US President Barack Obama on Friday signed a law repealing the Jackson-Vanik amendment and the Magnitsky list. This law lifts restrictions on trade with Russia and simultaneously imposes sanctions against Russian officials involved in the death of Hermitage Capital auditor Sergei Magnitsky.

This bill was passed by the US House of Representatives on November 16, 2012. On Thursday, December 6, the US Senate voted for the document. The adopted version of the bill provides for sanctions only against Russians, and not against human rights violators in all countries of the world, as proposed in the bill originally submitted to the Senate.

The signing ceremony of the “Magnitsky bill” by US President Barack Obama in connection with the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment took place in the Oval Office of the White House in the presence of congressmen and senators who participated in the preparation of the bill.

The law came into force from the moment it was signed. It grants Russia the status of a permanent normal trading partner, but also imposes visa and financial sanctions on Russian officials Washington believes are involved in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other human rights violations.

In particular, no later than 120 days after the adoption of the law, the US President must submit to the relevant congressional committees an unclassified list of Russian citizens who, in his opinion, were involved in the detention, torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, tried to hide the fact of what happened, and benefited from this financial gain, or participated in the criminal conspiracy that Magnitsky uncovered.

According to the law, the “Magnitsky list” will also include individuals who are responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture and other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.

The President will be able to send a name to Congress to be added to the blacklist in classified form if he deems it necessary in the interests of US national security. However, those names that will be submitted in unclassified form must be published in the US Federal Register.

Visa sanctions will be applied to persons included in the list, and their accounts and all transactions on property and rights in property will be frozen.

The document stipulates that names of individuals may be removed from the list if it can be proven that they were not involved in the activities for which they were included in this list.

The preparation of the “Magnitsky law” caused a negative reaction in Russia. “We, of course, must react accordingly,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. At the same time, he emphasized that Russia’s response should not be “adequate, but not excessive.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the adoption of the Magnitsky Law an anti-Russian act that contradicts the goals of deepening cooperation between Russia and the United States.

For its part, the State Duma adopted in the first reading a bill on measures of influence on persons involved in violating the rights of Russian citizens, which became a response to the Magnitsky Law.

Let us recall that Sergei Magnitsky, an employee of the Hermitage Capital fund, died in November 2009 in the Moscow pre-trial detention center “Matrosskaya Tishina”, having previously spent almost a year in Butyrka on charges of tax evasion. Colleagues of the deceased claimed that he died because he uncovered multibillion-dollar financial fraud by Russian officials. Hermitage released several films “The Untouchable Caste”, in which they talked about people allegedly involved in the theft from the budget and the death of Magnitsky: Lieutenant Colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Artem Kuznetsov, Major Pavel Karpov and the director of the Moscow Tax Inspectorate No. 28 Olga Stepanova.

Obama signed the Magnitsky Act