President’s Office believes if democracy needs its “Magnitsky list” to maintain Ukraine’s course, then we should create it

The Office of the President of Ukraine (OPU) believes if we need the "Magnitsky list" for Ukrainian judges and oligarchs to maintain the country's course to build a transparent democratic state, then Ukraine should introduce it.

Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the OPU, stated this in a comment to Interfax-Ukraine.

"Virtually all our foreign policy partners have taken a plain position on the recent initiatives of President Zelenskyi, who's strongly opposed to the return of the old non-transparent formats. In the same dispute with Constitutional Court judges, who did some political groups' bidding, Western institutions without exception are on Zelenskyi's side. They have directly stated this many times."

He noted that the latest example is the extremely harsh Washington Post editorial, which "clearly states the basic position: Western political elites should support the Ukrainian president as much as possible and allow him to stay on the path to a transparent democratic Ukrainian state."

"If this requires a "Magnitsky list" for Ukrainian judges and oligarchs, then such a sanctions list should be created immediately," Podoliak stressed.

Note. Magnitsky List (also known as the Cardin List) is a list of persons responsible for the detention, ill-treatment, and death of auditor Sergei Magnitsky, and other gross human rights violations in the Russian Federation, and a series of major embezzlement of funds from the Russian budget under the guise of tax refunds disclosed by a group of lawyers and auditors, including Magnitsky.

The list is also named after US Senator Benjamin Cardin, who, along with US House of Representatives member James McGovern, asked US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on April 26, 2010, to impose several personal sanctions on these individuals with a list of names.

Initially, the list included 60 names of officials from the Interior Ministry, FSB, Arbitration Court, Prosecutor General's Office, Federal Penitentiary Service, and a brief description of the role of each of these individuals in the Hermitage Capital case and in the prosecution of Sergei Magnitsky. Later, after different regulations were adopted in different countries based on the initiatives of Cardin and others, the number of people sometimes differed from the initial list.