials.

Those sanctioned under the US and Canada regimes include several Russian officials allegedly involved in the case being investigated by Magnitsky, but who were omitted from the equivalent list introduced by the UK last month. Mr Raab said the new sanctions were intended to target “those involved in the very worst human rights abuses right around the world”.

The US sanction lists also includes Ajay Gupta, Atul Gupta and Rajesh Gupta for their alleged involvement in corruption under Jacob Zuma’s regime in South Africa. Bill Browder, the financier on whose behalf Magnitsky was working in Russia, and who has led the campaign for the laws, said: “Corruption and human rights abuses are inextricably linked.

“Sergei Magnitsky discovered a $230million [£140million] corruption scheme and was killed for doing so. By sanctioning just the human rights abusers they have missed some of the people most complicit in the conspiracy surrounding Sergei’s murder.

“It is relevant for the UK because all kleptocrats from around the world want to have a house in Belgravia and send their children to fancy boarding schools in the English countryside.

“I know that the Foreign Secretary understands this perfectly because he campaigned for it when he was on the backbenches.”

‘It is relevant for the UK because all kleptocrats from around the world want to have a house in Belgravia’

Mr Raab told MPs that the Foreign Office is “considering how a corruption regime could be added to the armoury of legal weapons we have.”

“I am looking at the UN convention against corruption, and practice under way under the frameworks in jurisdictions such as the United States and Canada,” he said this month.

He said: “In the case of Sergei Magnitsky, what is astonishing is that we have one of the most egregious corruption cases, coupled with an appalling human rights abuse.”

Addressing the House of Lords last year, Lord Hain, the former Labour minister, said: “Through corrupt criminality and shameful looting … the Gupta brothers have ripped off South African taxpayers by over £500million ... Any failure by global governments to act against all this would echo their failure to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa.”

The Guptas denied wrongdoing.