As the UK moves into a new era of sanctions and asset freezes, Stephen Baker, senior partner at Baker & Partners, says success depends on international cooperation to trace assets
At the UK Conservative Party conference in September 2019, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that Britain would take steps ‘after it leaves the European Union’ to freeze assets of those deemed responsible for human rights abuses. His remarks were made in outline, but it is now possible to identify further detail.
By way of reminder, Magnitsky legislation is so called in memory of the death of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009. He uncovered the largest tax fraud in Russian history, had the tables turned on him by the officials implicated in the fraud, was charged with the very fraud that he had uncovered and reported, and later died from the torture and withholding of medical treatment which he suffered in jail.
