The UK has acquired its own Magnitsky sanctions regime, a means of ordering the freezing of assets of people whom the government thinks have committed infractions against human rights around the world. On the first list are the alleged killers of Sergei Magnitsky himself . Importantly, HM Government has resolved to impose the new regime on all the UK's colonies.

European Union sanctions will continue to apply in the UK until 11.00 pm on 31 December. It seems likely that the UK government has opted for Magnitsky sanctions as both a popular choice of policy and as a way of asserting its nascent independence from EU decision-making in this area.

HM Government refers to financial sanctions which relate to specific countries or terrorist groups as “regimes”. The US and Canada have Magnitsky-style legislation and Australia is considering it as well. About one-quarter of humanity lives under one or other of America's sanction programmes.

Sergei's story
Between 2007 and 2008 Sergei Magnitsky, a young Russian tax lawyer, exposed the theft of $230 million committed by tax officials in Russia's own Interior Ministry. Although others who knew about it left Russia in fear of their lives, Magnitsky stayed on to take a stand for the rule of law.

Russian authorities arrested Magnitsky in 2008 on trumped-up charges of tax evasion and, in a particularly Kafka-esque twist, the very tax investigators that Magnitsky had exposed were the ones who turned up to arrest him. The Public Oversight Commission, a Moscow-based charity, found that while in detention Magnitsky was subjected to physical and psychological abuse amounting to torture. He developed abdominal pain and an acute bladder inflammation but his jailers withheld the medical treatment that he needed. Eventually he was transferred to another facility, ostensibly to receive medical care, but instead he was handcuffed and beaten to death by riot police with truncheons. He died on 16 November 2009, aged 37.

The European Court of Human Rights found that Russia had violated Magnitsky's human rights by torturing him in prison and refusing to hold an effective investigation. Nobody involved has ever been brought to justice. Indeed, some have been promoted and even decorated with medals. The only person ever prosecuted was Sergei Magnitsky himself after his death, in Russia's first-ever posthumous trial. Now 25 Russian names are on the sanction list in connection with Magnitsky's demise.

What's on the list
Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday 6 June, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab made the first designations in accordance with the new regulations, imposing sanctions on people involved in some of the most notorious human rights violations in recent years. The first 25 designations, he said, will cover those involved in the torture and murder of Magnitsky. Some 20 designations will also include those responsible for the brutal murder of the writer, journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. There will be two designations of people who levelled violence on the Rohingya population in Burma/Myanmar, plus two for organisations that bear responsibility for the enslavement, torture and murder that takes place in North Korea's system of gulags where hundreds of thousands of prisoners have perished over the last 50 years.

As can be seen from this collection of targets, these sanctions can be invoked in relation to any supposed atrocity committed anywhere in the past and to perpetrators who have never had anything to do with the UK. In the fullness of time, the new regime promises to become a gigantic one.

Targeted sanctions are at their most effective when the sanctioning country co-ordinates its efforts with other countries, so Raab plans to work closely with the UK's partners in the “Five Eyes” surveillance dragnet.

Raab added: "Today we have also published a policy note that sets out how we shall consider designations under these regulations for maximum transparency. The legislation will ensure that due process will be followed in relation to those designations and that will reflect the process rights contained in the Sanctions and Anti-Money-Laundering Act 2018."
 

Sanction regimes in the UK
The UK's financial sanction regimes, some of which are to do with subjects and not countries, are listed here as follows: Afghanistan, Belarus, Myanmar , Burundi, Central African Republic, chemical weapons, cyber-attacks, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Global Human Rights , Republic of Guinea, Republic of Guinea-Bissau, Iran , Iran , Iraq, ISIL and Al-Qaida organisations, Lebanon and Syria, Libya, Mali, Nicaragua, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, terrorism and terrorist financing, Tunisia, Turkey, UK freezing orders, Ukraine , Ukraine , Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

An explosion of designations ahead?
The British initiative promises to begin a process in which HM Government orders the freezing of assets in the UK belonging to thousands of politicians, government functionaries and politically-connected HNWs from all over the world. Monday's Parliamentary debate, featuring contributions from MPs still in “lockdown”, made it evident that Dominic Raab is thinking of targeting the top echelons of China's ruling Communist Party in the next wave of “designations”. The debate also made it evident that many politicians are baying for Saudi blood as well. Any infraction against human rights, however far in the past and however foreign its victim, is a fair pretext for a designation under this regime.

Another factor is likely to lead to thousands of “designations”. In his opening speech Raab made a sweeping claim for the new regime.

“This government makes it crystal clear to those who abuse their power to inflict unimaginable suffering: we will not look the other way, you cannot set foot in this country and we'll seize your blood-drenched, ill-gotten gains if you try,” he said. 

There are so many people in the world who take part in decisions to commit abuses of human rights that this statement suggests that a truly staggering number of people will ultimately make their way onto the list.

Saudi and Chinese PEPs in the firing line
Dominic Raab was at pains to fend off people's suggestions for the next tranche of designations, but they kept coming anyway. The Saudi theme was picked up by the shadow Foreign Secretary, Lisa Nandy, who denounced corruption, torture and murder and called in the same breath for "a more consistent approach by the Government to Saudi Arabia and in particular the sales by the UK of armaments that the Saudi Government is using to harm civilians in Yemen."

Other politicians were keen on sanctioning Chinese “politically-exposed persons” or PEPs. Imran Ahmad Khan drew attention to Muslims suffering in Chinese camps and the need to freeze the assets of the politicians responsible for their suffering. Iain Duncan Smith, pausing to give a nod towards sanctions against senior Saudis, said quite rightly that on the issue of China "this is where big business will start to lean on the Government quite hard," meaning that any designation that disrupts commerce with that superpower is likely to inspire large corporations to lobby against it before it appears on the statute book.

Duncan Smith drew attention to the Uyghur suppression, sterilisation and forced encampment and the stripping away of the rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong. He indicated that many in Hong Kong wanted sanctions to go to "whatever highest level the evidence takes it," suggesting that Carrie Lam should be a starting point.

Raab refused to be drawn on the matter but hinted that the government was indeed thinking of targeting Chinese PEPs.

He mentioned that on 30 June Julian Braithwaite, the UK's Ambassador to the World Trade Organization and the United Nations in Geneva, delivered a statement in protest on behalf of 27 countries about the human rights situation in Xinjiang as well as Hong Kong. He added: "As with China and many other countries, people will wish to come up with further suggestions...and we will consider them very carefully based on the evidence. What I won't do is pre-empt what the next wave of designations will be but we're already working on them."

Adding corruption to the mixture
Lisa Nandy welcomed the inclusion of trafficking in the measures, after much previous governmental resistance. She was disappointed, however, that Raab had not yet persuaded his colleagues to include corruption in the new regime. She thought that corruption and abuses of human rights went hand in hand, as did others.

He reassured her: "On corruption, the work is already underway. We are committed to doing it. There are different definitions of corruption, which is one of the challenges on the international level."

Later on, he returned to this theme: "The issue with corruption is a legal, definitional one. We want to get it right. We also want to avoid all sorts of people bringing litigation against the government, either people who are on the list but also to make sure that we have a firm basis so that we're not judicially reviewed."

The addition of corruption as a basis for sanctions would certainly open the door to a blizzard of “designations” of HNWs, both in politics and in business. Not only might they be accused of offering bribes to politicians in exchange for various things; they might also be wealthy politicians doing corrupt deals on their own account, as many HNWs at the top of American and Russian politics have been accused of doing. The new regime appears to be infinitely extendable and UK politicians seem more than eager to extend it at the earliest opportunity.